Abstract
For Pierre Bourdieu, who considered “liberty or emancipation by knowledge” as the mission of his sociology, “the awakening of consciousness” had been very important as a weapon to resist to the symbolic violence and for a long period he evaluated this highly. However, particularly around the time both Pascalian Meditation（1997） and Masculine Domination（1998） were published, he abruptly started to insist on its limitations. Behind his change was, as has been pointed out, “another version of the theory of symbolic violence.” This article criticizes the errors of this interpretation and, instead of it, presents an alternative explanation. This change of attitude of Bourdieu has nothing to do with the change of content of his theory of symbolic violence. It derives from his eagerness to draw the line between his own position―his concept of symbolic power―and intellectualism, more specifically, the idea that the change of representation can lead to the change of reality. Finally, this article also raises a few questions about the relation between the mission of his sociology in itself and intellectualism.
