Constructed False Doxa

 At a seminar a few days ago someone mentioned the fact the Foucault and (especially) Bourdieu are often reference in works in a way which suggests their orthodoxy, though of course orthodoxy, and what makes a line of thought acceptable was one of the things those scholars sought to change. The next paper I have on my reading list just happens to be Blackledge, 2009, and dear old Bourdieu gets a mention... in the abstract! 

Bourdieu references doxa. And there's nothing wrong with doxa per se, it's the framing of a construct as doxa that is problematical. For example, I recently read somewhere, didn't make a note unfortunately) an article on education in the US that began with phrase, "With the failure of the state..." as if it was taken for granted that the state had failed in the provision of education, everyone knew that, and thus we were ALL forced to look at private provision.  

One would need an extremely uncritical mind to be taking in by most (let's call them) Constructed False Doxa. But when I went in search of this concept, almost everything went back to Plato. The only scholar using the phrase "false doxa" in a non-classical sense, (in connexion with racism, as it happens, so not too far away from my own research) is Myers, 2005, (I'm getting a copy from the ILL service). 

What's bugging me is that I've encountered this concept before, probably in Critical Discourse Analysis, but I can't remember the label/terminology. It's really important though. It's a discourse trick in all kinds of contexts, including common speech: "We all know that... Garry is lazy/Geordies are thick/white men can't dance" etc, just insert any dodgy premise you can think of, wrap it up in your auditors' most convincing form of "It is widely accepted that...", hey presto! a fully formed Constructed False Doxa, To Go. 

Anyways, that's my weekend sorted: Bourdieu, 1998. But that tangent is done for today, and I'm getting back to Blackledge, 2009, and my proper reading.

REFERENCES

Blackledge, A. (2009). : The Further Extension of Language Testing Regimes in the United Kingdom. Language Assessment Quarterly, 6(1), 6–16. http://doi.org/10.1080/15434300802606465
Bourdieu, P. (1998). On television and journalism. London: Polity Press.

Myers, K. A. (2005). Racetalk: Racism hiding in plain sight. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Leech or flatworm? Ants and Swiss Chard

Image
For the 2nd time in a week or so, (1st time regarding dwarf beans ), I'm following Alys Fowler's advice, this time with regard to Swiss chard .  Long story short, after midsummer plants which often bolt if planted in spring will resist the impulse to do so, probably because of shortening days; (I say shortening, but in Glasgow, in July, we're still getting 18 hours of daylight).   I got a packet of Bright Lights , at a good price, (another reason to wait until July before sowing, lots of bargains, I've noticed). But where to sow them? Most of the 2nd bed is under a tarpaulin, but it wasn't quite big enough to cover the whole bed, so the last 5ft or so went under a sheet of plastic, (in the background of the photo in this post, here .) Transparent plastic was a foolish idea, weeds were growing underneath it, so I covered most of it with sheets of metal from the old shed. I decided to leave the tarp, but use the area beneath the plastic for the chard. Who-ah there...
Read more

"Chevy Chase. Fuck ever happen to him?"

Image
As Paulie Walnuts said in The Sopranos. It got me thinking. As it happens, he's been working steadily , but you can see what Paulie means. It's like that with film and television actors: you don't see them in anything for a year or two, and you wonder if they're dead or perhaps on a lengthy charlie and booze session. Or maybe doing proper acting on the stage? Only appearing on the telly gives them meaning to us. That video with Paul Simon was on one of the cable music channels the other day. It always makes me smile. As for Paulie and the rest of the crew, the clock's ticking. Of course, America already knows how things finish, but we don't. My mate Ian was telling me about a friend of his, visiting the States a few weeks ago, flicking through the channels in his hotel bedroom, he hit on a repeat of THE final episode, just beginning. What a quandry! He watched it, as it goes, but kept shtum when he came home.
Read more

How many pallets can you fit in the back of a Fiat 500?

Image
At least 1. Maybe I could have got 3 altogether, at a pinch. Also 200+ gorse seeds, which have begun to look in danger of damping off, so I'm thinking they'll be better off at the allotment in the fresh air. I'm worried about slugs, snails and woodpigeons, though, so I put them in a wheelbarrow, covered with a net. Also this morning, planted a row of beetroot detroit.
Read more