Lars Thorben Henk, Zola before Bourdieu: a study of proto-sociology in Émile Zola's “Les Rougon-Macquart” (1871–1893), Mimesis 125 (Berlin; Boston: de Gruyter, 2025).
Content
The Reconstruction of an Implicit Sociology
The dissertation Zola before Bourdieu by Lars Thorben Henk, published in the series Mimesis: Romance Literatures of the WorldThis study offers a new literary-critical reading of Émile Zola's working-class novel trilogy by deciphering its implicit sociology through the lens of Pierre Bourdieu's ethnosociology. The study begins with the historical observation that Émile Zola, throughout his life, challenged the prevailing view of the French people with his novels, particularly through his uncompromising portrayal of the French people (the people), caused offense. Based on Jacques Dubois' insight that Zola's explanation of social action using the categories heredity and environment Drawing parallels to Bourdieu's concepts of habitus and field, Henk formulates the central research question: the systematic reconstruction of Zola's implicit sociology, focused on the French people, from the perspective of Bourdieu's economic ethnosociology. The necessity of this perspective arises from the observation that Zola's categories heredity and environment While Zola's novels exhibit similarities to Bourdieu's concepts of habitus and field, a systematic analysis of the relationship between Zola's novels and Bourdieu's sociology remains a research gap. Zola is thus understood as a pioneer within the emerging field of social sciences, whose literary works contain proto-sociological insights.
The central thesis is that the motif complex of the carnivalesque-grotesque in Zola's novels serves as a socio-analytical magnifying glass to examine the consequences of societal transformations (the disintegration of the Ancien Régime, industrialization) on a political, social, economic and cultural level for the popular classes to reconstruct. The second main thesis states that Zola's implicit sociology, using this magnifying glass, anticipates insights and approaches from Pierre Bourdieu's epistemology. This particularly concerns the socio-analytical diagnosis of the pervasiveness of homo economicus clausus in its milieu-specific form, whereby the pre-modern homo apertus is replaced by the individualistic and accumulation-oriented modern individual. The carnivalesque-grotesque thus serves as a basic narrative pattern to depict the transformation of the pre-modern. homo apertus in modern times homo economicus clausus to disclose.
This work was written within the framework of the DFG project “Bourdieu’s Heirs: On the Return of the Class Question in Contemporary French Literature,” supervised by Prof. Dr. Gregor Schuhen. The primary research question of this dissertation itself—namely, the reconstruction of Zola’s implicit sociology from the perspective of Pierre Bourdieu’s economic ethnosociology, with a focus on the French people—is thematically closely linked to Bourdieu’s work. An outlook in the conclusion of the dissertation draws a connection to contemporary authors such as Édouard Louis, whose works are likely to be relevant to the “return of the class question” within the framework of the DFG project. This is further emphasized by the mention of the collaborative work with Yvonne Myszkowski. Play Me the Song of Social Death: Precariousness and Masculinity in the Novels of Émile Zola and Édouard Louis, confirmed in the bibliography.
The three working-class novels of [author's name] serve as the corpus. Rougon-Macquart-cycle, which is specifically focused on the popular classes dedicate: L'Assommoir (1877) Germinal (1885), and Earth (1887). This selection is justified because it focuses on disinherited working-class generations in different milieus – urban, mining, and rural. The inclusion of Earth This is justified despite the farmers' land ownership, as their precarious living and working conditions are similar to those of urban workers.
The methodology is praxeologically and ethnocritically based. It applies the principles from Bourdieu's The Rules of Art The study engages with Zola's texts by uncovering sociological insights through the analysis of literary motifs and narrative patterns. The analytical focus lies on the role of carnivalization, understood in line with Mikhail Bakhtin's conception, to demonstrate how Zola depicted the transition from pre-modernism. homo apertus towards the modern homo economicus clausus diagnosed. Zola's own demand for the experimental novel, to reveal the hidden laws of the social, serves as an epistemological anchor.
For text work
L'Assommoir – The displacement of gift exchange by economic rationality
The first step of the analysis focuses on the Parisian working-class world of the Goutte-d'Or, particularly on the wedding scene of Gervaise and Coupeau and the subsequent visit to the Louvre. The wedding celebration is interpreted as a failed potlatch. Gervaise attempts to bind her guests through excessive spending. This ritual of obligation fails, however, because the guests no longer recognize the logic of reciprocation, having already internalized a selfish habitus geared toward immediate consumption maximization. Zola diagnoses here the imposition of homo economicus clausus in the working-class household. This is particularly evident in the figure of the Mes-Botte, whose grotesque physicality of the “avale-tout” is outwardly reflected in the homo apertus Zola recalls a consumption that is in reality calculated and geared towards personal profit. Regarding food culture, Zola anticipates Bourdieu's finding that... Necessity taste is popular classes, which prioritizes the principle of substance over the principle of form. The subsequent museum visit is thematically staged as a carnivalesque triumphal procession (walk of fame), which, however, devolves into a miserabilistic stroll (walk of shame) turns around by exposing the cultural incompetence of the workers through the eyes of the museum staff and the narrator.
The innovative contribution of the chapter lies in the demonstration of Zola's proto-sociological diagnosis of Necessity taste and the economic rationality of the urban proletariat. Of particular note is the argumentative assertion that Zola, through the carefully composed irony of the grotesque depictions, reflects his own miserabilist perspective, which was denounced by critics. He is aware of the violence inherent in writing about a foreign social class and thus approaches a sociological stance of reflection.
Germinal – The proto-sociology of the principle of the conservation of violence
Germinal The novel is structured antithetically around the class struggle between the wealthy landowners (Grégoire, Hennebeau) and the miners (the Maheu family). Zola exposes the material hardship of the working-class lifestyle, characterized by hunger, disease, and a perpetual cycle of social reproduction. The miners' lives, as the narrator explicitly states, are the consequence of the "balance of empty stomachs," an act of social violence perpetrated by the bourgeoisie. This is illustrated through grotesque depictions of the body, such as Bonnemort, who serves as a walking, sick monument to mining history, coughing up coal, or the crippled Jeanlin, whose animalistic appearance represents the inscription of social domination onto the body.
The workers' revolt, as the culmination of this social violence, is staged through a de-carnvalization of the grotesque. While the ducasseWhile Rabelais initially celebrates the logic of collective renewal, Zola uses this euphoric transcendence to collectivize the workers for violent protest. The subsequent, murderous eruption of violence (e.g., Maigrat's mutilation or the punishment of the female worker) is no longer portrayed as a carnivalesque, life-giving reckoning, but as monstrous, destructive rage. Zola uses this unleashed violence to illustrate his central proto-sociological finding: the perpetuation of violence. In the sense of thermodynamics, the violence perpetrated against the workers is maintained within the system and rebounds on the bourgeoisie in the form of an apocalyptic uprising.
The value of this chapter lies in identifying Zola as a proto-sociologist of the perpetuation of violence. He escapes the accusation of biological reductionism by presenting the pathology of the proletariat as a direct consequence of social exploitation and the unequal distribution of vital forces. His depiction of savagery The people's question here becomes an expression of a precise sociological diagnosis of the unresolved social question.
Earth – The commercialization of family ties
The concluding portrait of the working class examines the farming families in the Beauce region, focusing on the intrafamilial catastrophe triggered by the premature transfer of land ownership. Zola historicizes the Christian myth of "original sin" and the Cain and Abel conflict as a deregulation of giving: the peasants refuse to reciprocate the gifts of nature (Mother Earth) and their own parents. This is a consequence of the economic transformations following the French Revolution, which turned the farmers into homo economicus clausus They do things that accumulate wealth and commercialize family relationships. The economic calculation that costs Fouan his life is at the heart of the transgenerationally reproduced family habitus.
Once again, the carnivalesque-grotesque motif complex serves socio-analytical diagnosis and the formulation of counter-models. The wedding of Lise and Buteau is grotesquely commented on by the motif of the closed anus, which represents the economic disposition towards accumulation and the homo economicus clausus symbolized. In contrast, Zola portrays Jesus Christ as the Carnival King, whose throwing of excrement at the wedding party is interpreted as a subversive "cleansing of the oikos" and a denunciation of the logic of accumulation. Jesus Christ's "flatulence oikos" propagates a counter-model of a solidarity economy without utilitarian calculations. The scene of the twin birth (human/cow) underscores Zola's sociological insight that from the homo clausus no openness can arise anymore and only external influences (the veterinarian/artist) can create a new, regenerative world.
This chapter identifies Zola as a proto-sociologist of property and the economization of family ties. Its innovative contribution lies in understanding the carnivalesque-grotesque as a vehicle for the utopian potential of a homo apertus to utilize what reveals the limitations of capitalism in rural areas and seeks an alternative to the logic of accumulation. Zola reflects on socio-economic reality by historicizing the myth of "original sin" and linking it to the new market economy.
Overall assessment: The relevance of Zola's protosociology
The overall analysis reinforces the thesis that Zola's carnivalesque stagings of the people reveal a coherent, implicit sociological knowledge. Zola anticipates key aspects of Bourdieu's sociology: the reproduction of social relations through the interaction of habitus and habitat, the cultural sociology of goût de nécessité, the reflection on one's own ethnic position, and the diagnosis of the enforcement of the homo economicus clausus as a milieu-specific accumulation pattern, as well as the principle of maintaining violence in Germinal.
Zola, in the concluding assessment, is to be regarded as a pioneer within the emerging social sciences. His merit lies in uncovering the hidden mechanisms behind social phenomena through literary methods. His novels are not merely reportage, but an original engagement with the fundamental problems of modernity: Zola contributes to the emergence of that "third culture" which, situated between literature and positivism, becomes sociology.
Zola's reflection on his own "temperament" as an observer and the limits of his bourgeois perspective on the proletariat brings him closer to the methodological requirement of Participatory objectification Bourdieu's study corrects Bourdieu's own devaluation of Zola: The sociologist himself succumbed to the mechanisms of the field by ignoring the seemingly "less innovative" Zola in favor of more intellectually recognized authors. Zola's literary proto-sociology, which examined social inequalities and their reproduction within the milieu of deshes Zola's themes, which he addresses, remain influential and relevant even in contemporary literature (for example, in the work of Édouard Louis). Louis re-examines Zola's principle of the preservation of violence and his depiction of social reproduction in light of the neoliberal dismantling of the welfare state. His work thus provides a stimulating reassessment of the naturalist Zola as a pioneering thinker in sociology.
This article is written in German and can be found at https://rentree.de. Automatic translations into English and French are available. English, French.
