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--></style><title>Public Lecture: TONY BENNETT -- 'The Divided
Habitus'</title></head><body>
<div><font color="#000000"><i><br></i></font></div>
<div><font size="+1" color="#000000"><i>The Department of English with
Cultural Studies at The University of Melbourne presents a free Public
Lecture.</i></font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><i><br></i></font></div>
<div><font size="+1" color="#000000"><b>Professor Tony
Bennett</b></font></div>
<div><font size="+1" color="#000000"><b>'The divided habitus:
aesthetics and the politics of taste'</b></font><br>
</div>
<div><font size="+1" color="#000000"><b>6: 15 pm Tuesday 23 May
2006 </b></font></div>
<div><font size="+1" color="#000000"><b>Prince Phillip Theatre
(Architecture Bldg) The University of Melbourne</b></font><br>
</div>
<div><font size="-1" color="#000000"><u>Abstract</u></font></div>
<div><font color="#000000">Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus has
played a significant role in cultural studies in suggesting that our
relations to texts – whether visual, literary, or auditory – are
mediated via class-based habitus that provide unified and unifying
principles of taste that are manifest across the full range of an
individual's cultural interests. Yet Bourdieu claimed that his
own habitus was a divided or cleft one as a consequence of the
conflicting experiences arising from his social mobility. This
lecture will suggest that such a divided habitus is the rule rather
than the exception, and that the notion of a unified habitus – which
plays a central role in Bourdieu's sociology of consumption – is
unsustainable. The argument will be illustrated by drawing on
the evidence regarding the social distribution of cultural tastes from
a recent study of the relationships between cultural practices and
cultural capital in the UK. Its implications for accounts of the
relations between aesthetics and the politics of taste will be
explored by contrasting Bourdieu's interpretation of the social
inscription of Kantian aesthetics in processes of class
distinction with competing accounts focused their role in relation to
development of liberal forms of governance.</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><br>
Tony Bennett is Professor of Sociology at the Open University, a
Director of the Economic and Social Science Research Centre on
Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC), and a Professorial Fellow in the
Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne. His
current interests focus on the sociology of culture, with special
reference to questions of culture and governance, the history and
theory of museums, cultural and media policy, and relations of class,
culture and social exclusion. His publications include<i>
Formalism and Marxism</i>;<i> Outside Literature</i>;<i> Bond and
Beyond: The Political Career of a Popular Hero (</i>with Janet
Woollacott);<i> The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics;
Culture: A Reformer's Science</i>;<i> Accounting for Tastes:
Australian Everyday Cultures</i> (with Michael Emmison and John
Frow);<i> Culture in Australia: Policies, Publics, Programs</i>
(co-edited with David Carter);<i> Contemporary Culture and Everyday
Life</i> (edited with Elizabeth Silva<i>);</i> and, most
recently, <i> Pasts Beyond Memory: Evolution, Museums,
Colonialism</i> and<i> New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture
and Society</i> (edited with Larry Grossberg and Meaghan
Morris)<i> </i> He was elected to membership of the Australian
Academy of the Humanities in 1998.</font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font size="-1" color="#000000">Enquiries: Annemarie Levin, 8344
5506,<u> alevin@unimelb.edu.au</u>
http://www.english.unimelb.edu.au</font></div>
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<div><br>
<br>
Dr Audrey Yue<br>
Convenor<br>
Cultural Studies Program<br>
Department of English with Cultural Studies<br>
The University of Melbourne<br>
Victoria 3010<br>
Australia<br>
aisy@unimelb.edu.au<br>
+ 61 3 8344 5506/7<br>
www.english.unimelb.edu.au/culturalstudies/index.html</div>
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