Bourdieu e Foucault: un confronto critico a proposito dei fondamenti della spazializzazione del potere

Our aim in this paper is to carry out a comparative analysis of Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault – two figures traditionally opposed in the French academic field – in order to highlight the areas in which their respective aims and methods partially overlapped. Tacking stock of Bourdieu’s analyses in Homo academicus, we wish to argue that the opposition between the two concerns more the empirical individuals – resulting from the respective disciplinary and academic positionings – than the epistemic individuals. Bourdieu, in conceiving of the notion of social space and consequently of field, focuses on the dimension of power and describes the space of the positionings according to principles which are relative to force relations. It is in these latter that he finds the source of sense relations. Foucault, following a different but complementary trajectory, begins with the analysis of the order of discourse and then articulates its implications on the level of power relations and of subjection and subjectivation practices.