"Dashed Hopes and Good Intentions": A Bourdieuian Reading of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Ebrahim Salimi-Kouchi, Mohsen Rezaeian

Abstract


Pierre Bourdieu's investigation into the mechanism of power relations in any given society emphasizes that culture is firmly embedded in social lives of agents. An agent engages in some social competitions, struggling with others and his or her own limits. Applying the metaphor of "game" to social life, Bourdieu believes that people, in order to accumulate more capitals, participate in intense social competitions. Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf raises some questions about the nature of power, language, and their intersection. The lives of the characters are not far removed from how they experience power relations in a college campus, a microcosm of American society. Putting into practice Bourdieu's theory of practice, this article analyzes the influence of the accumulation of capitals in the lives of George and Martha, the role of the imaginary child as a part of American dream and its significance to the couple's lives, and ultimately the use and abuse of language in their ways of communication.

Keywords


Bourdieu; Albee; habitus; field; capital; imaginary son; American Dream; language

Full Text:

PDF

References


Albee, E. (1962): Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf: A Play. New York: Scribner.

Bennett, T. (2007): Habitus Clivé: Aesthetics and Politics in the Work of Pierre Bourdieu. New Literary History. 38.1: 201-228.

Bourdieu, P. (1984): Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. London: Routledge.

Bourdieu, P. (1990): In Other Words. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Bourdieu, P. (1986): The Forms of Capital. Trans. Richard Nice. The Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. Ed. John G. Richardson. New York: Greenwood. 243-48.

Bourdieu, P. (1990): The Logic of Practice. Trans. Richard Nice. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Bourdieu, P., Passeron, J. C. (1977): Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture. London: Sage.

Bourdieu, P., Wacquant, L. J. D. (1992): An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Chandler, B. (2013): The Subjectivity of Habitus. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour. 43.4 : 469-91.

Clum, J. M. (2005): Withered Age and Stale Custom: Marriage, Diminution, and Sex in Tiny Alice, A Delicate Balance, and Finding the Sun. The Cambridge Companion to Edward Albee. Ed. Stephen Bottoms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 59-74.

Davey, G. (2009): Using Bourdieu’s Concept of Habitus to Explore Narratives of Transition. European Educational Research Journal. 8.2: 276-84.

Dosse, F. (1997): History of Structuralism: the Sign Sets, 1967-present. Vol. 2. Trans. Deborah Glassman. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Falvey, K. (2010): Dark Humor in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Bloom’s Literary Themes: Dark Humor. Ed. Blake Hobby. New York: Infobase Publishing. 241-49.

Jenkins, R. (1992): Pierre Bourdieu. New York: Routledge.

Kolin, P. C. (2005): Albee’s Early One-Act Plays: A New American Playwright from Whom Much Is to Be Expected. The Cambridge Companion to Edward Albee. Ed. Stephen Bottoms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 16-38.

Konkle, L. (2003): Good, Better, Best, Bested: The Failure of American Typology in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Edward Albee: A Casebook. Ed. Bruce J. Mann. New York: Routledge. 47-63.

Lovell, T. (2000): Thinking Feminism with and against Bourdieu. Feminist Theory. 1.1: 11-32.

Malkin, J. R. (1992): Verbal Violence in Contemporary Drama: From Handke to Shepard. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Niro, B. (2006): The Social and the Cultural: Michel de Certeau, Pierre Bourdieu and Louis Marin. Modern European Criticism and Theory: A Critical Guide. Ed. Julian Wolfreys. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 292-301.

Orser, C. E. (2004): Race and Practice in Archaeological Interpretation. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Roudané, M. (2005): Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: Toward the Marrow. The Cambridge Companion to Edward Albee. Ed. Stephen Bottoms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 39-58.

Swartz, D. (1997): Culture and Power: the Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Thompson, J. B. (1991): Editor's Introduction. Language and Symbolic Power. By Pierre Bourdieu. Cambridge: Polity Press. 1-31.

Thorpe, H. (2009). Bourdieu, Feminism and Female Physical Culture: Gender Reflexivity and the Habitus-Field Complex. Sociology of Sport Journal. 26: 491-516.

Wacquant, L. J. D. (2006): Habitus. International Encyclopedia of Economic Sociology. Eds. Jens Beckert and Milan Zafirofski. London: Routledge. 317-21.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/lsmll.2015.39.2.50
Date of publication: 2016-03-31 09:33:46
Date of submission: 2016-03-30 10:44:29


Statistics


Total abstract view - 1114
Downloads (from 2020-06-17) - PDF - 515

Indicators



Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2016 Ebrahim Salimi-Kouchi, Mohsen Rezaeian

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.