Pierre Bourdieu lectures on Édouard Manet published

The groundbreaking lectures delivered by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu at the Collège de France between 1998 and 2000 have been released in a new volume. The work examines how Édouard Manet triggered a symbolic revolution by challenging the aesthetic rules of the 19th century.

Bourdieu situates Manet’s work within the mid-19th-century art crisis, a period when academic painting was losing authority and the definition of artistic value was being renegotiated. Bourdieu describes Manet’s departure from established norms as a “symbolic bomb” that can only be understood through the broader cultural field, including the influence of academies, the state, and the competition between realists and the avant-garde.

The volume includes the lectures, an unfinished manuscript by Pierre and Marie-Claire Bourdieu, various illustrations, and editorial commentary intended to provide art-historical and sociological context.