Comrades:

Louis Althusser

You can say I learned a thing or two when I studied under Louis—like how Marxism reveals the many different forms of privilege enjoyed by the upper class. What he taught me was that even though we have the elites, the middle class (the bourgeoisie), and the working class, the interests of these distinct classes aren't always protected by the very people within them.

Althusser helped me to see that the middle class (which is the majority of people) does all sorts of things that actually help the elites and keep the middle class itself perpetually stuck in the inferior middle position.Why? Because the middle class wants to identify with that elite class and doesn't want to be seen as working class.

Jean-Claude Passeron

Jean-Claude and I collaborated on a nifty little idea we like to call the "theory of symbolic violence." For excruciating detail, see our dazzling book Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture.

Not to oversimplify, but we developed this theory to expose how equal opportunity and autonomy was being stifled by the education system and capitalist society. When people receive a poor education, they inevitably have trouble finding decent jobs and thus remain stuck and unable to lift themselves out of their subordinate positions.

This is but one of the many cycles perpetuated by a society that greedily hoards power for a few and convinces the rest to silently accept being dominated. All of these inequalities have existed for so long that people have come to see them as natural. These inequalities may be invisible, but they're everywhere.

Bernard Lahire

Though we didn't always see eye-to-eye, Bernard and I shared some sharp criticism of the education system. He was more of a sociologist of literature: his big thing was that persistent illiteracy among the lower classes was all manufactured by the biased school system in France.

People often compared us because of our mutual fascination with the notion of "habitus," which I developed extensively in my magnum opus, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste.

I'll elaborate later, but for now, just know that habitus is sort of a mindset that has been developed through a person's dispositions, tastes, attitudes, and sensibilities, which has a "dependency on history and human memory. For instance, a certain behaviour or belief becomes part of a society's structure when the original purpose of that behaviour or belief can no longer be recalled and becomes socialized into individuals of that culture" (source).

In short, people don't even know why they behave the way they do; they just do it because that's the way it's done.

Hans Haacke

Hans and I have this little book called Free Exchange, which is the transcript of a lively conversation he and I had one day back in November 1991. Even though I was a theorist and he was an artist, we had a mind-meld over aesthetics and politics.

We ranted in unison over how the media has destroyed any sense of robust public debate by making celebrities out of "media intellectuals" (21). We also wrung our hands over how hard it has become to participate in provocative public discourse and really make a difference—and not just sell your soul to the media devil.

Günter Grass

I loved this German writer from the second we met in 1999. Of course, he was already a Nobel laureate then, but that didn't mean he wouldn't chew the fat with little old me. We had a super famous discussion on stage in front of a bunch of trade unionists in which we seethed and wept over the role of the public intellectual and the sad state of European politics.

Several famous publications recorded this conversation and made it available to our eager public audience. We took potshots at everything from injustice to neoliberalism to the oppressions of authority. In this dialogue, I praise Günter for his "search for means of expression to convey a critical, subversive message to a very large audience." He rocked.

Rivals:

The French Press

Although I try not to give the media the time of day—seeing how they're just full of oppressive, elitist propaganda—it did sting a bit to hear that they refer to my followers as a bunch of people helping their God (me!) to "intimidate the intellectual class" (source). Hey, there's no love lost between us—that's all I have to say.

Jean-Paul Sartre

So, we had a beef. Okay, it's more like I had a beef. I didn't like JP's whole "total intellectual" routine: this guy was all about playing to the media for attention. He was like an existentialist version of Kim Kardashian… without the airbrushing. Sartre may have been one of the most formidable thinkers of the twentieth century, but he seemed to work his role in the media as an act of entertainment.

Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut

If you don't read French, you won't know the nitty-gritty, but these two French philosophers said that I was "one of the intellectual dinosaurs of May 68, frozen in time, capable only of recycling Marxist platitudes and repeating themselves" (source). Ouch. Hey, guys: it's hard to write 45 books and never repeat yourself. How many books have you written?

Jeannine Verdés-LeRoux

By now you know that I'm not planning to become next president of the Sartre fan club, and that's why it really stung when this thinker had the nerve to call me a wannabe Sartre—and a sociological terrorist who hides behind the discipline of sociology. She hammers out books that I think totally misrepresent me. Take a look at this one: Deconstructing Pierre Bourdieu: Against Sociological Terrorism from the Left. Subtle title, eh?