Giving up as Practice

Social practices are constituted between a FIELD and a HABITUS according to Pierre Bourdieu, a French sociologist. Practices are both dependent by

Social practices are contingent. They have changed, are changing and will change. Even if they tend to reproduce themselves in function of a perpetuation of the present social condition, the distribution of actors and artefacts in the social space, variations, shifts and transformations are possible.

So, there is no singular practice of giving up. Different fields and different habitus constitute different practices of giving up. What giving up means, why actors do it, how others judge actors if they give up and how actors justify themselves for giving up, what actors feel if they do it and which artefacts partake in affording the practice of giving up, is relational.

The practice of planning is also dependent on its surrounding practices, concepts and artefacts.

One condition for planning to be viable in this realm is claiming a form of life as contingent, as transformable in principle. This contrasts essentialist concepts of being for example.

Practice is tempered.

Being a nexus of different elements, a practice is, among other things, defined by a specific atmosphere that affects a practising actor.

In this sense, an emotion that arises in an actor, like shame in giving up, is not a natural origination of the actor. An affect is a material condensation of a practice within the social actor.

Affects are constructed socially.

It is well known that giving up needs to be justified more than other practices.

Where is the site in the scene from where the actor gets evaluated?

Something is given up. It will never see completion. The practice of giving up puts an end to something.

Typical given-ups are aims in life, self-perceptions or social relations. They have in common that they usually took heavy investments for a long period of time. In this case, giving up is hard. It puts an end to a long-lasting process. Even keeping alive a self-perception is continuous hard work

Planning is very successful in structuring social actors. In reference to the practice of giving up, planning is often a kind of precursor.

In performing a practice, actors get affected in a specific way.

Affections function as a kind of lure into practices.

A tragic hero in cultural media often encounters a dilemma. A choice has to be made. There are two alternative ways of proceeding. Each accompanied by a different idea of purpose.

Choosing one pursuit, means giving up the other, and with that its aligning purpose. The ideas of purpose depend on a set of rules that is defined socially.

According to Friedrich Schiller tragedy, and with it the pleasure in the audience, arises out of this dilemma: in satisfying the demand of the law, the actor simultaneously breaks the law. Affection is thus a relation of lust and aversion. In this case they are both products of following a purpose or giving up a purpose.

Schiller re-/constructed this functionality on the basis of the tragedy in performing arts in „On the source of pleasure of tragic objects"

The practice of giving up figures here as an unavoidable acting contrary to the requirements of a social ruleset.

In classic performances, the tragic actor is temporarily affected by the pain of his own misfortune, while the weak is going to be a victim of his sorrow forever.

A Form of life is a nexus of social practices. Rahel Jaeggi, a Swiss philosopher, describes forms of live as characterized by a simultaneity of inertia and variability. On the one hand social actors actively shape their particular forms of live, on the other hand they find them as the defining, already existing, instance for their practices and dispositions.

Rahel Jaeggi, Kritik von Lebensformen. Berlin (Suhrkamp) 2013

If actors feel obliged to think of changing things, changing themselves, they eventually become critics of their form of life.

Actors of specific forms of life have no full access to the purposes of the practices they enact. Some practices are transparent and available for consideration, some are automatic and elusive for conceptualisation.

In dealing with those purposes, at least the evident ones, the timepractice of planning comes into play. Planning as a practice is strongly connected to giving up.

The scale of giving up is dependent on the previously made investments and on the prevailing ideas and values in the structuring field. The strength of affection is linear to the scale of giving up.

Encountering a specific situation multiple times, which appears similar and not similar at once, is a typical structure in which giving up as task takes place. It is not a plan that has to be given up here.

In terms of virtue and authenticity, the periodic call to give up, wherever it comes from, is a dangerous entanglement. But what if giving up is not a mark of deficiency?

produces not a total end of everything, but a relaying one.

A Field is spanned by an ensemble of objective graspable elements, like institutions, artefacts and social actors that are distributed in a specific way. This Distribution can be understood as a field of force, wherein every element gains its condition in relation to every other element. A Field is historically dependent in an objective way. Its spatial distribution is graspable and it's possible to trace back its development from the past into the present. A field is contingent, means a field is always a subject to change and transformation.

A Habitus is incorporated history. It shows itself in the bodies of the social actors, in their movements, postures and mandatory behaviours. Furthermore, it is composed by incorporated dispositions, for example systems of evaluation and classification that affect value judgements. A Habitus assembles specific strategies of social distancing, a know-how of setting one-self apart from other social actors and is often provided with specific attributes and features that represent social distances. A Habitus is not necessarily apparent for its carrying social actor.

A form of life is a relation of practices. It is composed of practices that are functionally interdependent. What is called a form of life is based on interpretation.

is more than a negative operation upon another practice.

considers giving up as a given necessity.

is not about completion.

feels good and bad simultaneously.

is no solitary action.

is hard but good work by remembering ideas.