Beyond “not this and not that either”
“Interdisciplinary” is a Janus word.
Let’s reach beyond the relatively literal meaning, “between disciplines” (Is there perhaps some implied longing here? As in between meals? Between relationships? Middle Ages? I wonder how many people alive in 1100 C.E. would have thought of themselves as ‘between ages’?)
Like Janus, this word looks both backwards and forwards; it is present at a threshold.
“Interdisciplinary” looks back to a definition - condescendingly bestowed by the “disciplinists” - connoting “not this and not that either.” And it looks forward to an intersubjective (uh oh, the language is circling back on me now…) understanding that my identity depends on - no, IS - the tangle of all the relationships of which I am inseparable part.
My teaching can hardly be called “disciplinary.” In my music courses, I am not preparing students to be future music academics. In my creativity and innovation courses, or in the design and leadership courses I have taught in the chemical engineering department, my teaching does not lend itself to being described as being “within a discipline.” I am not (even?) an engineer.
But let’s transcend the hardly, the not’s. It’s time for a new story (joined to and enjoying many other concurrent stories).
The blend, the hybrid. Silko’s half-breed Tayo. Risk, leaping the gap. Poetry.
November 30th, 2006 at 9:25 pm
Yay for hybrids!!! I think interdisciplinarity is a must, especially in this day in age when we don’t have the leisure/time? to be “Renaissance” persons. But truly, I think the world is interconnected, so really, why isolate anything? Why study the Harlem Renaissance and the poetry thereof without studying jazz? I’m not saying that there isn’t value in isolating a discipline in terms of learning it, but I think one needs to always maintain a sense that it is a cog in a much much bigger wheel.
And just so this comment doesn’t get too lofty, I’d like to mention that Janus probably could have benefitted from a good chiropractor.