I'm feeling brain dead

So in lieu of writing summink myself, here's a nice bit from the preface to a short primer (so really the most basic, simpleton's précised version of his ideas possible!) on Pierre Bourdieu that I bought because of this post.

[L]inguistic and cultural production, despite what they might claim to be, are not concerned with truth or reason (or the sublime, or beauty) . What is at stake is primarily belief, the consecration of utterances as legitimate and/or true. The criterian of argumentation of proof that are invoked during this process are arbitrary - defined within and by the field in question - and only apparently disinterested. The legitimation of utterances is a product of the power, authority and reputation of their author(s) in the field in question. This epistemic power is both means and end in the competitive struggles - analogised by Bourdieu as games - which characterise any field, and is constructed using a range of capitals: economic, cultural, linguistic, symbolic and social. These varied forms of capital are similarly means and ends in strategies that carry forward the pursuit of distinction within the field.

I'm only about a third of the way through this, but it clearly looks like it will get into the issue that I briefly blogged very briefly about (a bit more here) last year - the legitimation of ideas.