The currency of Pierre Bourdieu's work La noblesse d’état (1989) and its multiple facets

Abstract

Recalling the thirty years of the work La noblesse d'État: Grandes écoles et esprit de corps by Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002), published in 1989, when France celebrates the bicentenary of its Revolution or, more specifically, the two hundred years of Taken from the Bastille (July 14, 1789) and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (July 26, 1789), we brought to the discussion a large study (not yet translated into Portuguese) that constitutes yet another French sociologist's contributions to sociological studies. This work continues the previous analysis, mobilizes a large part of the Bourdieusian lexicon and introduces new categories of research and analysis methodologies that seem relevant to research on the Brazilian educational field. Inspired at the same time by constructivism and structuralism, the work unveils the complex web of relationships between the training system and the field of power. Our reflection begins by placing La noblesse d'État in the carrefour of different sociologies: education, knowledge, power. Then, we analyze the historical continuity that led to the narrowing of the link between “school nobility” and “State nobility”, the structural homology between university education and the reproduction of elites and the importance attributed to the demystification of the “myth of school democratization”. Finally, we highlight critical dimensions of the work that illuminate the reflection on research in the human and social sciences, at a time when, in Brazil, attempts are being made to check the relevance of studies in these areas of knowledge.