Progressive avant-garde?

Something I stumbled across in a bookstore, yesterday, in Asheville.  The absence of any comment–apart, perhaps, from the ambiguous sigh expressing merely, "Ah, but the science of it all"–should not  of course mislead you into assuming only the worst, most simplistic or didactic approval of any of the most obvious potential glosses, naturally.  In other words, all pervasive ironies aside, I just thought it was interesting.  (Certainly a cultural context worthy of attention, in any case, for historians of artistic, creative and political groupings, generally.)

Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production, 66-67.