Being Interdisciplinary Is so Very Hard to Do
Author(s): Stanley Fish
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Profession, (1989), pp. 15-22
Published by: Modern Language Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25595433 .
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Profession.
http://www.jstor.org
into the faculty lounge and
complains thatby doing so they
have abandoned their responsi
bility to thepublic?"as profes
sional lifethrives,public culture
PRESIDENTIAL FORUM
Interdisciplinary
Being
to Do
So Very Hard
StanleyFish
Interdisciplinaryhas long been a familiarword indis
cussions of education and pedagogy, but recently it
has acquired a new forceand urgency, inpart because
as an agenda interdisciplinarityseems to flow natu
rally from the imperatives of left culturalist theory,
that is,fromdeconstruction,Marxism, feminism, the
radical versionof neopragmatism, and thenew histori
cism. Each of thesemovements, of course, should be
distinguished from the others inmany respects,but
it is fair to say that they are alike all hostile to the
current arrangement of things as represented by (1)
the social structuresbymeans of which the lines of
political authorityaremaintained and (2) the institu
structures
by
means
the American
mainstream
to
the increasingly narrow and
jargon-ridden practices of the
academy.
I
tional
grows poorer and older" (8)?
we might well be hearing the
voice of LynneCheney contrast
ing the vigorous cultural lifeof
Is
of which
the various
aca
demic disciplines establish and extend their territorial
claims. Often this hostility takes the form of an
tiprofessionalism,an indictmentof the narrowly spe
cial intereststhat stakeout a field of inquiryand then
colonize itwith a view towardnothingmore than serv
ing their own selfish ends.
In the antiprofessional diatribe, specialization
stands foreverythingthat iswrong with a practice that
has lost itsway, everythingthat isdisappointing about
an educational system that seems out of touch with
the values it supposedly promotes. Of course the an
attackon specialization isby nomeans
tiprofessionalist
the exclusive property of the left: ithas long been a
staple of conservativejeremiads against the decline of
culture in a world where all coherence isgone and the
centerhas not held. Indeed, at times it isdifficult to
distinguish the two ends of thepolitical spectrumon
this question. When Russell Jacoby reports that in
tellectuals have moved out of the coffeehouses and
Yet, ifboth the leftand the
right can lay claim to an anti
professionalism that regards
with suspicion activities tied narrowly to disciplinary
pressures, there isneverthelessa difference in theways
inwhich the antiprofessional stance is assumed. The
difference is one of sophistication and complexity in
the presentation: whereas the right tends to issue its
call fora general, nonspecialized pedagogy in the same
flag-wavingmode that characterizes itscelebration of
the American family, the lefturges itspedagogy in
the context of a full-fledged epistemological argu
ment, complete with a-theoryof the self, an analysis
of the emergence and ontology of institutions,and
a taxonomyof the various formsof
pedagogical prac
tice,from the franklyoppressive to the self-consciously
liberating.
At the heart of that argument is the assumption
that the lines currentlydemarcating one field of study
from
another
are not
natural
but
constructed
by in
terested parties who have a stake in preserving the
boundaries that sustain theirclaims to authority.The
structureof the universityand the curriculum is a po
litical achievement that is always in the business of
denying itsorigins in a repressiveagenda. Knowledge
is frozen in a form supportive of the statusquo, and
this ideological hardening of the arteries is abetted
by a cognitivemap in which disciplines are repre
sented as distinct, autonomous, and Platonic. Once
knowledge has been compartmentalized, the com
plaint continues, the energy of intellectuals is spent
within the spaces provided by a superstructurethat is
The author is Professor of English and Law and Chair
of the
Department
of English at Duke University. A version of this
at the 1988 MLA
convention
in New
paper was presented
Orleans.
16
Being InterdisciplinaryIs So VeryHard toDo
never criticallyexamined. Disciplinary ghettos con
tain the forceof our actions and render them ineffec
tual on the world's larger stage. In Michael Ryan's
words, thepresent disciplinary "divisions conceal the
relationality" of supposedly independent enterprises
and prevent us from seeing "that theyare nothing 'in
themselves' and that they constitute each other as
mutually interdependent determinations or differen
tiations of a complex systemof heterogeneous forces"
(53-54). One who uncritically accepts the autonomy
of his or her "home enterprise" and remains unaware
of the systemof forces that supports and is supported
by that enterprisewill never be able to address those
forces and thereby take part in the alteration of
_
We must become
sensitive to "the
'made up9 quality
of knowledge."
that
system.
This analysis of our
situation implicitlyin
cludes an agenda for
remedying it. One
must first (and here
Bruce Robbins
is
"affirm
speaking)
.
.
. that no
institu
tion isan island" and thatwhile "exercisingour profes
sion,we simultaneously occupy overlapping and con
flicting institutions" (3). We must, that is, become
sensitive towhat Vincent Leitch calls "the 'made up'
quality of knowledge" as our present institutionalcat
egories deliver it to us (53); and then, as S. P. Mo
must
the process
of
seek to suspend
hanty urges, "we
to
this continuity,
the self-evidence
of mean
question
ings by invoking the radical?but determining?
alterities that disrupt our . . . discourses of knowl
edge" (155). That is to say,and JimMerod says it,we
must learn "to situate textsin the field of institutional
forces inwhich theyare historically conceived" rather
than rest contentwith regarding them as the special
isolated objects of an autonomous practice (92). Once
we do this, the smooth coherences and seamless nar
ratives that form the basis of our present knowledge
will be disrupted; artificiallyconstructedunities will
fall apart; the totalizing discourse inwhich discrete
and independent entities are put into their suppos
edly natural places by a supposedly neutral discursive
logicwill be replaced by discontinuity,disorientation,
decentering, transformation,fluidity, relation, pro
cess. Moreover,
as the bonds
of discourse
are loosened,
the mind will be freed from the constraints those
bonds imposed, and the person thus freedwill move
toward "the full development of all human faculties"
(Ryan 49), leaving behind the narrowness of vision
that befalls thosewho remain tied to the confining
perspectivesof the ideologically frozen divisions of in
tellectual labor.
Of course the program requires some mechanism
of implementation, and it ishere thatwe arriveat in
Sammons charts
terdisciplinarystudyby a routeJeffrey
for us.
Sammons
points
out
that American
education
derives from a German model whose goal is "the cul
tural formation of the self so that itmight reach the
fullness of itspotentialities" (14). In the context of
thatmodel it is the task of particular disciplines to
contribute to that fullness and avoid the temptation
to become ends in themselves, to become nothing
more than training schools for entrance into a trade
or profession. It alwayshappens, however, that as soon
as disciplines are fully established theycome quickly
to believe in the priority of their own concerns and
turnfrom their larger
mission to the trainingof profes
sionals forwhom those concerns are not only prior but
exclusive.
In short,
the
structure
of the curriculum,
or rather the very fact that it has a structure,works
against its supposed end, and therefore something
must be built into that structureto counter the ten
dency to produce nonresponsive spheres of self
contained complacency. By definition interdisciplin
ary studies do exactly that?refuse to respect the
boundaries thatdisciplines want always to draw?and
thus encourage a widening of perspectives thatwill
make possible the fullness education is supposed to
confer.
Although Sammons and Ryan share thewordfull
as a component in their briefs for interdisciplinary
thinking,theymean differentthingsby it. Sammons's
fullness is the fullness of the imagination. He writes,
however critically, in the tradition of High Human
ism, and that iswhy he can locate the potential for
destabilizing activity in thehumanities or, as he calls
them, "the disciplines of the imagination," of a
Coleridgean faculty that sees similarities and differ
ences as constructed. Such a faculty,he claims, is in
herently "subversive," and therefore the humanities
are inherentlysubversivebecause they introduce "peo
ple to the inexhaustible alternative options of the
imagination" (10). Persons so introduced would be
"full" in the sense that their intelligenceswould not
be captured by any one point of view but would,
rather,be engaged in exploring points of view other
than those authorized by current orthodoxies.
To someone likeRyan (orRobbins orMerod) all this
would seem suspiciously familiar, especially when
Sammons approvingly quotes Robert Scholes's asser
tion that "poetic textsare designed to discomfortus"
(Scholes 43). Left ears will hear this as just another
Stanley Fish
version of a hoary and suspect disciplinary claim,
which, instead of decentering the curriculum or ex
posing its affiliations with political and economic
forcesfromwhich it thinks itselfseparate, gives it an
even firmercenter in thehumanities and thenhas the
nerve
to call
that center
"subversive."
Insofar
as such
an agenda envisions a fullness, it ismerely a fullness
of the reflective intellect, an intellect detached per
haps from any of the particular intereststhat vie for
territoryin the academy but an intellectnevertheless
that
confined in its operations?however full?to
same academy.What Ryan,Merod, and Robbins want
is a fullness of engagement, a mind and person that
refuses to segregate itsactivities, to think, for exam
ple, that literarystudy is one thing,participation in
the national political process quite another. They
would say that the point is not to determine which
of the presently situated fields of study is the truly
subversiveone but to call intoquestion the entrenched
articulationswithin which the divisions between fields
(and knowledge) emerge, and thereby(or so the claim
goes) to subvert the larger social articulation within
which the articulations of the academy are rendered
intelligible and seemingly inevitable. In short, for
thesemore radical voices, interdisciplinary study is
more than a device for prodding students to cross
boundaries theywould otherwise timidly respect; it
is an assault on those boundaries and on the entire
edifice of hierarchy and power they reflectand sus
tain. Ifyou begin by transgressingthe boundaries, say,
between literatureand economics as academic fields
of study,you are halfway to transgressingthe bound
aries between
the academy
and
its supposed
"outside,"
and you are thus brought to the realization that the
outside/inside distinction is itselfa constructed one
whose effectis to confine academic labor to a neutral
zone of intellectual/professionalplay?a realization
that then sends you back to operate in that zone in
a way that is subversivenot only of itsautonomy but
of the forces thathave established that autonomy for
their own unacknowledged purposes. In this vision,
interdisciplinarystudy leads not simply to a revolu
tion in the structureof the curriculum but to revolu
tion tout court. In the classical liberal paradigm,
interdisciplinary studies seek only to transformthe
academy while maintaining thewall between it and
the larger field of social action; and thus, as Ryan
points out, "the radicalposition of pedagogic activism
for
the
sake
of
an
alternative
social
construction
seem[s] a deviation" (49), an intrusionof the politi
cal into precincts it is forbidden to enter.Radical in
terdisciplinaritybegins with the assumption that the
17
political is always and already inside those precincts
and that the line separating them from the arena of
social agitation is itselfpolitically drawn and must be
erased ifaction within the academy is to be continu
ous with the larger struggle against exploitation and
oppression.
II
It is a stirringvision, but it is finally at odds with
the epistemology that often accompanies it. That
epistemology is either deconstructive or psychoana
lyticor a combination of the two, and in any of its
forms its thesis is that "meanings do not exist as such
[that is, as freestanding and "natural" entities] but
are produced" (Mohanty 15).What theyare produced
by is a systemof articulation fromwhich we as either
or hearers
speakers
cannot
distance
ourselves,
because
we are situated within it. Since that system (call it
differance or the unconscious) is the unarticulated
ground within which specification occurs, "it" can
not be specified and always exceeds?remains after,
escapes?the
specifications it enables. What this
means, as Shoshana Felman observes, is that knowl
edge is "a knowledge which does not know what it
knows, and is thus not inpossession of itself (40).
That is, as knowledge it cannot grasp, or name the
grounds of, itspossibility, and whenever it thinks to
have done so, those grounds are elsewhere than they
seem to be; they are once again under thewould-be
knower's feet. It is to thispoint that Felman quotes
Lacan?"the
where
they
elements
are
do
interrogated,
not
answer
or more
in the place
as soon
exactly,
as they are interrogated somewhere, it is impossible
to grasp them in their totality" (Felman 29)?and she
might just as well have invokedDerrida as he explains
why differance, although itmakes presentation pos
sible, can never itselfbe presented: "Reserving itself,
not
exposing
itself,
.
.
. it exceeds
the order
of truth
. . ., but without
dissimulating itselfas something,
as a
mysterious
being.
...
In every
exposition
it
would be exposed to disappearing as disappearance.
It would risk appearing: disappearing" (122). Or
again, "the trace is never as it is in the presentation
of itself. It erases itself in presenting itself,muffles
itself in resonating ..."
(Derrida 133). That is to
say, the truth one would know has always receded
behind the formulations it makes possible, and
therefore those formulations are always ignorant of
themselves and incomplete. Indeed, ignorance, the
forgettingof the enabling conditions of knowledge
18
Being InterdisciplinaryIs So VeryHard toDo
(conditions that cannot themselvesbe known), is con
stitutiveof knowledge itself.Thus, Felman declares,
"human knowledge isby definition thatwhich isun
totalizable, that which rules out any possibility of
totalizing what itknows or of eradicating itsown ig
norance" (29). It follows then that if ignorance is the
necessary content of knowledge as presented at any
particularmoment, knowledge isnot something that
should be preserved or allowed to settle,since inwhat
ever form it appears itwill always be excludingmore
than it reveals; and indeed it is only by virtue of the
exclusions it cannot acknowledge that it acquires a
of established knowledge? It is in the answer to this
question that the tension between the political and
the epistemological arguments for interdisciplinary
studies comes to the surface.In thepolitical argument,
which sees us currently inhibited in our actions by
lines of demarcation we did not draw, thedemonstra
tion that those lines and the distinctions they sub
tend are not natural but historical will remove their
power and freeus from their constraints. "The class
room," saysJeffreyPeck,
then becomes
vironment.
(suspect) shape.
Not surprisingly,the pedagogy demanded by this
insight is a pedagogy of antiknowledge, of the refusal
of knowledge in favorof thatwhich itoccludes. There
must
be
a new way
of teaching,
one
that
"does
not
question the foundations of all disciplines, since those
foundations will in every case be made of ignorance
must be firstexposed and then removed.
and therefore
The way to do this is to work against the apparent
coherences that support and are supported by igno
rance and to engage in a kind of guerilla warfare in
which the decorums disciplines ask us to observe are
systematically violated, so that we proceed, "not
through linear progression, but through break
throughs, leaps, discontinuities" (qtd. inFelman 27).
Rather
than
teach meanings,
we must
undo
the mean
ingsofferedtous by hidden ideological agendas, pok
ingholes in thediscursive fabric those agendas weave,
replacing the narcotic satisfactionsof easy intelligi
bilitywith the disruptivedis-ease of relentlesscritique.
The call to battle is sounded in summarybut represen
tativeform byVincent Leitch in the name of Roland
Barthes:
. . .
the frozen text; break down stereotypes and
suspend or baffle the violence and authority of
language; pacify or lighten oppressive paternal powers; dis
orient the Law; let classroom discourse float, fragment,
uproot
opinions;
digress.
(51)
then what? Does the pedagogy of anti
knowledge hold out the hope of anything beyond its
repeated unsettling ofwhatever claims us in the name
And
a productive rather than a reproductive en
In the spirit of critical reflection mean
ings and values of traditional pedagogy can be scrutinized.
. . .The
intersubjectivity ofmeaning can be exposed, and
educational institutions, the classroom, the discipline, and
the university can be seen to construct and condition knowl
edge. In this way literary study, as the study of textuality,
. . . reveals the
structures that organize
epistemological
how we know, how our knowledge gets transmitted and ac
just reflectitself,but turnsback on itselfso as to sub
vert itselfand trulyteaches only insofaras it subverts
itself" (Felman 39), a pedagogic style that in Lacan's
words is "the ironic styleof calling into question the
very foundations of the discipline" (qtd. in Felman
39). Lacan is referringto the discipline of psychoanal
ysis but, vigorously pursued, the strategycalls into
...
cepted,
and why and how students receive it.
(51)
To thisheady prospect, which will end, Peck predicts,
with students becoming better readers "of theirown
lives,as well as of texts" (53), the epistemological ar
gument poses a dampening question?from what
vantage point will the "structures that organize how
we know" be revealed??and the answer can only be,
from the vantage point of a structure that is at the
moment ##revealedbecause itoccupies the position
formerlyoccupied by the structuresitnow enables us
to analyze. The strategyof "making visible what was
hidden" can only be pursued within formsof thought
that are themselves hidden; the bringing to light of
what Edward Said calls "the network of agencies that
limit, select, shape, and maintain" meaning requires
the dark background of a network that cannot be seen
because it iswithin it that seeing occurs (34-35). Par
tiality and parochialism are not eliminated or even
diminished by the exposure of theiroperation,merely
relocated. The blurring of existing authoritative dis
new
ciplinary lines and boundaries will only create
lines and new authorities; the interdisciplinary im
narrow con
pulse finallydoes not liberateus from the
fines of academic ghettos to something more
capacious; itmerely redomiciles us in enclosures that
do
not
advertise
themselves
as
such.
In short,ifwe take seriouslythe epistemological ar
gument in the context of which the gospel of inter
come
disciplinary study is so often preached, we will
to the conclusion that being interdisciplinary?
breaking out of the prison houses of our various
specialties to the open rangefirstof a general human
Stanley Fish
knowledge and then of the employment of that
knowledge in the great strugglesof social and politi
cal life?is not a possible human achievement. Be
ing interdisciplinary ismore than hard to do; it is
impossible to do. The epistemological argument
deprives the political argument of any possible force,
because it leaves no room fora revolutionaryproject.
Or, rather, it leavesus with projects that look discon
certingly like the disciplinary projects we are trying
to escape. Either (as some contributors to a recent
piece in theChronicle ofHigher Education complain)
the announcement of an interdisciplinary
program in
annex the
some
to
effort
of
the
augurates
discipline
of another, or "interdisciplinary thought" is
territory
the name (whether acknowledged or not) of a new
discipline, that is,of a branch of academic study that
takes as its subject thehistoryand constitutionof dis
ciplines. Either the vaunted "blurring of genres"
(CliffordGeertz's now famous phrase) means no more
than that the property lines have been redrawn?so
that,forexample, Freud and Nietzsche havemigrated
respectivelyfrom psychology and philosophy to En
glish and comparative literature?or the genres have
been blurred only in the sense of having been recon
figured by the addition of a new one, of an emerging
fieldpopulated by stillanother kind ofmandarin, the
"specialist in contextual relations" (Alton Becker; qtd.
inGeertz 521).
19
emanating from other regions (philosophy, psycho
analysis, etc.) and these in turnmay well challenge the
unifyingassumptions of thediscipline of literarystud
ies in America" (38). That is to say, one's practice
within a discipline can be characterizedby invocations
of and frequent referencesto the achievements, dicta,
emphases, and requirements of other disciplines.
This is certainly true (my own practice, like yours,
has often been answerable to such a description), but
the question is, does the practice of importing into
one's practice themachinery of other practices oper
ate to relax the constraintsof one's practice?And the
answer Iwould give isno, because the importedprod
uctwill alwayshave the formof itsappropriation rather
than
the
_
it ex-
form
hibits
"at home";
therefore at the very
moment of its intro
duction, itwill already
be marked by the dis
course it supposedly
some
When
"opens."
We must undo
the
meanings offered
by hidden ideolog
ical agendas.
thing is brought into
a practice, it isbrought in in terms thepractice recog
nizes; thepractice cannot "say" theOther but can only
say itself,even when it is in the act ofmodifying it
selfby incorporatingmaterial hitherto alien to it.As
Peter Stearns says of history (and it could be said of
any discipline), "What has happened is that social
historians have borrowed topics, concepts and vocab
Ill
ulary
.
.
. but
they have
then
cast
them
in an
es
sentially historical frame," and he adds, "This is
Needless
to say, this is a conclusion
many
are
loath
to reach, but in order to avoid it, the proponents of
radicalpedagogy must negotiate an impasseproduced
by one of theirown firstprinciples, theunavailability
of a perspective that isnot culturallydetermined. Since
a perspective fromwhich the determinations of cul
ture can be surveyed is a requirement of the radical
project, one must ask how that project can even get
something
.
.
. more
modest
than
a
'blurring
of
genres'" (qtd. inWinkler 14). Just so, and it is hard
to see how it could be otherwise: terms and distinc
tions could arrive intact in the passage from one dis
cipline to another only if they had some form
independent of the discipline inwhose practices they
firstbecame visible; but, in our brave new textualist
historicistworld, termsand distinctions are no less so
started. In general, two answershave been given to this
question. The firstis tomove fromRobbins's obser
cially constructed than anything else, and therefore
the shape theyappear inwill always be relative to the
sociallyconstructedactivitythathas received them and
made them its own.
conflicting institutions," to the criticalpractice of al
lowing the claimsmade on us by one institution to
stand in a relationof challenge to the claimsmade on
us by another.As SamuelWeber puts it,"in interpret
ing a literarytext, an interpreterwill not necessarily
Moreover, ifmaterials, concepts, and vocabularies
take on the coloring of the enterprise that houses
them, so do practitioners, and that iswhy the second
vation quoted above, that "while exercising our pro
fession, we simultaneously occupy overlapping and
be limited to confrontingthose interpretationsprevi
ously certifiedas inhabiting the discipline of literary
studies"; rather,"he may also invoke interpretations
strategybywhich pedagogy will supposedly transcend
the disciplinary site of itsactivitiesfails.That strategy
is a strategy
of self-consciousness,
and
it requires
us,
while performingwithin a discipline, to keep at least
one eye on the larger conditions that make the
20
Being InterdisciplinaryIs So VeryHard toDo
performancepossible. (This is the implicationof Rob
bins's subtitle: "Toward ProductivelyDivided Loyal
ties.")While some agents confine themselves to the
horizons of a particular profession, others situate
themselves in thewider horizons of a general cultural
space and therefore
manage to be at once committed
and not committed to the labors theyperform. It is
the lattergroup that keeps faithwith a higher vision
by not forgetting"the forcesand factors" thatunder
lie and give point to local urgencies (Weber 37). They
remain
aware
of "the
reader's
and writer's
immersion
in a network of social forces thatboth grant and limit
the possibility of intellectual authority" (Merod 93);
and unlike their less enlightened brethren they resist
the tendencyof any "regime of truth"to deny its"con
stitutivedependence on what it excludes, dethrones,
and replaces" (Weber 38). That is, they contrive to
practice a particular craftwithout buying into the
claims of that craft to be self-justifyingand autono
mous and without allowing the perspective of that
craftto eclipse the other perspectives thatwould come
intoviewwere the craft'sdemands sufficientlyrelaxed.
The question is, as itwas before, is this a possible
mode of action? Again the answer is no, and for rea
sons thatwill become clear ifwe rephrase the ques
tion: can you simultaneouslyoperatewithin a practice
and be self-consciously in touchwith the conditions
that enable it?The answer could be yes only if you
could achieve a reflectivedistance from those condi
tionswhile still engaging in that practice; but once
the conditions enabling a practice become the object
of analytic attention (against the background of still
other conditions that are themselves unavailable to
conscious inspection), you are engaging in another
practice (the practice of reflectingon the conditions
of a practice
you are not now practicing),
and
the prac
tice you began to examine has been leftbehind, at
least as something you are doing as opposed to some
thing you are studying.Once you turn,for example,
from actually performing literarycriticismto examin
ing the "network offerees and factors" thatunderlie
the performance, literarycriticism is no longerwhat
you are performing.
The point of course is tautological, and itwould
seem
unnecessary
to make
it, except
that
in recent
years it has been obscured by an illegitimate infer
ence that has been drawn from a legitimate thesis.
The thesis is the one we began with: disciplines are
not natural kinds; they emerge in thewake of a po
litical construction of the field of knowledge. The
illegitimate inferenceis that since disciplinarybound
aries
are constructed
and
revisable,
they
are not
real.
But of course they are as real as anything else in a
world inwhich everything is constructed (the world
posited by those who make this argument); even
though the linesdemarcating one discipline from an
other can in time blur and become rearranged,until
thathappens the arrangementsnow in forcewill pro
duce differences felt stronglyby all those who live
within them.Although it is true thatdisciplines have
no essential core (anotherway of saying that theyare
not natural kinds), the identityconferredon them by
a relational structure?a structureinwhich everything
isknown bywhat it isnot?constitutes (however tem
porarily) a core that does all thework an essentialist
might desire, including thework of telling commu
nitymembers what is and is not an instance of the
practice it centers. Someone who says,as I have done
in the previous paragraph, "that's not literarycriti
cism" has said something thathas a basis in fact, even
if that fact itself?the fact of the present shape of a
? is one
undergo
diacritically constituted discipline
Again
ing continualmodification and transformation.
the lesson isonly apparently paradoxical: because the
core of the discipline is a historical achievement, it
is capable of alteration, but as an achievement it ex
erts, ifonly fora time, a force that cannot be ignored
or wished away.
This does not mean that a worker in a discipline
knows its core in the sense of being able to hold its
differential (nonpositive) identity inmind. Indeed,
in order to function in the discipline (as opposed to
being a student of itsformation), the fragilityof that
identity is something theworker cannot know or at
leastmust always forgetwhen entering itsprecincts.1
The mark of that forgettingis the unintelligibility to
practitionersof questions one might put from the out
side, questions like (for teaching) "why is it that you
want your students to learn?" or (for criminal law)
"why should we be interested in the issue of respon
sibilityat all?" or (forhistory) "whywould anyonewant
to know what happened in the past?" You can't be
a mem
seriously asking these questions and still be
ber of those communities, because to conceive of your
self (a phrase literallyintended) as amember is tohave
can seriously
forgotten that those are questions you
ask. This is the forgetting thatWeber, Robbins,
Merod, and others excoriate, but it is also the forget
ting that is necessary ifaction of a particular kind is
ever to occur.Denying and forgettingare not reform
able errorsbut the verygrounds of cognition and as
sertion. Ifone were to remember everythingand deny
nothing, assertion, directedmovement, politics itself
would have no possible shape.
Stanley Fish
Some of those who findmagic in theword inter
disciplinary come veryclose tomaking thispoint but
shy away from it at the lastmoment. Richard Terdi
man observes, correctlyI think, thatwhile "we attend
to the content of our instruction,we are fundamen
tally,but imperceptibly,molded by its form"?that
is,by the disciplinary structureswithin which the in
structionoccurs?and that therefore"the ideological
representation of theworld is involuntarilynatural
ized even through critique of its specificdetail" (221).
"Are our ways
of teaching
students
to ask some
ques
tions," asks Barbara Johnson, "always correlativewith
our ways of teaching them not to &ri?indeed
to be
unconscious of?others?" ("Teaching" 173). The an
swer
is yes, and
because
the answer
is yes our peda
gogical imperative,no matter how radical its stance,
will always turn out, as Terdiman observes, "to have
sources and serve interests other than those we
thought" (222). In the act of producing this insight,
Terdiman terms it "unhappy." But why?All itmeans
is thatwe will never achieve the full self-consciousness
that would allow us at once to inhabit and survey
reflectivelyour categories of thought, but that inca
pacity only affectsour ability to be gods; and were
we indeed to become gods, no longer tethered to the
local places within which crisesand troubles emerge,
we would not feel theurgencies that impel us forward.
The fact thatwe do feel theseurgencies and aremoved
by that feeling to act depends on the very limitations
and blindnesses Terdiman and company deplore. It
is only
because
we
cannot
critique" (Terdiman 223)?a
litical or conceptual
achieve
an
"authentic
critique free of any po
entanglements?that
the critiques
we do achieve have force, even if it is the nature of
thingsfor the forceof those critiques to be as vulner
able and transient as the conditions that give them
21
glish departments of philosophy, psychoanalysis, an
thropology, social history, and now, legal theory; or
theyare in theprocess of establishing a new discipline,
one that takes as its task the analysis of disciplines,
the charting of theirhistory and of their ambitions.
Typically themembers of thisnew discipline will rep
resent themselves as antidisciplinary, that is, as inter
disciplinary, but in fact, as Daniel Schon points out,
they will constitute a "new breed" of "counter
professionals/experts" (340). Nor is there anything
necessarily reprehensible about these activities.De
pending on one's own interestsand sense ofwhat the
situation requires, the imperial ambitions of a partic
ular discipline may be justwhat the doctors ordered;
and it may equally
well be the case that,
froma certainpoint of
view, the traditional
authentic
The impossibility
disciplines have played
themselves out and it
is time to fashion a
new
one.
For my
own
of
critique is the
impossibilityof the
interdisciplinary
part I subscribe to
both these views, and project.
therefore I find the
success
of literarystudiesheartening and
imperialistic
the emergence of cultural studies as a field of itsown
exhilarating. It is just thatmy pleasure at these de
velopments has nothing to do with the larger
claims?claims of liberation, freedom, openness?
oftenmade for them. The American mind, like any
other, will always be closed, and the only question
iswhether we find the formof closure it currentlyas
sumes
answerable
to our
present
urgencies.
form.
The impossibility of authentic critique is the im
possibility of the interdisciplinaryproject, at least in
sofaras that project holds out the hope of releasing
cognition from the fettersof thought and enlarging
theminds of thosewho engage in it.The obvious re
sponse to this conclusion is to point out that inter
disciplinary studies are all around us.What is it that
all these people are doing? The answer has already
been given; either they are engaging in straightfor
wardly disciplinary tasks that require for their com
pletion information and techniques on loan from
other disciplines, or theyareworking within a partic
ular discipline at a moment when it is expanding into
territorieshithertomarked as belonging to someone
else?participating, that is, in the annexation by En
Note_
1
Stephen Booth tells me
strong, and he reminds me
that this formulation may be too
of an experience many of us will
be able to recall, knowing while
watching a horror movie that
certain devices are being used to frighten us and yet
being fright
ened nevertheless despite our knowledge. In
experiences like this
an analytical
understanding of what is happening exists side by
side with what is happening but does not affect or neutralize
it. It would be too much to say, then, that when
engaging in
a practice (and
watching horror movies is a practice) one must
forget the analytical perspective one might have on the prac
tice at another time. It would
be more accurate to say that an
analytical perspective on a practice does not insulate one from
experiencing the practice in all its fullness, that is, in the same
way one would experience it were the analytical perspective
unavailable.
22
Being InterdisciplinaryIs So VeryHard toDo
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