Gisella M.Vorderobermeier, Remapping habitus in translation studies

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Notes

1. Among the strengths of the concept, one may recall the ‘mediating’ dimension of the habitus which helps to overcome the dualism of subjectivism vs. objectivism, and its ability to account for the (social) logic of practices taking place below the level of consciousness, practices that go without saying. As such, the concept allows us to solve apparent paradoxes and contradictions within discourses, within practices, or between translators’ practice and discourse. Another strength, well illustrated in a few chapters of this volume, is the fact that within Bourdieu’s social theory, the habitus is related to a whole set of other concepts that may be useful to account for more conscious translatorial choices, unorthodox or ‘deviant’ practices, as well as unique and apparently extraordinary trajectories. This inextricable link between Bourdieu’s sociology and the habitus becomes a weakness when considering that the former is still firmly grounded in the notion of nation states and mostly dedicated to explaining the reproduction of social structures (rather than social change). Hence, as developed and used by the French sociologist, the habitus appeared to some as a more subtle way to present rather deterministic explanations – although the circularity that this theoretical apparatus entails should make it immune to such critique (see Gonthier 2007, 387) – and was rightly criticised for its inability to account for in-group diversity as well as for the temporariness and multiplicity of human experiences.

2. In that respect, her contribution is that which most redefines the habitus concept, since the latter appears, in the framework presented, as a highly volatile and adaptive feature, rather than a durable mechanism of dispositions.

3. As Pasmatzi explains, ‘Bourdieu introduced hexis to identify and describe those ritualised and regularized bodily stances of the Kabyle people in Algeria that were the corporeal expression of social order.… Hexis appears as the embodied and socially-conditioned “knowledge” of what is honourable and dishonourable in a given context’ (pp. 78–79). In other words, unlike the habitus (which refers to a set of dispositions), hexis refers to concrete (bodily) expressions, partly conscious and partly unconscious. By analogy (considering a text as a linguistic body), Pasmatzi and Hanna suggest interpreting translatorial agency – both in textual choices and in identity discourses – as the expression of a translatorial hexis. The proposal is intuitively appealing and the demonstration (through the case studies) convincing. However, comparing Bourdieu’s definition of the concept (quoted p. 78) with its appropriation by the three translation scholars reveals an interesting twist, in that the latter tend to emphasise both the temporary and conscious dimension of hexis, whereas Bourdieu insisted on its permanence.

4. According to Grbić, Thomas F. Gieryn first introduced the notion of symbolic boundary as a ‘mental fence’ in 1983, in relation to the sociology of science; ‘Boundary work is “strategic practical action” (Gieryn 1999, 23) pertaining to techniques and strategies that agents or groups employ to construct distinctions between themselves and others.’ (p. 98)

5. To what extent data resulting from interviews and surveys can in themselves allow us to analyse translators’ habitus is more questionable, at least if we understand habitus as a system of dispositions that is largely unconscious.