PIERRE BOURDIEU. THE LITERARY FIELD

Expected to be ready in December 2026.

The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002) refuted many notions that had seemed fundamental to culture. In particular, he showed that authors are not the sole producers of the value of their works, and that the weight and visibility of those works depend on the state of the literary field.

In the article “The Literary Field,” instead of analyzing a work and its social context, Bourdieu focused on the struggle for power within fields of cultural production and proposed a three-level methodology of analysis.

This comprises an analysis of the position of the literary field within the field of power; of the structure and functioning of the literary field itself; and, finally, of the professional trajectories of writers. The antagonists of the art field here are Henri Rousseau and Marcel Duchamp, and in the literary field, Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine.

“The Literary Field” is published in a translation by Andriy Ripa, with afterwords by the literary critic Yevheniy Stasinevych and the art critic Borys Filonenko. It continues the Small Run Books series after a break of several years.

About the Small Run Books series

Small Run Books is a curated series of books on culture, art, and society that presents texts by foreign scholars in Ukrainian.

In a pocket-size format, the series covers a wide range of areas, including art theory and history, philosophy of culture, sociology of art, photography, comics studies, and the theory and history of curating.

Cet ouvrage a bénéficié du soutien du Programme d’aide à la publication Skovoroda de l’Ambassade de France en Ukraine/Institut français d’Ukraine.

This publication was made possible with the support of the Skovoroda Publishing Assistance Programme of the Embassy of France in Ukraine / Institut français d’Ukraine.

Team

 Translation from French: Andriy Ripa
 Afterwords authors: Yevheniy Stasinevych, Borys Filonenko
 Series design: 3z studio (Tanya Borzunova, Serhiy Mishakin, Dmytro Vierovkin)
 Layout: Ostap Yashchuk
 Literary editing: Iryna Kurhanska
 Proofreading: Olha Petrenko-Tseunova
 Project management: Nastya Leonova, Kateryna Nosko
 Copyright: Mariia Sharova, Mariia Farbota
 Communications: Mariia Kharenko