Defining Interdisciplinarity

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Modern Language Association

Defining InterdisciplinarityAuthor(s): Timothy R. Austin, Alan Rauch, Herbert Blau, George Yudice, Sara van Den Berg,Lillian S. Robinson, Jacqueline Henkel, Timothy Murray, Mark Schoenfield, Valerie Traub,Marianna de Marco TorgovnickSource: PMLA, Vol. 111, No. 2 (Mar., 1996), pp. 271-282Published by: Modern Language AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/463106

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o r u m

PMLA invitesmembersof theasso-

ciation to submit letters, typed

and double-spaced,commentingon

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ical interest.Theeditorreservesthe

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to PMLAForum,ModernLanguage

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York,NY10003-6981.

FORTY-TWO eadersof PMLA esponded o a call forcommentson the

extent to which interdisciplinary goals in literary studies have been

achieved. The statements are arranged in four sections: Defining Interdisciplin-

arity, The Role of Theory, Enumerating the Obstacles, and Perspectives fromParticular Fields. Below is a list of contributors:

BeverlyAllen 308

DerekAttridge 284

TimothyR. Austin 271

SusanBalee 289

CynthiaGoldin Bernstein 306

HerbertBlau 274

DanielBoyarin 290

JonathanBoyarin 288

MarkBracher 300

EdCohen 288JeffreyJeromeCohen 283

PaulJ. Contino 309

Stanley Corngold 286

AnnCvetkovich 292

MariaI. Duke dos Santos 291

David Graver 307

John C. Hawley 283

JacquelineHenkel 278

MargaretR. Higonnet 298

KathrynMontgomeryHunter 303

Claire Kahane 301

KennethJ. Knoespel 304

Millicent Lenz 305

John Lowe 294

JulietFlowerMacCannell 295

FedwaMalti-Douglas 311

TimothyMurray279

HermanRapaport285

Alan Rauch 273

LillianS. Robinson 277

HenryM. Sayre 283MarkSchoenfieldand

ValerieTraub 280

Sidonie Smith 293

MadelonSprengnether302

MariannaDe MarcoTorgovnick282

Mario J. Vald6s 299

LynneVallone 297

Sara van den Berg 276

KathrynVanSpanckeren296

GeorgeYddice 275

ClarisseZimra 291

DefiningInterdisciplinarity

For at least two decades, "interdisciplinary" has ranked high among the acco-

lades that educators accord their colleagues' work. The term is both pervasiveand seductive. Granting agencies frequently set aside special funds for interdis-

ciplinary proposals, and college recruiters highlight interdisciplinary projects on

their campuses in addressing high school prospects. After all, interdisciplinarity

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suggests collegiality, flexibility, collaboration, and

scholarlybreadth-the academy's equivalents o parent-

hood andapple pie.Unfortunately, nterdisciplinarityand its implied an-

tithesis, (intra)disciplinarity, efy absolute definition as

intellectual concepts; their meanings are at best provi-sionalandinstitutionallydependent. n this respect, theyresemble the fickle deictic modifiers this and that. A

speakerwho refers to a Rolls-Royce as thisfantastic car

while passing it in a parkinglot will adjustafter pro-

ceeding only a few spacesdown the line-it is now that

fantastic car. Analogously, scholars constantly adapttheir definitions of interdisciplinarityto fit the various

institutional ontexts from whichthey speak.

As a graduate tudent n a department f linguisticsinthe 1970s,I regarded inguisticsas an autonomousdisci-

pline. Wholly contained subdisciplines included pho-

nology, syntax, and semantics; interdisciplinarywork

generally occupied "hyphenated"ields such as psycho-,neuro-, and sociolinguistics. Withinthis framework,I

chose to pursueresearch n stylistics,whichmy advisers

and I saw as an unhyphenated ut nonetheless nterdisci-

plinary area situated between linguistics and literarystudies. True,stylistics could claim at least a fifty-yearexistence as an independentfield of study, and it sup-

portedseveralspecialist journals. But at thattime there

existed neither an active professionalorganizationdedi-catedsolely to stylistics nordepartments r programs n

stylistic studies,either of which mighthave served to le-

gitimatethe field as a disciplinein its own right. (Today,of course,theemergenceof theInternationalAssociation

forLiterarySemanticsand of academicprograms uch as

the Programmen LiteraryLinguisticsat the Universityof Strathclyde, n Scotland,might lead one to the oppo-site conclusion.Thisdevelopmentalone demonstrates he

highly provisionalstatusof disciplinarydesignation.)After taking my doctorate, I accepted an assistant

professorship n an English department,whereI was as-

signedto introductoryinguisticscoursesvirtually denti-cal in content o thoseI hadtaughtas a graduate ssistant.

Now, however,those courses functioned institutionallynotas introductions or studentsembarkingon a linguis-tics majorbut instead as electives that offered "an inter-

disciplinary perspective"to undergraduates ommitted

forthe mostpart o literary tudies.

I then served for severalyears as directorof the uni-

versity'sLinguisticsStudiesProgram,a unitclassified as

one of three interdisciplinaryprograms,the other two

being Women's Studies andAfro-AmericanStudies. In

thisinstance nterdisciplinary ctedmerelyas a synonymfor

interdepartmentaldepartmentaltatus

itself havingbeen settled a priori).

MeanwhileI had gravitated o the MLA Division on

LinguisticApproaches o Literature, ne of thirteensub-

sumed under the broad banner of InterdisciplinaryAp-proaches. The titles of some divisions in this groupcombine literature with other well-established disci-

plines-for example, Anthropological Approaches to

Literature,Philosophical Approachesto Literature,and

Psychological Approachesto Literature.The Divisions

on Women's Studies and on EthnicStudies,by contrast,do not link paired disciplines in thatway.Literature nd

Science and Literatureand OtherArts both relate liter-

ary studies to "superdisciplines,"areas considerablywider than might usually qualify as disciplines. And

Children'sLiteraturedenotes a subdisciplineof literary

studyrather han aninterdisciplinaryield at all.However,the apparentlyrandomassignmentsto this

group turnout to have a perfectly cogent institutional

basis. The MLA employsas the primarybasis for classi-

fying its eighty or so divisions either the language in

which literarytexts are writtenor, where thatlanguageis English, the nationalityof theirauthors: he divisions

on American iterature ormone group,followed alpha-

betically by thoseon English,French,German,Hispanic,andItalian iteratures,and thenby the groupOtherLan-

guages and Literatures. A collection of divisions in

Comparative tudieschallengestheMLA'sprimary las-

sification by crossing languageboundaries;another setcovers work more usefully classified in terms of genre.And for topic areas that arenonliterary,he MLA offers

divisionsin LanguageStudies andin Teaching.Given such an organizationalgrid, it is easy to see

how InterdisciplinaryApproachesshould have come to

encompass a miscellany of divisions that would other-

wise have had no home. Even an areasuch as children's

literature-in which the basic materials and methods

useddifferverylittle fromthoseappropriateo, say, studyof the English Romantic period-becomes interdisci-

plinary by default when it fails to fit anywhere else in

the MLA architecture.The evidence is overwhelming, then, that interdis-

ciplinarityconstitutes not an inherentcharacteristicof

an article, book, course, or research programbut the

byproductof a highly contingentsystem of intellectual

categorizationwhose form is dictatedby locally specificinstitutional orces.This conclusion n turnentailsa com-

mitment o threepartiallyoverlappingprinciples.First, t

suggeststhat the epithet nterdisciplinaryhould be used

neither to lionize colleagues norto disparage hem,nei-

ther to elevate theirwork nor to marginalize t. Scholar-

ship maybe praised or its originality,nsight,coherence,

or thoroughness,but interdisciplinaritydoes not belongon any such list of criteria.Second, scholarsneed con-

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stantlyto remind hemselvesof the permeabilityandfra-

gilityof themembranes hatsurroundwhateverdiscipline,

subdiscipline,or interdisciplinaryieldthey areworkingin, and they need to remainopen to the possibility that

new interests theirown or those of others)maydistance

them from colleagues in their field or bringthemcloser

to those ostensiblyoutside it. Finally,as membersof ac-

ademic institutions (a department,a college, a facultysenate,the MLA itself), scholars shouldstay alert to the

presuppositionshatunderlieeach institution'sdemarca-

tion of thedisciplines, n order hat,whennecessary, hey

may defend the presuppositionsor, perhaps, argue for

revised, nstitutionallymoreappropriate efinitions.

TIMOTHY .AUSTIN

LoyolaUniversity,Chicago

Inmany ways theprofession'ssense of interdisciplinarityhas notchanged verymuchin recentyears.In spiteof or

perhapsbecause of currentpractices n highereducation,which emphasize the narrowspecialization needed for

disciplinaryinquiry,the figureof the eclectic polymathas a modelfor interdisciplinaritys stillpredominant. he

figureis dangerousbecause it inherentlyvalidatesdisci-

plinaryboundariesand suggests thatinterdisciplinarityhas more to do with capacity and retention than with

synthesisandanalysis.As interdisciplinaryields such as those thatcombine

literature nd science (the areaI know best, as coordina-

torof the Program n Science, Technology,and Cultureat GeorgiaInstituteof Technology) have grown, so has

the dilemma of avoiding the reificationof conventional

boundarieswhile resisting the self-congratulatorytoneof the polymath.Both tasksaredifficultgiven the over-

whelminginfluenceof science andtechnology in socialand academicdiscourse. It is hard to resist the impulseto use "interdisciplinarity"now a buzzwordacross the

curriculum)o reassert he importanceof the humanitiesin universities

ncreasinglydriven

bytechnicalandvoca-

tional imperatives.No matterhow well intentioned, his

strategy is misguided not merely because it reinforcesthehierarchyof disciplinesbut also because it implicitlysuggests that interdisciplinaryprogramsare important

primarilybecause of the service role they play for more

establishedprogramsn science andengineering.Even the most well-intentioned colleagues imagine

thatliterature-and-sciencerogramsareessentiallyelab-orateforaysinto technicalcommunication,with a minordose of literarystudies to give students the appropriateculturalveneer.The popular image of interdisciplinaryprogramsthus often fails to encompass a full sense of

whatbeinginterdisciplinarymight actuallymean.

The problemis partlytaxonomic."Interdisciplinary"

suggests an almost mechanical linkage between disci-

plines,whenin fact all the differentmodesof intellectualinquiry it into a culturalmatrix hatisn'teasily mapped.Needless to say,theforcednatureof thecopulain "litera-

tureandscience" is no better.Other erms, ike"infradis-

ciplinary," eginto evokethe ideabehindtheseprogramsmoreaccurately,butungainlyneologismsoftenhavefew

advocates.Whenmy colleaguesandI developeda degree

program n science, technology,andculture, t met with

some resistance because to colleagues in otherdepart-ments the title wordsseemedtoo disparate o be linked.It has been our practiceto describe the degree as "cul-

turalstudiesof science andtechnology,"a phrasing hat

seems more sensitive to the spirit of what we do thanotherterms.

Thecultural tudiesof scienceandtechnologyencom-

passes the idea that all forms of culturalexpression in-

fluenceandareinfluencedby the otherforms. And while

hardly a remarkableinsight, the idea means compre-

hendingscience andtechnology,disciplinesthathave at-

tempted to sustain the appearanceof objectivity and

disinterest.The ostensibleneutralityof science was sus-

tainedby the encyclopedic notionof interdisciplinarity,whicharranged nowledges neatly,distinctly,and-most

important-separately on the plane of intellectual in-

quiry.Contemporaryviews of science and

technology,shapedby Foucault,Geertz,Haraway,Latour,Fish,Beer,

Hayles, Levine, Shapin,andSerres(to namea few), in-

sist thateverythingaboutscience andtechnology,down

to its very methodologies, is subject to social and cul-

tural nfluences.

The response to this emerging concept of interdis-

ciplinarityhas not always been pleasant.In Higher Su-

perstition, for example, Paul Gross and NormanLevitt

cantankerouslydefend the sanctityof science andtech-

nology fromcriticalscrutiny hat stems fromany source

but the discipline itself. Using the "social constructionof science" as a universal

bogeyman, theywarnthatun-

qualifiedbarbariansare at the gates of science andthatthe sole aim of these "intruders" s vandalismand de-struction. Yet if annihilation is on anyone's mind, itseems to be on the scientists'.GrossandLevitt ndulgea

fantasy that involves successfully replacingthe facultyof a humanitiesdepartmentwith autodidact readpoly-math)scientistswho could "patch ogether"a functionalhumanitiesdepartment. t is difficultto imagine a more

perverseor cynical view of interdisciplinarity;yet, as Ihave tried to suggest, the very limitation of the termen-ables so outrageousa claim.The barbarianso be fearedare the dilettanteswho can construeinterdisciplinarityso simplistically.

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Thatresearchers should be rigorously committed to

understandinghe objects of theirstudyis surely a cor-

nerstone of good scholarship in any discipline. Withgrowing frequency n the humanities, hose objectshave

been andwill be related o thebranchesof human nquirycalled science. But science, like almostall subjectswith

intellectualappeal,is a multilayeredsystem thatcan be

approached n diverse ways; while one individualmaybe concernedwith the practiceof science, anothermay

studythe disseminationof knowledge,andyet othersthe

invention of methodologies or the application and im-

plementationof results. Culturalproductions,whether

scientific, technological, literary,or artistic,all emergefrom environments that resist the scientifically useful

but highly artificial notion of mutuallyexclusive cate-gories. The projectof the culturalstudies of science is

not to announcethe arrivalof interdisciplinarity;t is to

help us find our way in a world that is always already

interdisciplinary.

ALANRAUCH

GeorgiaInstituteof Technology

It may be that God is in the grammar,as Nietzsche re-

marked, but with epistemology failing aroundus, we

keep announcinga dissidentwritingbeyondthe certain-

ties of the sententious,ora languageof "performativity"thatwill outwit, baffle, or abolish the regulatoryfunc-

tionsthatwork nthe name of the law.Thespacein which

this is to be accomplishedis an affective "in-between,"where subversionis second natureand the model of in-

surgencyis the diasporic agency of those who have suf-

feredthe depredationsof historybutmanaged-throughthe lore of displacement or fragmentation,its aporeticmurmursor marginalnoise-to keep the struggle goingand academicscharged.

If there is "a mode of minimum rationality"whose

versatilityof articulationnotonly has survivalpowerbut

also changes the subject of culture (Homi K. Bhabha,"PostcolonialAuthorityand PostmodernGuilt,"Cultural

Studies,ed. Grossberg,Nelson, andTreichler Routledge,

1992] 57), it is not now and is not likely to be, in anyforeseeable future, the heuristic mode of any scholar-

ship, within the disciplines or across them. Nor will the

"radicalproject"of culturalstudies, infinitelyextended

throughalien culturesbut,like Einstein'suniverse,curv-

ing back on itself, escape the positivism it deplores-canons of judgment, rules of evidence, and, despite

postmodernism'sdevastating critique of authority,the

questionof authoritynevertheless. Whatever he appar-

entlyborderless

energy acquiredin

passingfrom the

insularityof the literary ext through hepoliticaluncon-

scious to the propheticvoice of the wide worlddreamingon things to come, the validationof knowledge-wher-

everit comes from,out of the libraryor off the streets-remains the principal issue of interdisciplinarity,as it

was forL6vi-Straussn "thescience of the concrete."

Asking who is doing the validating is sometimes as

muchan evasionof the issue as a definitionof it, thoughsometimes too the insistence may come from an un-

accreditedsource,as it did many years ago for me in an

affectivein-between,which remains n memoryas a cau-

tionarytale. My firstdegree was in chemical engineer-

ing, and my first book, on my work in the theater (in

which I starteda career while completinga doctorate n

Englishand Americanliterature),had a chapterentitled

"GrowingUp withEntropy";he title crossed one of thegospels of the 1960s, Paul Goodman'sGrowingUpAb-

surd,with an unresolvedfascination for that ratherdis-

tressing conceptof the second law of thermodynamics.had studied that law at a time when it was possible to

solve all problems atleaston exams)with almost no the-

oreticalunderstandingf whatentropywas,thoughI had

a premonitionthat it wasn't very good. It wasn't until I

began to study literature and thought about Hamlet,EmmaBovary, hebaldspotonVronsky'shead,BartlebytheScrivener,Didi andGogo,or the Eliotic versionof the

Saussurian ignifier,wordsslipping,sliding, anddecay-

ing with imprecision,thatI graspedthe idea of entropyas a measure of the unavailableenergyof the universe,the increaseof randomness ausinga leak.

There was a moment, however, when I was rather

chastened,and with an authority 've rarelyencountered

in an academic context. When he was a teenager,one of

my sons had a friend named Charles, a buckle-and-

leather ypewho mighthave been a Hell's Angelbut who

later, as a National Merit Scholar, finished the entire

chemistrycurriculum t Stanfordn his firstyear.Charles

rather ikedmy thinkingaboutscientificconcepts n what

he considereda "literary"way,butone time,as I pressed

an issue with a metaphorical leap, the indulgence sud-denlysnapped:"Youdon'tknow,"he said,"what he fuck

you'retalkingabout."And I suddenlyknewI didn't.

Vanity being what it is, that didn't preventme from

thinking across borders,still growing up with entropy

(butdefinednow, too, by information heory)as a mea-

sure of the uncertainty of knowledge. Sometimes, I

think,we haven't earned o live in doubt.While the Hei-

deggeriannotionof a boundaryas a beyondingand not a

customs barrierhas been taken up by critical theorists,current debates still presume thatpassportsneed to be

stampedandsubjectpositionsdeclared.The rites of pas-

sageacross boundaries are not

really settlingfor an

in-between, where space and time cross with variable

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knowledges and ideological differences-what is beingsettled on instead s a new set of categorical mperatives.

I certainlywon't tell PatBuchanan,but this developmentputsa quite limiting damperon the debates,even whenwe're urgedto teach them. And though over the entire

spectrumof cultural studies all areurgedto historicize,thereis one dominant heorizationof history, nto whichall the talk of histories is accommodated. The knowl-

edge that seems to be falling between the cracks herere-

mains withhistorianswho arelargelyunread.

The legitimacy of crossingor hybridizingdisciplinesis not so much in questionanymorebut the claims beingmadein a crisis of authoritywith therhetoricaboutsub-

versions and transgressions while invisible power is

laughing upits sleeve.

Meanwhile,the

"heat death" ofentropyhas takenanother urn,a sort of clinamen in the

void, into chaos theory, where the laws of physics areseen less as laws thanas functionalreductions thatper-mitone to thinkaboutcomplex systems, like that of late

capitalism,whose realityis neithera logic nor a law but

ratheranenvironmentalotalityof forcesandtendencies

onlypredictablewithintheshadowy imitsof theindeter-

minacyprinciple.There is another esson here for inter-

disciplinarystudies. Howeverprogramsare structured,

allowingfor the suffusion of disparateknowledgethat isin some finalanalysis,as WallaceStevensmight say, theweatherof itself, what is precipitatedas weather ornot)may arise fromincrementalvariantsof the most unfore-seeablekind,withchancehaving"the astfeaturingblowat events," as in the mat-weaving sequence of Moby-Dick. This is not to yield all of reality to the aleatoric,

only to recognize thatwhen inquirymoves from a sub-

ject position to an institutional or global scale-with

shiftingdemographies, orcedmigrations, atellitetrans-

mission,andtransnationalinance,and wheredecoloniza-tion is matchedby resurgingnationalismswith obduratehistories-then the capacityto thinkaboutrealityacross

disciplinaryandculturalbordersrequires omething essformulaicthan the going historicism or the mantrason

power arisingfrom an overdose of Foucault. In this re-gard,in between,there is still a leak in the universe.

HERBERTBLAU

Universityof Wisconsin,Milwaukee

A political analysisof disciplinaryand interdisciplinaryknowledgecouldnotbe moretimely as theUnitedStates

universityundergoesprofoundchangesin the 1990s. Atthe beginnings of the cold war era, linguistic, literary,and culturalinstruction in American studies, areapro-grams in Soviet studies, and Latin American studies

emergedas partof aneffortto fomentbotha new articu-

lation of American traditionsand an understandingofthepotential roublespotsfor UnitedStatesworlddomi-

nance. The struggles of the social movements of the1960s andearly 1970s also helpedusher n interdisciplin-aryprogramsn women'sstudies,blackstudies,Chicano

studies, andgay andlesbian studies.These fields intro-ducedanalyticalcategoriessuch as gender,race,sexual-

ity, imperialism, and colonialism that cut across the

disciplinesandenabledthediscernment f objectswhoseformulationand studypointedto the political stakes oftheepistemological enterprise.

Institutionalizedin partas a form of crisis manage-mentby thegovernmentn the 1970s,theseprogramsarenow fending off the assault of the conservative turnin

UnitedStatespolitics.Theirpredicaments compoundedby the availability of new forms of inter-or transdisci-

plinarity, uch as multicultural ndcultural tudies.Withthe waningof affirmativeactionandotherGreatSocietyprograms,boardsof trustees anduniversityadministra-tions can moreeasily justify cuttingethnic studiespro-

gramsorfoldingthem intocultural tudiesprogramshat

presumablyaddress ssues of raceandgenderwhile en-

joying wide popularityand a solid marketshare injour-nals,universitypress publications,andthe media.

According to a recentreport,areastudies programsarealso destinedfor cutbacks f not outrightelimination

now thatthe cold warthat ustifiedthemhas ended.Be-cause theywere seen as crucial to nationalsecurity,evenresearchthat "hadno identifiable relationship to coldwarconcerns"was supported StanleyJ. Heginbotham,

"RethinkingInternationalScholarship,"Items 48.2-3

[1994]: 33-40; 34). Fundersnow give priorityto suchissues as ethnicrivalriesandthe negotiationof diversityin civil society, the understandingof nationalisms and

religious fundamentalisms,he transition o democracy,and other factors crucial to the development (or hin-

drance)of marketsand market nstitutions(William H.

Honan,"TheQuadrangleBecomes a Globe,"New YorkTimes6 Nov.

1994,sec. 4A:

14+).Cultureand

diversityare growing in popularityin the humanities and social

sciences, not only because United States demographictrendsrequirea rearticulationf national dentitybutalsobecausesocial scienceandbusinessprograms re"focus-

[ing] scholarlyattentionon issues of ethnicity,religion,andlanguage"(Heginbotham37). A recenttextbookon

global marketing highlights the "culturalvalues thatmake [marketing echniques]useful in formulating tra-

tegic plans and programs in the global marketplace"(RichardL. Sandheusen,GlobalMarketing Hauppauge:Barron's,1994] 99). Drawingon a rangeof research ntonationaland local cultures,this marketingapproachat-

temptsto approximate "globalculturalstudies" 105).

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Thefocus on thediversityof valuesin theglobalmar-

ketplaceas a wayof capturing ndretaininganexpanding

rangeof consuming publicshas affected trends n educa-tion andemployment-not only the emergenceof MBA

and other training programsin global business but the

transformationsn the United Statesuniversitysystemas

a whole. That "Americaneducationneeds to go global"means "internationalizinghe curriculum" thome, par-

ticularly n elite institutions hat will developthe expen-sive interdisciplinaryprogramsto give their students a

competitiveadvantage n the global marketplace. t also

means that well-off foreign studentswill help maintain

the financialhealth and influence of United Statesgrad-uateprogramsat elite institutions Honan15).

Interdisciplinaryprogramsat public colleges, whileimportantor achievingunderstandingf a multicultural,multiracial ociety, will prepare tudents at best forjobsin the middle levels of the ever-growingservice sector.

The programsmayalso help trimthe size of facultiesas

interdisciplinaritydoes double and even triple duty in

satisfying culture,pluralism, diversity,humanities,and

social science requirements.Thus,interdisciplinary ro-

grams may help the effortsof budget-cuttingpoliticianswho are brokeringthe business sector's evasion of the

public good. Indeed,the intersectionof elite universities

with the global marketplace-the presidentof one uni-

versityis intent on

makingit a "center for worldwide

conferencesof university eaders" 15)-may be contrib-

utingto theunderdevelopmentf publichighereducation.

Whileinterdisciplinarytudiesprovidesdifferentwaysof discerningobjectsof studyandunderstandingow the

disciplines are implicatedin a politics of knowledge, it

is important o keep in mind that all interdisciplinaritiesarenotequal. So long as the termand the programs hat

go underit remainunexamined,the inequities thatare

already being institutedwill receive the imprimatur f a

justifiably sought-afterrecognitionof diversity.The in-

terests servedby suchprogramsneed to be examined,no

matterhow pedagogicallysoundtheprogramsare.

GEORGE UDICEHunterCollege,City Universityof New York

Interdisciplinarys a vexed term thatabsorbs contradic-

toryattitudesandaspirations.Forscholars ndifferentor

hostile to traditionalorganizations of inquiry,a better

termmight be postdisciplinary or antidisciplinary.For

others, interdisciplinarydenotes not a rebuketo estab-

lished fields but a collaborationbetweenthem and an ex-

tensionof theirseparatepossibilitiesinto new areas.

Paradoxically,hose who undertakeollaboration ften

face moredifficulties thanthose who simplybreak with

establisheddisciplines. The and in "psychoanalysisand

literature,""law and literature,"or "science and litera-

ture" ignifiesa goaldifficult o define,much ess achieve.Scholars in one field often confront the twin tendencies

of theircounterpartsn the otherfield to trivialize their

workand to idealizeit. Psychoanalysts,orexample,mayreduceliterarycriticism to literaryappreciationand ex-

empt its practices from any need or desire to produce"scientific" objective,reproducible,predictive,quantifi-

able)change,while simultaneouslywonderingat the sub-

tleties of literary heory.Literary riticsmay dismiss the

debateabout the hermeneuticbasis of psychoanalysisas

irrelevant r obsolete,while idealizingthe transformative

cultural orce of psychoanalytic heory.Rather hancol-

laborateas equals, we too often appropriatehe "other"discipline on our own terms, subjectingit to our needs

and wishes. We distort t by investigatingandusingonlythose elements we choose and disregarding the field

as a whole. As a result, our would-be collaborators in

the discipline we find so alluring may dismiss us as ill

informed.Psychoanalysts,orexample,smile in bemuse-

ment when literarycritics assume that psychoanalytic

theory stopped with Freud (or Jung or Winnicott or

Lacan). Literarycritics smile when psychoanalystsas-

sume thatliterary heorystoppedwithNew Criticism.

Interdisciplinarywork requires the investigator to

honor the assumptions, he history,the methods,and thecurrentmultiplicity of each discipline. Literarycritics

often seem unaware of importantconversationstaking

place among colleagues in other fields. They would do

well to attend to those debates;they may find issues re-

markably imilarto those in their ownfield. Concern or

"the subject"and "agency,"for example, is common

to the work of feminist, queer, postcolonialist, new-

historicist,and textual critics who arestudyingways that

representations generatedandpositionedthroughsets

of human relationships. It is also a major concern of

such psychoanalytic theorists as Daniel Stern,who is

testingpsychoanalyticconceptsthroughobservationsofinfantsandparents;ThomasOgden,who is developingan

importantnew "relational" aradigmof psychoanalysis;

StephenMitchell, who is redefiningthe psychoanalyticsituationas a meetingof the "multipleselves" of analystand analysand;and Stanley J.Coen, who offers a rela-

tional theoryof writingandreading.The new relational

paradigmis a significant advance beyond the object-relationstheoryand the Lacanianlinguistic theorystill

prominent n the work of many psychoanalytic literarycritics. At the same time, however, literarycritics have

gone beyond most psychoanalytic theorists in under-

standingand

explicatingthe

implicationsof

object-relations heoryand Lacanian heory.

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It is difficultto work at a comparable evel of knowl-

edge andsophisticationn more thanone field andto rec-

ognizepossibleintersectionsandparallels.Few membersof one discipline systematically read andkeep current,

much less gain bona fides, in a second field. There are,

of course, exceptions: Roy Schafer uses literary theoryto explicate psychoanalytic heory;MeredithSkura races

the parallel developments of practices in literarycriti-

cism andclinical psychoanalysisin TheLiteraryUse ofthe PsychoanalyticProcess; andPatrickMahonyreads

Freud'swritingswithcarefulattention o the psychicand

rhetorical ources of theirstyle.A numberof literary rit-

ics since NormanHolland and Steven Marcus(includingSkura andMahony) have completed formal trainingin

psychoanalysis, despite strong oppositionfrompsycho-analysts who fear the trivialization of their field asjustanotherkind of interpretation.Others,like me, havenot

completedsuchstudybut are fortunate o workwithpsy-

choanalysts who generously instructliterarycritics in

theirdisciplineand welcome reciprocalcommentson lit-

erarycriticism.Manycritics havebeen drawn o psycho-

analyticmethods andderive theirclaimto authorityrom

theirpersonalexperienceof psychoanalysis,but the ex-

penseof analysisand of psychoanalytic andidacymakes

both kindsof trainingdifficultfor manyscholars to un-

dertake.I do not know of any psychoanalystswho have

subsequentlyundertakendoctoral studies in literature,althoughthe curriculum n severalpsychoanalyticinsti-

tutes is being altered o include the perspectivesof other

disciplines. At the Seattle Institute for Psychoanalysis,forexample, first-year andidatesare asked n whatways

theymightconsider an analysanda text to be read. Inter-

disciplinarycenters for research, ike those at New York

University,the Universityof Florida,and the State Uni-

versityof New York,Buffalo,facilitateongoingwork and

communicationthroughconferences, publications,and

Internetbulletinboards.In otherplaces, scholarsrely on

informal discussion groups and personal friendships.Most

often, interdisciplinaryourses are

developedand

taughtwithin established departments.In such depart-ments,interdisciplinaryworkmaybe regardedas a radi-

cal challenge,thenaccepted,then dismissed.

I believe thatpractitionersof every discipline live in

the same moment and are moved to ask the same ques-tions, albeit framed in their own vocabularies. Rightnow, a major concern in our society is violence, both

publicandprivate,rootedin a sense of lost relationshipsand lost agency.Not surprisingly,here has been a resur-

genceof interestamongpsychoanalystshere and n SouthAmerica in the work of Melanie Klein, the preeminent

psychoanalytictheoristof rage, hatred,and loss. Teach-

ers, theorists, and critics of literatureare also trying to

address these issues in classrooms and in research.

Whetheror not these two disciplineschoose to collabo-

rate,theircommoninterests,hopes,and fears will be ob-vious to an observera hundredyearsfromnow.

SARAVANDENBERG

Universityof Washington

In the prehistoryof feminist culturalstudies-by which

I mean certainstunning ntellectualmoves thatprecededthe introduction f feministwork ntotheacademy-therestandtwo monumental tudies,VirginiaWoolf's A Room

of One's Own and Simone de Beauvoir's The Second

Sex,both modelsof original nquiry ntothe female con-

dition and of interdisciplinary pproaches o that nquiry.A work of imaginative literature,A Room of One's

Own begins with the implied question, What about

women and fiction? In order to get to her famous con-

clusion, at once material and cultural, that a woman

needs five hundredpoundsa yearand a roomof herown

to writefiction,Woolfhas to learnwhat amount o alien

tongues, includingthe discourses of history,economics,andsociology. Beauvoir,also a womanof letters,exam-

ines texts frombiology, anthropology,philosophy,soci-

ology, and fiction to articulate for the first time the

theorynow calledthe social constructionof gender.

Although the ideological and institutional barriersthese two womenencounteredwere formidable,at least

no departmenthead told Woolf to keep off otherdisci-

plines' turf or thatliterarystudycould not accommodate

herquestion,Why arewomenpoor?No committee chair

said to Beauvoirthat the questionwhetherone is bornor

becomes a womanis settled n the deliveryroom,not the

philosopher'sstudy.

By contrast,a feministcriticin the academy todayat-

tempting,howevermodestly,to follow the trailsblazed

by Woolf andBeauvoir runsheadlonginto the walls es-

tablishedby her own and otherdisciplines,each with its

characteristic object of study, research methods, anddiscursive practices. Indeed, bringingfeminist studies

into the academy has entailed a confrontation with the

traditionalorganizationof knowledge into disciplines."What s this?"I used to be askedaboutmy earlywork.

"It'snot literature,t's-it's sociology "Andsociologistsfelt free to dismiss the same work as hopelessly tainted

by belles lettres.

Nonetheless, the institutional barriers hatdeterminewhether t is possiblefor suchworkto be carriedon atallareinsignificantnext to thebarriersn my mind,echoingthe internalvoice thatWoolfcalled theangelin the houseand thatshe heardcautioningrestraintn criticism of the

patriarchy.The angel I hear-who soundsmore like the

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once argued,disciplinary boundariesare necessary to

ongoing research;otherwiseone would not know where

to begin, what to find,how to give evidence("BeingIn-terdisciplinaryIs So VeryHard to Do," Profession 89

[New York:MLA, 1989] 15-22). We arethenliving out

the inevitablewhen ourperspectiveon otherdisciplinesis firmly rooted in our own. Certainly in (or near) my

field, I would praisethe local success of research n the

"borrowing"mode,whether t developsor only suggests

disciplinary onnections: inguistics-influencedriticism,

linguisticstudyof meter,narrative nalysis,orpragmatic

approaches o fictional convention.Thoughthe interdis-

ciplinarycommitmentsrepresentedherevary,suchproj-ects sharediscipline-specificgoals thatthe outside field

comes to serve.But to celebrate disciplinary perspective is also to

admitinsularity.For the paradoxical,andalso unattrac-

tive, effect of disciplinaryfocus is the developinghope,

alternately dealistic andterritorial, hatliterarystudies

will mergewith neighboringdisciplinesor absorbthem.

How mightwe otherwise magine nterdisciplinary ork?

Most often andobviously our interdisciplinaryprojectsborrowfrom nearbyfields. But being interdisciplinarycould also mean collaborating piecemeal among disci-

plines on some subsumingbutpartitionedproject.More

rarely,an interdisciplinaryeffort might generateacross

departments cowrittenpaperaddressinga questionnei-ther authorcan solve alone. Whatever he interdisciplin-

arymode or aim, we wouldexpect suchprojects o work

best when the goals of each discipline are compatible

enoughto focus researchbutenoughat odds to stimulate

new approaches o old problems.And we would assume

that nterdisciplinaryraining ucceeds most whenit finds

institutional upport.A numberof pointsrelevant o literarystudiesfollow

from these simple observations.First, interdisciplinarycollaboration is everywhere suspect but nowhere more

than n literary tudies,whichbarelycreditscoauthorship

withindepartments.Second, collaborativepartnersandcompatibleprojectsare hardto find. Institutional actors

arepartly o blame,butargumentsor interdisciplinarity,cast as "boundary reaking,"ail to serve us if theyfoster

merely adversarialpostures. We would converse with

outside fields better-in order both to teach and to be

taught-were we to live more comfortably with disci-

plinary difference. Finally, as we streamline graduate

programsin response to economic pressures, students

will findinterdisciplinarywork-the kind thatseriouslyinvestsin two fields-increasingly difficultto do.

How importants it to maintainand extend interdisci-

plinary projects?I would not

saythat work that calls it-

self interdisciplinary s somehow superiorto work that

does not. NorcanI claimthat atpresent nterdisciplinaryinterestsenhance one's professionalprofile. (As a psy-

cholinguistonce observed,everyone suspectsyou reallybelong in anotherdepartment.)But graduate raining n

different disciplines is like experience with other cul-

tures; nothing serves to illustrate the contingency of

one'smethodsandmodelsso well as the shock of finding

problemsrelocatedand redefined.AndI value the stimu-

lating pressureof contrastingdisciplinarypointsof view

in professional life. Could I remake our professional

world, I would ask first for more thought about early

graduate specialization. Next I would wish us to ease

disciplinaryisolation-to accept a broaderrangeof in-

terdisciplinary efforts, to collaborate, and to arrange

structured ccasions for interdisciplinary ebate.The re-wards here are not momentous-simply an enhanced

perspectiveon our ownperspectives.

JACQUELINEENKEL

University f Texas,Austin

In my fields of specialty,comparativeiterature, inema,

and performance, the use of methods from other dis-

ciplines, such as philosophy and psychoanalysis, has

resulted in groundbreakingreconsiderationsof the re-

ceived genealogies of subjectivity, gender, sexuality,

race, class, and culture. The general acceptance of the

merits of interdisciplinary study is attested by the fre-

quency with which national literaturedepartmentshire

colleagues with interests and training in other fields:

comparativeliterature,ethnic studies, philosophy,cin-

ema, art,anthropology, t cetera.Butsuch self-willed in-

stitutionalcross-fertilizationhas resulted n the frequenterosion of the intellectual eciprocityhatshouldmotivate

andlegitimate nterdisciplinary tudy.I amreferring o a

kind of interdisciplinaryhegemony in which advocacyof one discipline remainssuspiciously neglectful of the

materialandconceptual egacy

of another.

In some cases, this neglect results from the pursuitof the modern at the expense of research andreflection

on the ancient. Although this practice is certainly not

novel to the historyof the humanities, t works no better

for new epistemologies than it did, say, for the new sci-

ence that eventually returnedto the reading of the an-

cients. Inothercases, interdisciplinary egemonyresults

fromthe hallucinatory ffects of exposure o new materi-

als and methods thatleave colleaguesrelatively ndiffer-

ent to thedisciplinedpursuitof theirdoctoralsubjectand

their pedagogy in, say, literary study.One bothersome

feature of suchheadlong pursuit

of the other(disciplineor period) is the arbitrarybricolage of this or that from

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one discipline to embellish another. Yet this mainly

benign result may be symptomatic of more troubling

methodological challenges facing the welcome rise ofinterdisciplinary ursuit.

The most seriouschallengeis the politicaltemptation

simplyto abandonstudyof a particular isciplineor his-

torical literaturein response to ideological biases that

mighthave framed hedisciplineor literaturen thepast.It is truethatconsideration f themethodological ootsof

particulardisciplinesmay involveprolongedanalysesof

frustratingmattersthat scholarsmightrather ranscend,

like the reliance of earlymoderntheaterandphilosophyon figuresof the "savage"or Freud'sphallocentricaffec-

tion for the trials of Oedipus.Butat issue is whetherhis-

torically adendisciplinary pistemologiesand economies

can be adapted o emergentsocial andpoliticalconsider-

ations.Conversely, s it intellectually prudent o assume

thatemergentfields have little to glean from the disci-

plinarymethods andlegacies now undersuspicion?Forexample,cinemastudies,which is particularlyn-

terdisciplinaryn practice,has witnessed a growingsus-

picion about psychoanalysis, one of the disciplines to

which it has been theoreticallyindebted.Even scholars

workingoutside this field have heardthe call to dismiss

psychoanalysis or favoringphantasmatic eneralityover

historicalparticularityandfor being historicallyhostile

or indifferent o a wide rangeof identitypositions,espe-

cially those withfeminist, racial,queer,andpostcolonialinflections. These criticismsderive from the understand-

able concern thatspecific film practiceswill be reduced

to somethinglike a masterdiscourse of psychoanalysis.But they are also based on the questionableassumptionthat cinematic analysis can easily distinguish politicsfromfantasy, orcefromdesire,and cinemafrompsycho-

analysis.Even moreproblematic,hesesuspicionsremain

blind to the historical bases of interdisciplinaritytself.

Is it even possible to dissociate clearlythe historical de-

velopmentof the modern institutions of psychoanalysisandcinema?Haven't bothdisciplinesbeen complicitousin borrowing rom each other to help mapthe modernist

parametersof female and male subjectivityand sexual-

ity? And haven't relatedconceptualizationsof perspec-

tive, hallucination,visualization,moving images, voice,and echo been crucialto both? Forinstance,contempo-

rarycinema's stilted portrayalof psychoanalysis(Basic

Instinct, Whispers in the Dark, Silence of the Lambs, etc.)

and recentpsychoanalyticstudies of transference Pon-

talis, Green, Borch-Jacobsen, Kristeva, Zizek) reveal

how cinematic flashback and hallucinatory projection

are conjoined in the genderedrepresentation ndanaly-sis of trauma.

Openness to interdisciplinary reciprocity can also

work to the advantageof psychoanalysis, which all too

frequently ontrasts hepathosof theunresolved llnessesof its patients with the bathos of artistic creativity and

sublimation.In makingthatcontrast,the psychoanalystremains indifferent to the psychosocial structures and

traumas f cinematicandliterary epresentation,isualityandtextuality,to which Freud was drawnfor guidancein understandinghe enigmasof psychicalpresentation.

Turning eciprocally o examplesof the cinematicandlit-

erarymatterof psychoanalysiswouldpromotediscussion

of how creative antasyoftenspeakson behalf of psycho-

analysis.Suchcomparative tudywould considerhow the

illusions of fantasy (like those of literature and visual

culture)serve as thepartial upportof psychoanalyticre-

ality in lendingstructureo the auraland visual relations

of analysis.While it may be difficult to recognizeand to

mapthe visual and auralregistersof the psyche, it maybe illuminatingto situate them in analogousrelation to

the psychosexual mechanics of cinema and literature

(whichthemselvesarefrequentlycompoundedby refer-

ence to the theorizationsof psychoanalysisandtrauma).Of course,the challengeand/ordangerof focused in-

terdisciplinary eciprocity s that suchworkmayalterthe

foundationalassumptionsof the fields under considera-

tion. But even when such welcome alterations result in

the definition of evolving disciplinarypractices,as with

culturalstudies,postcolonial studies,andqueerstudies,

theywill notmaintain heirefficacywithoutan active di-

alogue with the historicalreevaluationof the disciplinesfromwhichthey emerge. Finally, n responseto the seri-

ous crises in staffingboth traditionalandemergentcur-

ricula,sensitivity o the intellectualbenefitsof reciprocitymust involve a refusal to bend to economic andpolitical

pressures implyto tradeone curriculum or another.The

excitingpedagogicalchallengeof thetwenty-first enturywill necessitate reliance on the principlesof interdisci-

plinaryand historicalreciprocityin shapingthe univer-

sity curriculum f thefuture.

TIMOTHYMURRAY

CornellUniversity

To the extent that literarycriticism has concerned itself

withreference, t hashad an interdisciplinary bject.The

manytopicstakenupby nineteenth-centuryBritishperi-

odicals, for instance, as they invoke one subject (law,

economics, religion)to explicateanother poetry,novel,

romance)demonstrate the practical recognition of this

point. The assumption that words mean is itself inter-disciplinary.A reference to marriage n Shakespeare's

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sonnetsdraws ts meaningfrom discoursesof history,re-

ligion,andheterosexuality. Marriage"s intelligibleonly

throughreferenceto otherterms; he slidingof the chainof signification s notjust the slippagebetweensignifierandsignifiedbut also the meaning-producingmovement

that occursthrough he frames of disciplinarity.

If, as Derridaargues, he law of genre requires ts own

contamination, he law of discipline equally dependson

the unacknowledgedpermeabilityof its boundaries.Be-

cause disciplines are in continual transformation, it

is inadequate, for example, to use a legal text such as

Blackstone's Commentaries o gloss a referencein By-ron's Don Juan to contract law, because the two texts

wereengagedin a widerpolitical struggleoverthe mean-

ing of public agreements; his struggle shaped,and con-tinues to shape, law, literature, legal scholarship, and

literarycriticism. Alternatively,to understand he legalcontext for Shakespeare's Othello requires thinkingabout how criminal law has been shaped by readers-

usually admirers-of Shakespeare(several Tennessee

legal opinions in murderappealsquote Shakespeareto

justify their narrative).This recursive dynamic marks

the political and intellectualnecessity of a historicizing

interdisciplinarity that regards the construction and

maintenanceof the disciplinesas partof the meaningsof

texts-even those texts that seem most comfortablynes-

tled in the realm of the aesthetic.Certain opics andquestionsare morevisibly marked

thanothers by the disciplinary wars that result in their

current ntelligibility.Forexample, the effort to analyzetherepresentationf lesbianism s hamperedby the dom-

inance of one discourse-psychoanalysis-in the crea-

tion of the object of inquiry.This dominancegives rise

to several strategies: to reconstitute the lesbian within

the terms of psychoanalysis; to scuttle psychoanalysis

altogether(butthatleaves the historythatgave rise to it

intact);or to performa genealogy of the diacritical for-

mation of both psychoanalysis and lesbianism. But the

pointremains that the

disciplinaryboundaryis as

pro-nounced around he lesbian as it is aroundpsychoanaly-sis. Orthe invisibilityof the objectmaybe enactedby its

dispersal across disciplines. The representationof the

humanbody, for instance,has been parceledamong lit-

erature,history,philosophy,the visual arts,and the sci-

ences; in a sense, to refuse to engage with the body's

interdisciplinaritys to reproducets dismemberment.

Both of us-an early moderngender theorist and a

British romanticist-are concerned about the specific

conceptual boundaries we confront in our individual

projects.One limit, however,circumscribesus both: the

construction,reading,andutilization of evidence. As a

scholarworks in the interstices of history,science, law,

visual arts,andliterature,evidentiaryclaims (as well as

theirdismissal)tend to police intellectualmovement; his

policingcan take the form of reifyingcertain ruth laimswhile not adequatelyproblematizingthe methodologythatproduced hem. Recourse to "rulesof evidence" ails

to account for the extent to which the adjudicationof

claims is a disciplinary formation.Not only does each

discipline constructits own criteriaof proof, but what

counts as proof is itself contested within, as well as

across,disciplines.To understandhis contest in histori-

cal terms is the crux of interdisciplinarity.Ratherthan

use presumptivestandardsof admissibility to discredit

speculative work, we need to ask how a matrix of evi-

dence gainsconsensus,by means of which criteriaof in-

clusion and exclusion. By what means is evidence readas symptomatic of an "event"? To the extent that the

conceptof evidence is a scientificor legal paradigm,how

does evidence in those discourses depend on literary,historical,andreligiouspresuppositions?

Pressuring he status of evidenceby means of such a

genealogy suggeststhepossibilityof moving beyondcur-

rentconfigurationsof proof. It might be useful to sup-

plantthe epistemological privilegeof evidence with that

of the predictive hypothesis:If we hypothesizeX, what

do we bringto light thatmightotherwise have been oc-

cluded?Using predictive hypotheses provisionally is a

tenuous,enablingformof scholarshipthat demands in-tellectualgenerosity.The payoff is the foregroundingof

evidenceas a circular,accretiveconstructioncontingenton historicalselectivityanddisciplinarycriteria.

Theexistenceof differentparadigmsof proofcontrib-

utes to the lack of protocolsforengagingin dialogueand

to the difficultyof translatingacrossdisciplines. These

paradigmsn turngive rise to the illusion thatwhileone's

own field is fractured,contradictory,and riven, other

fieldsarestable,coherent,andopento untroubled xpor-tation. Whenwe turnto an eighteenth-century egal text

for a notion of marriage, or instance,and learnthatit is

an "economicunionoriginalto civil society"(TheLaws

respectingWomen,1777),we should notacceptthis defi-

nition as a gloss on the marriageplot oras a statementof

the way things were or as an irrelevancy o the aesthetic

expressionof desire.Rather,we shouldexploreas politi-cal conflict and rhetoricalpositioning the heteroglossic

productionof whatmarriagewill, always provisionallyandpartially,have meant.Analogously,when we speakof interdisciplinarityn the presenttense, we do so with

little sense of how certainsubjectsremain nconceivable

because of currentdisciplinary configurations. High-

lightinghow discourses anddisciplinesareproducedas

stable,resisting

thepractice

ofmerely importing

the

findings of other domains in orderto engage with and

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critiquetheirguidingterms,is a crucialchallenge posed

by interdisciplinarityoday.

MARK SCHOENFIELD

VanderbiltUniversity

VALERIETRAUB

VanderbiltUniversityand

University f Michigan

Every discipline has rules and limitations of its own-

certain ways of doing things, both for better and for

worse.Interdisciplinarytudyworksbecausepeoplefrom

one discipline are not routinely bound by the same as-

sumptionsas people fromanother.Theydo not necessar-

ily sharethe sameblindspots, focus on the same things,or thinkaboutproblems n the same way.So, often, theycan see through he assumptions hatgroundother disci-

plines so thoroughlythat the assumptionshavebecome

invisible axioms. People from anotherdisciplinecan un-

derstandproblems-and, sometimes, reachsolutions-

in a new orcogent way.Inotherwords, nterdisciplinarity

brings with it the benefits of defamiliarization. It can

break hrough o powerful nsights.

Interdisciplinarysuccess stories abound.One is the

reevaluationof Freudian heories thatresultedfromthe

perceptionof narrativityn Freud'scase studiesor, from

a differentangle, the perceptionof his vexed and illogi-cal ideas aboutwomen,which are often the result of met-

aphoric thinking gone wild. Another is the broadeningof arthistory from its traditional preoccupationswith

artistic genealogies and iconographyto include issues

like race and gender.A thirdis the arrivalof poststruc-turalistrelativism n anthropology.

Literarystudies has played an importantrole in all

these developments.It was unlikely, to give one exam-

ple, that a trainedpsychologistwould havethoughtabout

Freudas a storytelleror a masterof metaphor;bothper-

ceptionswere natural or literarycritics.Interdisciplinar-

ity has enhancedthe powerandprestige,not to mentionthe availablesubjectmatter,of my discipline-importantbenefits of interdisciplinary studies to members of

the MLA.

Not all the gifts of interdisciplinarityareunambigu-ous, nor are all uniformlywelcome.Someethnographers,for example, don't want to hear how poststructuralism

compromisesthe validityof theirfindings. They equate

poststructuralismwith self-consciousness or narcissism.

It mightbe healthier or them to pointoutthatethnogra-

phy has addressed the issue of culturalrelativism for a

long time, for example, in the work of Franz Boas. In

fact, too few literary theorists have bothered to readfoundationalbooksin anthropology,whichoften address

problemsof interpretationndculturalcontact. It's arro-

gantfor scholars n fields like postcolonialstudies not to

know andacknowledgelandmark exts in anthropologythat raiseandilluminatekey questions.Interdisciplinaryscholarsneed to fill in gaps like these. In the same way,

interdisciplinarycritics in literatureand theorydepart-ments need to learn more about statistical documenta-

tion, interviewing and sampling techniques, and fields

thatrequirespecial expertise, ike mathandmusic.

But there is no getting away frominterdisciplinarity,evenin thewaypeoplewrite.Manydisciplines-ethnog-

raphy,history,andliterarycriticism-are being affected

by impulses toward narrativeand memoir in scholarly

writing.To some extent,such trendsare a productof the

prestigeof

literarytudies.Mostof

all, perhaps, heyare

the result of an increased interestin crossover writing,not just among scholars but also among the university

pressesand tradehouses thatpublishthem. But suchim-

pulses partlyderive frominterdisciplinaritytself. When

writingcrossesdisciplines,scholarscannotcount on cap-tive or built-in audiences.Prose has to be accessible to

people who are not longtime specialists. Termsmust be

defined,howeverbriefly,and references identified.Ar-

gumentsmustlive andbreathe,as well as have sufficient

detail to satisfy experts.

Interdisciplinarityas no promises o keepandnone to

break.It is not a mantraor a magic potion.Work hatcuts

acrossareasof studyis as good or as badas the individ-

ualbooksandarticles hatdo it.Certainly,workingacross

disciplinesis not theonly or evenalwaysthe best way to

do scholarly work. Interdisciplinary approacheswork

best on problems hatshow upin more thanone partof a

culture.Forthatreason, herise of interdisciplinarity,nd

its future,are tied to cultural tudiesandcultural riticism.

Forreadersof PMLA,who are trained n literary tud-

ies and love it, close readingis likely to be the basis for

interdisciplinarywork. Whateverkind of text they are

workingon-novel, poem, photograph,film, painting,

ethnography, r psychologicalcasebook-their skills as

close readers are essential. Interdisciplinarityalso re-quiresresearch in a scrupulousnumber of primaryand

secondarytexts or in archives.Still, the goal of such re-

searchshould not be to re-create he specialist'straining

point by point.Indeed,that kindof re-creationcan never

be done by someone who comes to one fieldprofession-

ally aftermasteringanother.But the exact replicationof

anotherdiscipline's pointof view woulddefeat the main

purposesof interdisciplinarity:defamiliarization,fresh

insights, skills from one areaof expertiseenrichingan-

otherandmakingup for another's imitations.

MARIANNA DE MARCOTORGOVNICKDukeUniversity

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Documents

Defining Interdisciplinarity