The Intellectual in Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim: A Bourdieusian Perspective

Abstract

Lucky Jim (1954), Kingsley Amis’s debut novel, is a comic, campus fiction, in which Jim Dixon, a member of the new alienated
educated generation, is striving for a position at a university which is still run by the upper-class professors. This masterpiece of Amis
has generally been approached from two perspectives: either as an epitome of a new voice in literature (Amis as a member of the Angry
Young Men’s group, for instance) or as an illustration of different literary aspects (a revival of the picaresque in fiction, for instance).
However, the central issue of the conflict between the protagonist and the academia has not been adequately addressed. Drawing on
Pierre Bourdieu’s key concepts and theories, this paper attempts to turn the focus on the roots of this conflict. Bourdieu believes that in
every given “field: the agents compete over positions by fighting over different “capitals”; the ones who occupy a higher degree of capital
occupy better positions within the field, which would lead to “symbolic capital”. The Welches, representing the upper-middle-class and
academic pseudo-intellectualism own more cultural, economic and social capital which gives them power. The paper examines the
modality of the relationship between such capital and power, especially in the field of education, as exemplified by Amis’s novel.