French Research Seminar with Dr Dominique Jeannerod

Dr Dominique Jeannerod will present his paper 'Two celebrations and a funeral? On Jean d’ Ormesson, Johnny Hallyday and Pierre Bourdieu’s Distinction' - All welcome!

This seminar paper will revisit some of the core theses in Pierre Bourdieu’s seminal work La Distinction and question their enduring legacy and continued validity, 40 years after its publication. It will discuss in particular the normative foundations of and the practical belief in distinctions between popular and highbrow cultures and the hierarchies of taste. Based on a reading and a comparison of the “national” funerals bestowed respectively on the novelist, essayist and Doyen of the Académie Française Jean d’ Ormesson and upon the star rock n’ roll singer, musician and actor Johnny Hallyday (which both took place in December 2017), it proposes to re-evaluate the status of cultural distinction in contemporary France. It will thus examine the renewed roles, impact and relationships of the competing institutions involved in the creation of cultural value.

Dr Dominique Jeannerod is lecturer in the School of Arts, English and Languages at Queen’s University Belfast.