In fact, it is not a question of a choice between, on the one hand, objectivist arbitration, which measures representations (in all senses of the term) by ‘reality’, forgetting that they can give rise in reality, by the specific effectiveness of evocation, to the very thing they represent, and, on the other hand, the subjectivist commitment which, privileging representation, ratifies in the domain of science that falsehood in sociological writing by which militants pass from the representation of reality to the reality of the representation. One can avoid the alternative by taking it as an object or, more precisely, by taking into account, in the science of the object, the objective foundations of the alternative of objectivism and subjectivism which divides science, preventing it from apprehending the specific logic of the social world, that ‘reality’ which is the site of a permanent struggle to define ‘reality'. To grasp at one and the same lime what is
instituted (without forgetting that it is only a question of the outcome, at a given point in time, of the struggle to bring something into existence or to force out of existence something that already exists) and representations, performative statements which seek to bring about what they slate, to restore at one and the same time the objective structures and the subjective relation to those structures, starting with the claim to transform them: this is to give oneself the means of explaining ‘reality’ more completely, and thus of understanding and foreseeing more exactly the potentialities it contains or. more precisely, the chances it objectively offers to different subjective demands.
When scientific discourse is dragged into the very struggles over classification that it is attempting to objectify (and. unless the disclosure of scientific discourse is forbidden, it is difficult to see how this usage could be prevented), it begins once again to function in the reality of struggles over classification. It is thus bound to appear as either critical or complidtous, depending on the critical or complicitous relation that the reader himself has with the reality being described. Thus the mere fact of showing can function as a way of pointing the finger, of accusing (kategorein) or. on the other hand, as a way of showing and throwing into relief. This is as true of classification into social classes as it is of classification into ‘regions’ or ‘ethnic groups’. Hence the necessity of making completely explicit the relation between the struggles over the source of legitimate di-vision which occur in the scientific field and those which take place in the social field (and which, because of their specific logic, grant a preponderant role to intellectuals). Any position claiming ‘objectivity’ about the actual or potential, real or foreseeable existence, of a region, an ethnic group or a social class, and thereby about the claim to institution which is asserted in 'partisan' representations, constitutes a certificate of realism or a verdict of utopianism which helps to determine the objective chances that this social entity has of coming into existence.9 The symbolic effect to which scientific discourse gives rise by consecrating a state of the divisions and of the vision of the divisions is all the more inevitable because, in symbolic struggles over cognition and recognition, so-called ‘objective’ criteria, the very ones which are well known to scientists, are used as weapons: they designate the characteristics on which a symbolic action of mobilization can be based in order to produce real unity or the belief in unity (both in the group itself and in others) which ultimately, and in particular via the actions of the imposition and inculcation of legitimate identity (such as those actions performed by the school or
the army), tends to generate real unity. In short, the most ‘neutral’ verdicts of science contribute to modifying the object of science. Once the regional or national question is objectively raised in social reality, even if only by an active minority (which may exploit its very weakness by playing on the properly symbolic strategy of provocation and testimony in order to draw out ripostes, whether symbolic or not, which imply a certain recognition), any utterance about the region functions as an argument which helps to favour or penalize the chances of the region’s acquiring recognition and thereby existence.
