Document Type : Research Paper
Author
PhD, Department of Political Science, Allameh Tabatabaei University, Tehran, Iran.
Abstract
Introduction
Modern state theories, largely influenced by the theoretical formulation of Carl Schmitt and Max Weber, have given the state a theological and transcendental dimension, in such a way that the state, like a Hobbesian sovereign, stands above and beyond society and organizes society from an external position. But these theories, whether left or right wing, have a fundamental problem: where does the source of legitimacy, which is a necessary condition for all states, come from if state power is external? In other words, if the source of state power is outside of society, the problem of a legitimacy crisis causes us to constantly witness the collapse of states and the emergence of revolutions. However, transformative events such as revolutions are exceptional and rare phenomena throughout the modern era, and in most cases, we are faced with maintaining the status quo, which requires the obedience of the subjects.
Materials and Methods
Pierre Bourdieu's Genetic structuralism, relying on a powerful conceptual toolkit that uses concepts such as field, habitus, capital, reproduction, doxa, and symbolic violence, has abundant analytical power and explanatory capacity for analyzing social and political phenomena such as the state. In Bourdieu's view, the state is not a superstructure or metadiscourse that informs from the outside, but rather it gives color and form to all social phenomena from the inside. The state teaches individuals by producing habitus, perceptual categories, shared thinking, and social capabilities through the educational process that begins in the family and school. On the other hand, the state, in parallel with cognitive structures and habitus, provides a kind of balance between the subjectivity of the individual and his collective life by constructing social fields that are objective institutions. Therefore, the individual has no access to any belief other than what the state produces. Bourdieu shows with formative structuralism that the process of producing the modern state is the same process of producing the modern subject through state-building and the creation of bureaucracy. The state is an active and constructive member of the social world.
Results and Discussion
Bourdieu's theory of the state was a response to Max Weber's theory of the state and the idea of defining the state based on legitimate force, a legitimacy that Weber identified only at the conceptual level and was unable to explain theoretically. However, Bourdieu, while benefiting from the rich tradition of state studies before him, tried to show where the element of legitimacy came from and how the state emerged in this way and not in any other way in the modern world. Bourdieu's intellectual struggle around the element of legitimacy linked him to a tradition of political theology that, in common categories we call immanent political theology. With the help of the Lutheran concept (hidden God), Bourdieu attempts to delve into the deepest depths of the modern state and ultimately finds in that dark abyss that has always been invisible even to the most profound theorists, an element that guarantees the monstrous power of the modern state, and that is nothing other than symbolic power that serves as a superstructure for the symbolic violence that emerges from the accepted doxa of society.
Conclusion
According to Bourdieu, the idea of the state is present in the deepest layers of our thoughts, and in order to break away from this way of thinking, it is necessary to fight against the norms that are engraved in our minds, norms that from the moment of birth in the family and then in school and through socialization, until the end of our lives, tie our existential elements together based on (the idea of the state). According to Bourdieu, one type of the idea of the state, which is of course also addressed in other theories, is the aspect of bureaucratic power that flows in various objective institutions from hospitals and schools to barracks and universities. However, the other dimension of the state that Bourdieu pays more attention to is the subjective element of the state, the same element that has its home in the brain and nerves and the patterns of understanding and thought of individuals. Bourdieu believes that the modern state works and persists according to an intrinsic mechanism through which subjects themselves eagerly and unconsciously reproduce the process of obedience to seek blessings from the hidden god within the state.
Keywords
- Modern state
- Legitimacy
- Transcendental political theology
- Immanent political theology
- Pierre Bourdieu
Main Subjects
)