Event Review
Practising interdisciplinarity . . . difficulty, troublesome knowledge, structure and improvisation.
16 March 2007
The first of the IRTN conferences to be convened by CRASSH as part of the IRTN programme was held on March 16. The main aim of the conference was to explore what the practice of interdisciplinarity might entail for graduate researchers. How does the researcher negotiate disciplinary boundaries? What are the implications of pursuing interdisciplinary research agendas and methodologies? What conceptual difficulties are involved in thinking across perceived disciplinary domains? What are the benefits a nd potential pitfalls of doing so? To address these questions, four practitioners from the disciplines of Philosophy, Social Anthropology, Drama and Performance Studies and English Literature presented on the themes of difficulty, troublesome knowledge, structure and improvisation. One of the aims of the conference was to facilitate an engagement between disciplines, to attempt to practise interdisciplinarity, and graduate researchers from other disciplines were invited to act as respondents to the presenter.
Session 1: Difficulty
Professor Jane Heal (Cambridge, Philosophy) spoke first on the theme of difficulty, reflecting on the difficulties involved in grasping a concept. Unpacking just what is implied by the notion of a 'concept', she drew upon the developmental cognition of children, and the ways in which they become linguistically competent, to illustrate her exposition and explore the processes underpinning conceptual learning. To do so encompasses a variety of cognitive skills often overlooked when thinking about the ways in which we grasp concepts, which also entails engaging with the world differently. While Wittgensteinian in approach, Heal demonstrated the embodied aspects of learning, and the difficulties involved in negotiating conceptual boundaries. The challenge in interdisciplinary engagement, when not impeded by institutional politics, 'turf wars' and the like, was to lay aside one's own practices in order to engage with those of another.
Responding to Heal, David Leitner (Social Anthropology) drew on his own experience in education at Cambridge and in the US. Differences in disciplinary practices were not just to be found across disciplines, but within disciplines. Knowledge practices, the production of academic knowledge, and what were seen as legitimate modes of knowledge production, often vary within a discipline. Talk of disciplines itself is to some extent misleading, suggestive of a coherence that often belies quite different disciplinary perceptions held by practitioners within a single discipline.
Session 2: Troublesome Knowledge
The second speaker of the day was James Leach (Cambridge/Aberdeen, Social Anthroplogy), who works on Papua New Guinea, with an interest in open source programming. Arguing provocatively that labelling something as 'knowledge' is a process of validation, he made a distinction between 'data' as the unprocessed 'stuff' apprehended by the senses, 'information' as data that is in some way organised, and 'knowledge' as data organised that has an effect. It is the effects that knowledge might have, the ways in which it becomes constituted as knowledge and the consequences of doing so, that might make it troublesome. Systems of relationships in which 'effect' is registered are not necessarily commensurate with one another. The effect of calling the outcome of interdisciplinary encounters 'knowledge' is to elide complex systems of persons, skills, contexts, objects, ideas, etc, and thus render 'widely different productions and intended effects' commensurate with one another through an objectification of social processes. It is to focus on a model of knowledge that stresses utility, a very different thing from 'effect'. Effect is a more unpredictable process, and is not based upon assumptions as to who the users and producers of knowledge might be. Knowledge, Leach concluded, is for these reasons, not simply 'transferable', nor should it be.
In response to Leach, Laura Watts (Science and Technology Studies) drew on Haraway's metaphor of the cat's cradle in which one person cannot make all the patterns alone to stress the collaborative practices that take place in the creation of knowledge. Also responding to Leach, James Riley (English) asked about ways in which a researcher conceptualises a project, and the ways in which this shapes its outcome. Further discussion debated the metaphorical construction of knowledge, and the relationship between concepts and metaphors.
Session 3: Babel of Tower
The afternoon started with Simon Bayly (Roehampton, Theatre/Performance Studies) presenting Babel of Tower: A report to the Academy, a provocative performance piece exploring, commenting on, and at times parodying the research process, including the ways in which the outcomes of research projects belie the often arbitrary and even sporadic nature of the research process itself. This exploration too the form of a dramatised dialogue between two actors playing the role of researcher and interviewer. The file structure of the researcher's computer formed a backdrop to their interaction. The folders, files, documents and images unfolded with the discussion on of the research project, opening up to the audience the structured reality of research as mediated through the computer environmnet. The piece drew attention to the place of failure, obsession, not knowing and self-indulgence in the research process, raising questions about the ways in which the research process creates the researcher, rather than positing the individual cogito as the site of knowledge production. Faced wit hthe daunting task of responding to this unconventional and stimulating presentation, Zoe Zvendson (English/theatre studies), emphasised the place of silence as an appropriate mode of response to a performance of this kind, and the difficulty in responding academically. After the earlier session led by James Leach on productions and effects, this session left the audience at once engaged and reflective.
Session 4: Translation
The final session by Clive Scott (UEA, Translation/European Literature) began with a series of exercises to illustrate his presentation on the difficulties implicit in the exercise of literary translation. Examining different translations of the same works, he asked the question of how it was possible for a non-bilingual reader to know which was the better engagement with what the author was trying to convey. Having made his case about the difficulty of translation, he went on to draw an analogy with interdisciplinary engagement, arguing that a similar set of problems confronted work across and between disciplines. His presentation took a different line to that taken by Leach, for whom practicing interdisciplinarity was not so much a matter of translation, as of incommensurable knowledge practices with differing effects. The ensuing discussion by Ben Morris (Archaeology) and Ben Etherington (English/Music) engaged the issues further, and was followed by further group discussion. Feedback suggested that the attendees--who included trainers as well as PGRs--had been stimulated by and profited from the range of issues covered and the nature of the interaction that took place throughout the day, which was attended at capacity.
The day concluded with an evening's open screening of Zizek's Perverts Guide to the Cinema.
Lee Wilson (CRASSH)
