Autonomy Revisited: The Question of Mediations and its Methodological Implications GISÈLE SAPIRO Abstract: Bourdieu’s concept of the literary field aimed to overcome the opposition between internal and external analysis of literary works. This paper examines its theoretical and methodological implications by exploring the notion of mediations between text and context at three different levels: the material conditions of production and circulation of literary works; the modalities of their production by their authors; their critical reception. It is through these mediations that the key concept of autonomy becomes operational for empirical research and that it displays its heuristic power, as illustrated by works using Bourdieu’s theory of the literary field produced over the last two decades. Keywords: sociology of literature, literary field, autonomy, intellectual history, reception, censorship, Pierre Bourdieu The question of the autonomy of cultural production is at once an ontological question and a methodological question, these two levels of enquiry being linked. 1 From a methodological standpoint, studies of literary works and other kinds of cultural product can be divided between internal and external approaches. Internal analysis focuses on the act of deciphering rather than on the creative act. The hermeneutical method is based on textual analysis, leaving producers aside. Conversely, external analysis — sociological, historical, or biographical approaches — tends to reduce works to their material conditions of production and reception, ignoring the specificity of symbolic goods. Whereas internal analysis focuses on the structure of works, external analysis insists on their social function. Paragraph 35.1 (2012): 30–48 DOI: 10.3366/para.2012.0040 © Edinburgh University Press www.eupjournals.com/para