35

This article starts with some reflections on the form of Bourdieu’s lectures at the Collège de France as they appear in Sur l’État, and on the opposition between the work of the sociologist and that of the historian, as they are discussed at length in the text. It then addresses several considerations about the state developed in these lectures and sets them against the historical experience of the Chinese state ; it questions in particular notions of the state that liken it to a person or a god, the notion of the state as a “field,” and the genesis of the state.