The ritual of introductions with which we began was already so fruitful; let me just identify a few questions that we might keep after. Hazal got us thinking about childhood, and Grace did too. How do disciplines account for children; how might they; is there anything to be learned from how we teach the disciplines to children (dividing them into school \u201csubjects\u201d etc.)? The language of boundaries and limits recurred, especially with Grace and Paul. (For Paul, in regards to tragedy and death: what is the relation between genre and discipline, by the way; is generic hybridity any model of interdisciplinarity?) How far will the metaphor of a bounded space take us, thinking about disciplines? (See \u201cfield\u201d below.) Monica and Hazal\u2019s interdisciplinary work, and others\u2019, has to do with decolonialization\u2014how are disciplines sites of colonialism? (What work does that metaphor do?) What does inter- or antidisciplinarity have to do with unmaking colonial formations? Joyce\u2019s evocation of synesthesia is something we might carry with us too: an intimately experienced juxtaposition, or synthesis, of sensory modalities. Could we imagine an interdisciplinarity at the level of perception? (Cue the discussion of experience next week.)<\/p>\n
Next, equipped with our set of readings on knowledge, we considered three possible objects of interdisciplinary attention: the opening paragraph of the Graduate School\u2019s description of the \u201cDissertation and FPO,\u201d a Pendaflex file folder, and an image of a space where our disciplines to their thing. I\u2019ll pull out some questions that arose at each stage.<\/p>\n
First that GS text: \u201cThe dissertation must show that the candidate has technical mastery of the field and is capable of doing independent and original research. It must enlarge or modify current knowledge in a field or present a significant new interpretation of known materials.\u201d As a general project, we shared an interest in surfacing its contradictions\u2014a paradigmatically critical procedure (per Adorno, e.g.), with its equivalents in other disciplines (structuralist anthropology, e.g.). What else might we have done\u2014looked for patterns, considered cases; why was contradiction such an important, revealing phenomenon for us? And how should we regard those contradictions: is their suppression a power effect? Inevitably? (Might it be done as care, as protection; how would we talk about that?) But to those questions:<\/p>\n
Next, that Pendaflex:<\/p>\n
Finally, the place-images, a little more telegraphically, since this is going on\u2026<\/p>\n
Phew! My plan was to stop at 500 words\u2014and I\u2019m sure there are vital questions that I have missed here. The use of going on, I hope, will be laying out a range of the preliminary curiosities that we bring to our visitors and the texts they share. Some of the questions we will follow up, some may fall away; the first hour of our seminars will be an opportunity to identify particular interests, set ourselves some useful reading, and talk things through.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The ritual of introductions with which we began was already so fruitful; let me just identify a few questions that we might keep after. Hazal got us thinking about childhood, and Grace did too. How do disciplines account for children; how might they; is there anything to be learned from how we teach the disciplines … <\/p>\n