[D-G] Cascading Cultural Capital Style Sheets

[Chris Chapman]

I just read the Bourdellian reading of Deleuze Sylvie suggests and this
popped into my mind:



"Labov, however, has other ambitions. When he brings to light lines of
inherent variation, he does not see them as simply as "free variants"
pertaining to pronunciation, style, or nonpertinent features that lie
outside the system and leave the homogeneity of the system in tact; neither
does he see them as a de facto mix between two systems, each homogeneous in
its own right, as if the speaker moved from one to the other. He refuses the
alternative linguistics set up for itself: assigning variants to different
systems, or relegating them to a place outside the structure. It is the
variation itself that is systematic, in the sense in which musicians say
that "the theme is the variation." Labov sees variation as a de jure
component affecting each system from within, sending it cascading or leaping
on its own power and forbidding one to close it off, to make it homogeneous
in principle. He takes the example of a young black person who, in a very
short series of phrases, seems to pass from the Black English system to the
standard system eighteen times. Is it not the abstract distinction between
the two systems that proves arbitrary and insufficient?" 
(A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia 93)


"Labov leans in this direction when his concern to rehabilitate 'popular
speech' against the theorists of deprivation leads him to contrast the
verbosity and pompous verbiage of middle- class adolescents with the
precision and conciseness of black children from the ghettos. This overlooks
the fact that, as he himself has shown (with the example of recent
immigrants who judge deviant accents, including their own, with particular
severity), the linguistic 'norm' is imposed on all members of the same
'linguistic community', most especially in the educational market and in all
formal situations in which verbosity is often de rigeur." (Language and
Symbolic Power 53)




....for my money I'ld rather Guattari's and Deleuze's reading of the
significance of accents in the formation of Cultural Capital, "variation as
a de jure component affecting each system from within" rather than
Bourdieu's reading that "the linguistic 'norm' is imposed on all members of
the same 'linguistic community' ". The logical third term produced here is
in thinking how variation might be imposed. 

The author of the architecture piece does get somewhere at the end: noting
the passage between virtual and actual. I would begin with that distinction
and the difference between judgment and interpretation they entail. The idea
that the subject is a windowless monad is a test, experiment in the real,
innit? I think the author missed that point and the direction of the
politic, which isn't towards the individual but rather the social and hence
the virtual. 

 What kind of chairs are in the staff room at the chair factory? Wicker? 

Chris.


-----Original Message-----
From: deleuze-guattari-driftline.org-bounces at lists.driftline.org
[mailto:deleuze-guattari-driftline.org-bounces at lists.driftline.org] On
Behalf Of Liza Kozner
Sent: Thursday, February 24, 2005 6:54 PM
To: deleuze-guattari-driftline.org at lists.driftline.org
Subject: Re: [D-G] deleuze nietzsche philistine

why is it ? it's so intello-and-poseur
> this link might be of interest
> 
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