Paper-12-2014

Francesco Panico and Hans DielemanThe Narrative as a Way to Construct Transdisciplinary Knowledge: Building Upon Experience in a Polyphonic Way 123

The Narrative as a Way toConstruct TransdisciplinaryKnowledge: Building UponExperience in a Polyphonic Way1Francesco Panico and 2Hans Dieleman, 1Center for Eco Literacy and Dialogues of Knowing, UniversidadVeracruzana, Campus para la cultura, las artes y el deporte, S/N, Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico, Email: [email protected],2 College of Sciences and Humanities Autonomous University of Mexico City, Colonia Doctores, Delegacin CuauhtemocMexico City, Mexico, Email: [email protected]

When trying to glimpse at the possible realiza-tion of transdisciplinary, Basarab Nicolescupoints throughout his work at the powerful

potentials of the narrative, particularly in its literarymanifestation. In response to that and with theintention to contribute to the further developmentof transdisciplinary theory and methodology, weaim to explore the potentials of the narrative as aform of transdisciplinary knowing that is rigorousyet escapes from the strict methodology imposedby positive science. Our contribution will explorethe narrative in its aesthetic form (literature), inits form of vivid culture as well as in its form ofcosmological fundamentals (stories and legends).It will analyze if and how the narrative offersa platform to entangle the abundant heritage ofhuman experiences, both in a historic as well as inan individual way. It will finally asks if this lively,discontinuous and complex way of knowing may be abase for the construction of a more open, accessibleand democratic house of knowledge.

Keywords: Transdisciplinarity, narrative, lit-erature, polifony, knowledge.

1 Introduction

The structure of the expression representsa piece of reality while the meaning or theidea is nothing more than a shadow.

Paul Valery, The dialogue of the tree

A word of a beautiful maiden that did not sufferyet the erosion of time is now expanding like anexplosion of life and meaning, a little bit everywherein the world, [1]. Indeed, this is an odd way to startan article, as indeed, it is a curious choice to start amanifest to spread the message of a new and maidenword. The style of the unique Manifest of Transdis-ciplinarity is drenched with messianic virtues andglimpses of new beginnings, thus presenting a mid-way between a triumphant outpouring of the spiritand a treaty that leaves spaces of meaning open forunderstanding, attainable when interpreted withinthe genus (the manifest itself) where they belong to.

We continue to ask ourselves however why Nico-lescu adopted such a descriptive style: to favor theincursion of a new vocabulary within existing knowl-edge and formal education?; to provide (as he claims)

Transdisciplinary Journal of Engineering & ScienceISSN: 1949-0569 online, c2014 TheATLAS

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in a secure axiomatic form the argument about some-thing that, by its very nature, cannot be penetrateddue to the limited light of reason?; or only becauseit was unconsciously created in this way by the lessdemanding hugs of his intuition? Was choosing theform of a manifest the easiest way to avoid the cum-bersome problem of the elucidation of the conceptsand procedures of transdisciplinarity or, more sim-ply, to adjust to the fact that approximation alwaysleads to partial understanding?

It looks like Nicolescu wants to tell us how ev-erything that is ambiguous can be the subject oftransdisciplinarity, like the face of the moon that ishalfway between viewed and invisible, or anythingelse that is in between being discussed and silenced.What way can there be to approach this kind ofapprehension, when we know that the axiomaticknowledge is prior to us, and emerges rather from aninherited disposition than from intimate intuition,without worldly mediation? Certainly it is difficultto find an answer to so many doubts and questions,a reason why we prefer to see the Manifest as anexercise in style and as a fortunate encounter ofwords intended to be associated so they communi-cate something to us. To be able to do so however,they need to be submitted to a creative power thatorganizes them and gives them an organic meaning.

Remaining faithful to our own assumptions we, inthis article, do not consecrate a definition of trans-disciplinarity but try to explore, with hopefully sug-gestive outcomes, small regions of its vast territory,following some of the meandering paths of the verbalact of narration. Unlike Nicolescu, who explores theimmense wealth of knowledge forms starting fromthe basis of his training as a physician, we drawfrom the experience of the narrative to discover ourhorizon of meaning. To clarify a little bit where wewant to arrive, we like to present a short quote fromThe Wizard of Vienna of Sergio Pitol [2]:

Of the various instruments of man, themost astonishing is undoubtedly the booksays Borges. All the others are extensionsof his body. The microscope, the telescopeare extensions of the sight; the telephonean extension of the voice; then we havethe plow and the sword, extensions of thearm. But the book is something else: thebook is an extension of his memory andimagination.

The book is obviously one of the many marks leftby the passage of man on earth, and it seems tobe among the most significant ones since in it, asthe above words suggest, mankind has left memoryof all that has meant being a man. Often phi-losophy, religion or science suggest us comfortingdefinitions of what that means, but we neverthelesshave not found the anthology of complete humanexperience anywhere, equally not in books. Theamazing metaphor inherent in the great Borgesianlibrary warns us that the quest for existential secu-rity will not be found in any corner. What mankindpassed on to us is a rich universe of everything wehave been, are and will be, and paradoxically thathas been transmitted largely through books. Farfrom pretending to be exculpators of the book, thisremark merely wants to suggest that the humanbeing is basically and fundamentally that what hehas told about himself over time, orally and graphi-cally, instead of a sublimated essence of some deusex machina1. Mankind, as already suggested by theGreeks, is created through stories that are necessaryto establish identity and to avoid getting lost in theawkward whirlwind of time. This afterwardness inthe construction of identity [3] has been forged inmany stories (myths and literature) in which theunequal and divers human phenomenon has shownmany ways of communication and collaboration.

Transdisciplinarity, which essence is in that whatis external and additional to the scientific method(without abandoning science), aiming at recoveringall the exuberance and complexity of the human ex-perience, cannot overlook or ignore the fertile groundof the narrative, in either its epistemological searchprocess, its professional practice or in the transmis-sion of the knowledge it creates2.

1... the story is present at all times, all places and in allsocieties; the story begins with the very history of mankind;there is and there has never been any community withoutstories; all classes and all groups have their stories andoften these stories have aspects in common among diversand even opposite cultures: the story mimics good and bad,international, transhistorical and transcultural literature,the story is there as life.

2It is important to mention right now that the fictionalnature of the narrative does not represent a different levelof truth of what is put forward (less real or even devoid oftruth), but is the very essence of the linguistic frameworkthat allows access to the very reality and is the form totransmit to other realities. In Latin the verb fingeremeans to capture something through a form (figmentum).The late medieval poet Giovanni Boccaccio in his Trat-tatello translates the Latin carmina fingere to finzione


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2 The Literary Narrative

In this article we restrict ourselves to the literarynarrative as a forefront representation of the oral andwritten word, while we are obviously aware that thenarrative is much wider than the restricted domain ofliterature or verbal arts. The literary narrative how-ever is of paramount essence to transdisciplinarity asit historically represents a plural and complex way ofstructuring reality and consequently understandingit. In the narrative, as in the arts and myths ingeneral, the categories of reality and truth do nothave a vital importance or essential weight [5] andthe principles of classical logic have been avoidedfrom the beginning3

, in particular those of non-contradiction andof the excluded middle that both are central inNicolescus understanding of transdisciplinarity [1].The narrative celebrates the loss of centrality anddirection in communication. Its image is that of themirror that multiplies instead of reflects. Its prolif-eration is in fact an escape, an abdication from thesecurity of that what is and a resignation to identifywith that. In this infinite process of multiplicationthe faces of both the creator and the created dontstop to show and hide and when the image ultimatelyfades, its underlying query converts in an absurdityand arid stubbornness. The narrative does not sepa-rate, as it knows how to encompass totality and torestrict to the blind imperative of demonstration. Inthe narrative, knowledge does not suffer lacerationsas all can be seen and grasped.

In this sense we could explore, as we will do later,the path of polyphony. The great Russian liter-ary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin [6] believed that wecould find polyphony, among other things, in theuniqueness of the individual, which in fact consistsof different Is heard and held over time. Man isa living mosaic in a constant state of listening andappropriation. So are society and history that arenourished by a myriad of views, discourses, denialsand camouflages. This represents the richness andcomplexity of reality as a place where truth is de-nied and the denial becomes an intangible truth4.

in the sense of composition.3The logic to which we refer is that of the aesthetic forms

mentioned by Bakhtin [6], and not that of the formalcategorical principles of classical tradition.

4Freeing the distant and wise Hellenics from all liability,the exercise of power and its formalization in generallyrecognized and accepted hierarchical structures, are that

These Is of which Bakhtin speaks, point us in thedirection of a notion of time that is fragmented andthat matches, in many cases through a reality as a(grotesque) parody, denial with affirmation, pleasurewith anger and joy with misery.

In this sense, the narrative paraphrases the trans-disciplinary methodology of Nicolescu where knowl-edge is not simply a concatenation of easily verifiablefacts that are accessible to everyone in the same way,but a personal (or group) reconstruction of mean-ing based on elements that are scattered and oftenincoherent. Knowing is chasing the trails of a mys-tery (as in a detective?) in the abode (possibly) ofcreativity [7]:

So therefore what is referred to as theknowledge that Pasolini expressed whensaying I know consists of [...] beinga writer who strives to know everythinghe writes, imagining anything that is notknown or said, coordinating distant eventswhile bringing together the disorganizedand fragmented pieces of a coherent politi-cal framework thus restoring logic whereverarbitrarity, madness and mystery seem toreign. To do all of that requires writing astory.

So in just a few lines we are able to address amanifest and a detective that only differ from eachother in as far as they belong to a different typeof narrative, but that converge in the sense thatboth have the inescapable task of having to shapethat what is scattered. Like in a square packed withpeople, where movements and sounds out of tuneneed the be touched by the right note of an eventualpublic speaker to reach a center of gravity that isat first strongly rejected by the multitude of privateconversations.

To prevent that diversity of voices ends as confusedand disjoined Babylonian babbling, it needs higherorder synthesis and shape, whose fictionality, towhich we refer in footnote 2, is not a simple adjectivethat is loosely attached (the fictional), but a nounclearly defined (fiction). Unfortunately, academicanalysis has primarily been treating form-fiction asan aesthetic object (literary criticism), thus entirelyruling out the whole of ethical implications that anordering of the chaotic implies, as well as the impact

what most of all have pronounced, not coincidentally, thewords contradiction and exclusion.


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that applying shape or form has on thought andbehavior. As we will try to argue in the aftermathof this writing it is precisely here, in the order ofthe action of transdisciplinary knowing, where theaesthetical and the ethical may converge.

As will be clear by now, the point of referenceto reflect on our impressions is Basarab NicolescusManifest that we consider that to be the most presti-gious, most intriguing and most precise approach totransdisciplinarity, as it sees modern science as justone of the many ways of responding to the humanlonging for understanding. Longing in the sense oflooking at ourselves in the reflection of any otherness;letting human dignity prevail over depersonalizedyet dominant laws of history; urging a reanimationof the subdued call to man to take responsibilityfor his own knowledge; giving new life and utopianbreath to the dwindling candles of a civilization thatis mired in an expiring progressivism.

Finally, with this text we intend to give a small andmodest contribution to the practice of the narrativeas a way to differentiate the metaphorical from whatwe call reality (the facts) and truth (how toreckon) knowing that, as is clear from the words ofValery presented at the beginning of this article, themeaning of a text lies more in the magnificence andcoherence of its architecture (as in geometry, seen bySocrates as the supreme art) and less in the contentof the argument or the alleged claims.

3 The Animal That Talks

The definition that the wise philosophers of Greekantiquity gave to men and women was that of theanimal of language. The individual that did notspeak or that was dead received an indisputabledistinct ontological status or, quite simply, belongedto another category of existence like a cypress or atiger for who the whistling wind or shattering roarcould never reach the dignity of true communication.For Parmenides, language was the arrangement intime of the act of thought, as there was, in Being,absolute coincidence between idea and word; it wasnot necessary to link thought with representationor interpretation or, which is in the end the same,illusion. Language was not submitted to any kindof mental schizophrenia, as thought emerged fromthe rational and reliable companion that we call thetruth: ... thinking and being are the same, saidthe born in Elea.

However, the most interesting in all of that is notthe epistemological status of truth or opinion, butthe way a long philosophical tradition, from the pre-Socratics to the present day, has tried to explain theproblem of knowledge. Parmenides wrote a poemto represent his ontological argument; Plato, as wellas many centuries after him Galileo, resorted to theliveliness and the unfinished style of dialogue whileHegel, Heidegger, Derida and many others - uselessand tiresome to mention all - tested the preciousSaussurean scheme of the signifier and the signifiedto try to express the intangibility of language. Ev-erything, it seems, ends in poetry [8] or, in case thisis more acceptable, in a complicated and not alwayspleasant exercise of style. From this we dare to con-clude that fiction, as we understand it now, is notthe prerogative of art only but merely a technicalprocess that underlies any attempt of expression.

Throughout history mankind experienced count-less ways to shape the chaotic while trying to addressthe maddening complexity of reality by reducing itsunderstanding to simplified and therefore abridgedworlds. Are cosmologies not attempts to encirclethe incomprehensible and to provide us with a se-cure place from which to speak? Are we sure thatscience can lead us out of the place of existentialdoubt if we admit that we can reduce the Method ,for example, to a matter of style? Will the Method5

not be one of the many ways of organizing discourseand experiences, rather than an infallible tool forthe truth? And will science not be yet one morefruitful cosmology, as the philosophers of Hellas ap-parently conceived it? As Sciascia said in El casoMoro [9], the truth is the filter that sits between usand reality (the same reality that Nicolescu, in theManifest, calls trans-subjective) since, for us poormortals thrown in chaos, what ultimately counts ishow this reality is apprehended, that is, how it isrepresented and organized. So the truth, as Cassirer[10] guessed right in his philosophy of symbolic forms,is a plausible (and consistent) abstraction of reality,and not a natural coincidence between the fact andits representation. In short, representation acquiresa status of being that is separate and distinct fromthe fact to which it refers.

All this presents us with the problem of the cen-trality of the act of expression (in our case, verbal)and the pleasant possibility of seeing this act as be-

5We refer to the Galilean method that still in general under-pins the scientific exercise.


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ing separate from the factual content that is usuallyattached to it as a guarantee of its truth. The oldghost of plausibility, suggested by Aristotle, doesnot appear because it is put to the test of reality (asthe very citizen from Stagirus argued himself for thecase of history), but receives its full proof in any actof representation or, to put in other words, fiction.In this respect man is undoubtedly a talking animal,while speaking and writing are traces of our passagethrough the journey of the soul. So as a partialclosure, with the intent to underline the fictionalfoundation on which all claims of truth rest, we turnour focus to the sweet Lust, the crystal lady of Valery[11], who crossed out the daily appearances of Devilas the fruit of the despicable literature against thecorruptible minds of men, while suddenly, servantof Fausto announces the entry of a man who saidhe was a friend of the master. ...and who... spookItalian with a Russian accent.: nothing more andnothing less than Mephistopheles.

4 Polyphony

It is proven that man, since he wants to fly throughthe endless skies of thought and rejoice with theexclusive materials of his mind, has not yet beengranted the precious gift of solitude. As a result hisvoice, the single efflux that sprouts from the indi-vidual, is doomed to be emptied into the containerin which everything is mixed: the world. And inthis world he also finds the voices of others, not onlypeople but equally things, ideas, mirrors that, inshort, bring him back to the image of his body andthe sound of his words; thus revealing other things,other ideas and other words, to the point that allthe distance that separates him from other people,things, ideas and words, condenses in him and isreleased when he decides to build the story of whatcorresponds to him: his life or, if he settles for muchless, some pieces taken from her.

Music catches well the subtleties of polyphony,and interprets it (in the strict performative sense)as a simultaneous set of different voices (human orinstrumental) that are placed in different shades andgo in parallel or opposite directions, thus showing itsconsistency as part of the unique and unrepeatabletotality of a concert. That what most of all alertsour interest and curiosity is undoubtedly the wholeof divergent voices that find their musical coherencein performing dissonance, and that lead us to the

apparent absurd thought that harmony, in a broadsense, is a well orchestrated dialogue of dissonantvoices in the sense of note against note or punc-tum against punctum (counterpoint). This scenarioof polyphonic counterpoints constitutes, for presentpurposes, a powerful metaphor6 that enables us tofind the potentials of contradiction (represented pre-cisely by the counterpoint) for realizing synthesisrather than for creating irreconcilable separation.Mikhail Bakhtin, while going over the cultural his-tory of the novel, used polyphony to refer to thesocial nature of the I that writes and, consequently,of any I that narrates, provoking in that way achange of the well-known commonplace of man astalking animal into man as animal that is spokento. This reversal of direction is not simply one ofthe many language games Wittgenstein saw as es-sential to humans, but places us in a concrete way infront of the arduous task of recognizing the illusoryand ideological nature of any linguistic act and, asa consequence, of each word we use to cope withthe challenging journey of life. We are made of anindefinite number of voices that manifest themselves,in most cases, through an equally indefinite combi-nation of materials, among others, linguistic; butthese do not belong exclusively to us, as we sharethem with others within certain historical and geo-graphical settings that determine their senses (weuse the plural as they are multiple) and their possibleapplications. This implies a substantial ambiguityof language (heteroglossia), as the linguistic act towhich we refer is submitted to the empire of con-juncture. During such an act, participants choosewords and develop discourses to free themselves froma situation they are, volente o nolente, wrapped in(dialogism).

However, the animal that is spoken to and the

6It is important to mention that the metaphorical sense thatwe refer to, does not intend to substitute a reality that itaims to explain by other means and through other exam-ples, but intends to settle in the threshold that facilitatesthe connection between areas that, apparently, are not re-lated. To illustrate this, we could say that the metaphor isan extension of the quantum discovery of non-separability(by which two entities continue to interact despite their re-moteness), to the polymorphous universe of language. Theformula of all is in all is nothing more than the transferof a microphysical truth (for instance the memory of thefirst moment of life of the universe is maintained in eachparticle that currently makes up that universe, a reasonwhy time and history require a different meaning) to therealm of poetic truth where memory, through metaphor(its iconic weapon), represents the distant.


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talking animal are placed in different positionswithin the order of what we want to express. Thefirst leads us to accept the performative nature oflanguage (like a concert), where no speaking subjectcan break away from the linguistic universe thatis pre-created yet constantly changing, in which heparticipates as an executor; the second leads us to ac-knowledge that language is, despite of its enormousrange of use and of the multiple scenarios to whichit leads, the way we have chosen to communicate,thus actively participating in the construction of thishuman phenomenon which we observe and live today.As a result, the talking animal is fragmented into amyriad of voices of which he is certainly not alwaysable to capture the contrapuntal unifying potential.At that point polyphony becomes a powerful toolfor understanding the ethical dimension of both thelinguistic act as well as the individuals behavior ina given environment.

Has this awkwardness, that most of us humansexperience, something to do with the parallel inabil-ity to establish harmony within the contrapuntalgame intonated by our words and by our actions?Everything we said resonates in the wise words ofMontaigne [12] when he wrote that:

[...]our life is composed, like the harmonyof the world, of opposite things, as wellas of various soft and hard tones, sharpand blunt ones as well as tender and se-rious ones. What does the musician thatonly loves some of them wants to tell? Itis necessary that he uses and mixes themtogether. Equally for us the good and theevil are implicit in our life. We can donothing without this mixture; the one is asnecessary as the other. Trying to wrestlewith this natural necessity is to imitate thefolly of Ctesiphon who was trying to fightwith his mule by kicking it.

The natural need that Montaigne refers to is, para-doxically, a melting pot of arbitrariness for our poorsight. But in part this is also true for nature as onthe microphysical level, as quantum physics showedus, nothing is something full of possibilities7, so hope

7Here the following words of Miltons Satan resonate: [...]we have been begotten and created by our own essenceand by virtue of our vitalizing power, while fatal coursecompleted its full circle and reached the time of maturityof our birth, of this native sky, ethereal sons, our very ownstrength [...]

is rather to be found in the future that is alwayslocked in Pandoras box than in verifiable facts andas a result, it is to be unfolded rather than to befound in the open. That makes us think that webetter orient ourselves at what is hidden behindthe appearances of what we put forward right nowthan at what is built from knowledge in a measur-able world. True knowledge is always postponedand found in a plausible future, as Aristotle wiselystated in his Poetics, assigned to the likelihood andnot the factual findings of the historical narrative.The problem for us, limited humans, is to find outhow to understand and practice this simple warningthat contemporary physics provides us with, avoid-ing at the same time that the desire to argue andprove things that are by nature improvable, preventus from being clear.

So what Nicolescu defines as levels of reality,the included middle and complexity, that what hedesignated as the pillars of transdisciplinary method-ology, must be understood as metaphors that are notless effective or less true than the logical-deductiveproofs. Is Nicolescu not telling us that the areaof non-resistance is the place where the reality ofthe object and that of the subject meet and free usfrom the difficult act of knowing?, is the metaphornot an indication that we are approaching the areawhere reality no longer resists8, but is allowed topenetrate and, in parallel, invades the delicate fibersof consciousness? We believe that the passage fromthe microphysical world of inherent uncertainty tothe macro-physical one of measurable certainties isinherent in any path of wisdom or poetic intuition.Yet we have neglected that path in recent years andrelegated it to play not more than a miserable roleof embellishing, in fetish and anti-esthetic ways, thereality that we thought we mastered through thearms of technology.

The voice of Nicolescu in the Manifest is a po-ethical call (in the sense of a hope aimed at a possi-ble future) that, as it belongs to an axiomatic genre,organizes and combines its content in a stylistic way.We see this as its main virtue because as a resultit comfortably surpasses pathos and efficacy, leav-ing the desire for philosophical argument presentin the text, but more as a guest than as an owner.The powerful ethical and militant voice we hear sur-

8I understand as Reality first of all that which resists ourexperiences, representations, descriptions, images or math-ematical formalizations.


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passes that of the physicist who seeks to disclosethe physical foundations of his transdisciplinary pro-posal. The polyphony of the text is in the presenceof all those voices that inspired his writing and, asBakhtin mentioned, belongs not only to the personaluniverse of Nicolescu, but to the entire field of use oflinguistic materials that he deployed. In a nutshell,the Manifest is an example of polyphonic realizationsubmitted to a certain architectural form, whose pil-lars rest on the firm foundation of an ethical stanceand a poetic proclivity. To end, on another level ofinterpretation more often given to the content: isNicolescu not describing transdisciplinarity as theconvergence of different fields (or voices) of know-ing in order to realize the dream of the unity ofknowledge?

5 Fiction

We often fall in the trap of misunderstanding the nar-rative, due to categorical overindulgence or economyof thought, and think of it as the exclusive preroga-tive of art. But if we accept that human beings arepredominantly talking animals that, during linguisticacts, attempt to structure understandable worlds forcommunication purposes, we may conclude that weare rather animals that tell than talk. This bringsus to the question regarding the relationship, asoutlined above, between reality and truth.

The withdrawal of the existence of a full coin-cidence between reality and truth was one of thefounding discoveries of modern age, with Kant inthe role of material executor of this finding. Butadmitting that the world cannot be reflected as itis does not mean that we surrender to chaos or, theopposite, to the inevitability of a destination alreadycreated by someone. Realizing - for purely historicalreasons - that we have been thrown into a worldthat holds few similarities with the ideal images wehave of it, opens up the possibility to recognize andtake advantage of the quality of the narrative char-acteristic of all human phenomenon. It helps us tosee truth as the formal coincidence between a realitywe observe on the one hand and one we envisionin words and actions and that we, sometimes, putin writing on the other hand. The acceptance ofthis narrative truth means that every truth mountedis the result of narrative invention. The notion oftime that exists in the one-way arrow of Newtonianphysics actually bears resemblance to that of the

Augustinian Confessions in which consciousness ofworldly things was perceived as being the antithesisof eternity. Past, present and future humans do notrepresent a worldly derivate of divine essences, asin the work of Plato, but are rather the result ofthe necessity, typically human, to build chains ofmeaning without which we would not be able to seeor, even less, imagine ourselves.

So it would be no nonsense to say that what looksto be certain about humanity is, among other things,this narrative boldness in which both the handspainted in a Neolithic cave as well as the leavespasted in a book about the Neosphere, appear to berevelations. However, the animal that tells displaysin a narrative its truth through fiction that allowshim to bring order to the abode of chaos and tobuild from there his reality. But for this reality toacquire a full and communicable meaning, it mustbe consistent, that is, correctly built, architecturallybalanced and capable of organizing those materials ofexperience that are largely to be found in the word; aword that, as Bakhtin warns us, is not a prerogativeof the subject in his abysmal loneliness and infinitefreedom, but is declined gloss by a discursive andmultiform context that is in constant motion witha large variety of power mechanisms in constantoperation.

To explain this better, anthropology may help us,through the introduction of two authors, CliffordGeertz and Marc Aug who, coming from a disci-plinary field that was already hybrid (somethingthat questions the naive equivalence made betweendiscipline and disciplinarity that is often used to crit-icize the rigid boundaries of the knowledge createdby the first) both faced the challenging problem ofinterpretation as a necessary operation for arrivingat knowledge. We begin with Geertz [13] to thenfocus, in the next section on ethics and aesthetics,on Auge:

To elaborate descriptions taken from thepoint of view of the actor of things relatedto a Berber chieftain, a Jewish merchantand a French military in 1912 Morocco,clearly constitutes an imaginative act thatis by any means different from preparinganalogous descriptions of, lets say, the re-lationships between a physician living ina French province, his silly and adulter-ous wife and the futile lover of nineteenth-century France.


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So what is fiction, when we consider the narrativeof an anthropologist on the culture and society inlate nineteenth-century Morocco as equivalent toa history imagined by an alchemist of language asFlaubert, roughly in the same period? Does the actof interpretation leads us to conclude that, by natu-ral disposition, the human being cannot go beyondappearances?, or is it that there is no appearancebecause there is no singular reality, but realitiesthat depend on both the contradictory nature ofconsciousness as of that of matter? If beyond men,disillusioned by the abjections they are able to createbecause of their weakness and finiteness, we thoughtthe world of consciousness would never have reachedthe perfection of the natural arrangement, now wediscover that the same unevenness, although we lack(and not little) apprehension, is found in the veryreality. So where to hang on to when both the in-side and outside world have lost the characteristicsnecessary for us to repair our existential security?,and where can we find the ethical principles thatshould underlie our behavior, if the reality that wepreviously thought as given (though inaccessible inits entirety) is, in itself, a fiction (in the sense ofa construction which is both necessary and circum-stantial, build of elements put together by a law thatat the same time precedes the construction9)?, howdo we relate to a pluri-real world that combineslaws that are never definitive, materials composedby others that materialize themselves in improvisedways?, what do we do with a living reality in per-petual construction that constantly interprets itself?We like to suggest, as an answer to these questions,to think of reality as a poetic scenario that is con-stantly completing, in a provisional way, a fiction.This, always being closed and insufficient, is the pos-itive, necessary and synthetic moment of creation orof, in some way or other, a possible embodiment ofthe entire universe; necessity as a carrier of emergentillusions of totality, to impose order on chaos. It ishoping that things acquire a visible and recogniz-able body that allow for memory to play with them(or to forget); it is the always frustrated hope thatevery creative act by nature conveys something inour attempt to reach the ultimate and final essence

9We use the term necessary to point at the synthetic mo-ment that strives for unity, and to the term circumstantialto refer to the one who has the tendency to fragment. Thisspecification is entirely conceptual regarding the universethat moves, contradictory but not incongruously, betweenorder and chaos [14].

of totality.

Hence, here we encounter the crucial importance ofresponsibility because, in a universe without absolutecenter, the inescapable law of coexistence requires torelativize all centers sought of by the ego, referringto them as part of a horizon of dialogue and inclusionwhere no voice is silent. This democratic natureof fiction, besides having a clear ethical sense, alsoimplies an aesthetic dimension in the sense that itgives classical antiquity, symmetry and proportion.The universe, without having moral consciousness ofbeing, is wise and creative. We might even mistake itfor an artist who knows how to modulate and join hisvoices into a symphony composed of contradictoryelements; his credo being polyphony, his dimensionbeing fiction.

6 Ethics and aesthetics

We open this section with a quote from the Frenchanthropologist Marc Auge [15]:

If I want that the others [those who are theobject of ethnographic studies] live fiction,and beyond that their own fiction, I have tosituate myself by definition outside of that,and likewise outside of any kind of fiction,because my aim is to produce documents,as Bataille would say, transcribing what Ihave before my eyes. Am I not stressingthe non-contemporaneity of the observerthat Johannes Fabian precisely denouncedand whose mark is present in all anthro-pological literature?, or to conclude: am Inot contributing to the reproduction andamplification of ethnographic fiction?

Auge is aware, as is Geertz, that in any story wherewe intend to enclose the explanation of an event, asfor instance in the case of an encounter with somecultural otherness, we create a fiction because onlywe humans know how to make a posteriori interpre-tations out of partial data structured in function ofour inevitable prejudices. In transcribing experience,we make a reduction in the complexity of that what,through the selection of scattered fragments thatwe order along a time line, i.e., we create a fiction,building upon our own version of events, using thematerials, both conceptual as well as linguistic, thatwe have to our disposition. The distance between


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the experience we lived and that which we remember(non-contemporaneity) translates into a story as ahybrid compendium of memory and the forgotten, astory of which we are the authors.

This tripartite scheme reminds us of the structureof Hegelian dialectics, when applied to a particu-lar case where it would resolve the duality betweenthesis (the experience) and antithesis (the memory)in the synthesis of a story. Meaning that fiction,where Auge is talking about, is the dissolving of thedualism between experience and memory under tothe persistent macro-physical laws of time. Withinthis dimension, there can be no memory that exactlyreproduces the lived experience simply because thedistance that exist between the two terms (whichwe might think of as a contradiction), is only rec-oncilable if we give up the belief of full coincidence,settling for a story well crafted. The polyphony thatwe envision in this case, will submit itself to therigid but inevitable prescription of time, and thefiction that results from it would become, at best, awell compiled summary of that what is experienced.As such, transdisciplinarity, in our view, disclosesitself as an essential practice for understanding theexperience of knowledge seen in an ethical sense, andas a force capable of giving attention to the diversityof voices intrinsically present anywhere, and yes indoing so, it will be able to express all voices in anappropriate and consistent way.

Summarizing and paraphrasing both Auge andNicolescu, we may say that on the macro-physicallevel of non-contemporaneity, transdisciplinarity isthe practice that tries to create a fiction (and hencea methods of inquiry) that is appropriate for andopen to the diversity of voices, thus intending toface the challenge of knowledge. But, what happenswith the issue of experience and the proprietorshipof living knowledge? To try to clarify this question,we return to Nicolescus concept of the zone ofnon-resistance. This zone is the place where twotendencies come together, the subject and the ob-ject, who finally, through the occurrence of a thirdelement (the hidden third), dissolve their distances.As we saw above, for Hegel the pair of opposites thatare at the basis of the dialectical relationship (in theontology of the development of reality as well as inthe logical understanding of it), is composed of rigidand isolated bodies that need to be put in motionso that, like a pair of two molecules that both rejectand attract each other, a third unifying element may

arise from their encounter. For Nicolescu, the thirdelement does not require a temporal dimension butmanifests itself, like in Kierkegaard, like a flash ofeternity within the natural order of time. In thearea of non-resistance the antagonism between sub-ject and object is resolved in the contemporaneityof the occurrence of the third party, i.e., an absolutepresent that allows transdisciplinarity to penetratethe elusive realm of the sacred. Through the ideaof no-contemporaneity, Aug places us, without anyescape, in front of the problem of time, i.e., in frontof the need to bring order to the chaos that sur-rounds us, following the linear structure created inthe past, in the present and in the future. The past,present, and the future of the ethnologist are notthe same as those who he is studying, his fictionsare different. Only in moments of real coexistence,the researcher and the researched (subject and ob-ject) share, in the full sense of the word, the notionof time; only in the act of jointly repairing a roofwhen a heavy downpour takes them by surprise orwhen they eat and laugh together, they experiencecontemporaneity, that is to say experience that doesnot require the constant mediation of interpretationin order to be understood; in these experiences theyare taken by surprised by unforeseen occurrencesof chance. What do we do in these circumstances,when we are not in a position to control and reg-ulate the temporal chain of causalities? Aristotlesummarized the virtue of the wise, not the struc-tured narrating of fiction but in his intelligence toknow to do the right thing at the right time (phrone-sis). The subject of transdisciplinarity knowledgecomes close to the profile of Aristotles wise, whenin the zone of non-resistance fiction is a fiction inoperation (a narrative of contemporaneity) wherethe aesthetic dimension of construction of a balancedform goes hand in hand with the ethical compositionof a balanced behavior10. In this place where thesubject and the object meet in contemporaneity,ethics and aesthetics convert in synonyms. This is,in our understanding, the place where the impor-tant elements of honesty and openness of Nicolescustransdisciplinary proposal, get their meaning, senseand specificity.

So we conclude by saying that, in the microphys-ical level of contemporaneity, fiction is that what,ethically and aesthetically, structures the actual ex-

10The concept of auto-ethics of Morin [16], points at a horizonof kindred understanding.


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perience of both the subject and the object.

7 Conclusions: The Occurrence ofa Poetic Disposition

Although it is impossible for us humans to mate-rially access different realms of the macro physicalworld, and although we are confined to unavoidabletemporary fiction, we can try to introduce ourselvesto the universe of the full vacuum through what wehistorically have experienced as poetry. Not in thesense of poetry as an artistic achievement but ratheras a poetic attitude that we have lost by giving toomuch importance to an instrumental pragmatismfounded on the belief that to achieve balance andharmony, it is inevitable to eliminate those factorsthat hinder the achievement of the goal that we setout for ourselves; we obscured the polyphony inher-ent in any reality up to the point that we now donot even recognize it anymore; we have dropped ouranxieties in the seemingly calm, but very dangeroushorizon where synthesis is replaced by elimination.War, even though difficult to recognize, is not anaccident within the tortuous path of progress (al-though we believe so) but is, dramatically, the onlyway weve found to make up for and cope with theloss of memory of who we are: animals that talk inan overwhelming concert of voices. To build an arte-fact of beauty is, in the end, the virtue of civilizedman who knows how to recognize and give space toall the voices that compose him. Transdisciplinarityis, therefore, the new episteme and new tekne ofcivilized man.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the University of Veracruz andthe Autonomous University of Mexico City for sup-porting the effort that meant the writing of thisarticle. Likewise we thank our families for being aconstant reference point in our lives and in our workeveryday.

References

[1] Nicolescu, B., 1996. La Transdisciplinariedad. Mani-fiesto, Edicion 7 saberes, Mexico.

[2] Pitol, S., 2006. El Mago de Viena, Fondo de CulturaEconomica, Mexico.

[3] Ricoeur, P., 2007. Tiempo y narracin XXI Editores,Madrid.

[4] Barthes, R., 1996. Introduccion al analisis estruc-tural de los relatos, Ediciones Coyoacan Mexico.

[5] Eco, U., 2011. Confesiones de un joven novelista,Lumen, Barcelona.

[6] Bakhtin, M., 2007. La cultura popular en la EdadMedia y el Renacimiento. El contexto de FrancoisRabelais, Alianza Editorial, Madrid.

[7] Tabucchi, A., 1999. La gastritis de Platon, Ana-grama, Barcelona.

[8] Steiner, G., 2012. La poesa del pensamiento, Fondode Cultura Economica, Mexico.

[9] Sciascia, L., 2010. El Caso Moro, Tusquets,Barcelona.

[10] Cassirer, E., 1978. Filosofa de las formas simblicas,Fondo de Cultura Economica, Mexico.

[11] Valery, P., 2003. Mi Fausto, A. Machado Libros,Madrid.

[12] Montaigne, M., 2011. Ensayos completos, Porrua,Mexico.

[13] Geertz, C., 2004. La interpretacin de las culturas,Gedisa, Barcelona.

[14] Prigogine, I., 2013. Las leyes del caos, Planeta, Mex-ico.

[15] Aug, M., 1998. Las formas del olvido, Gedisa,Barcelona.

[16] Morin, E., 2006. El mtodo VI: la etica, Catedra,Madrid.

About the Authors

Dr. Francesco Panico is a full professor in the Cen-ter for Eco Literacy and Dialogues of Knowing of theUniversity Veracruzana in the state of Veracruz, Mexico.Postdoc at the Center for Research in EnvironmentalGeography (CIGA) of the National Autonomous Univer-sity of Mexico (UNAM). Doctor of History and Regional


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Studies at the University Veracruzana. National Systemof Researchers (SNI), Level I. Profile Promep (Ministry ofEducation). Level V of academic productivity at the Uni-versity Veracruzana. Email: [email protected];[email protected]. The topics that he work are: the rela-tionship between ethics and aesthetics and its connectionwith research; Literature as transdisciplinary experiencie.

Dr. Hans Dieleman is of Dutch/Flamish origin andworks as a full professor in the College of Sciences andHumanities of the Autonomous University of MexicoCity. Previously he worked in the Center of Environ-mental Studies of the Erasmus University Rotterdam inthe Netherlands, that he combined for several years withcoordinating a European-wide Master program in En-vironmental Management of the European Associationof Environmental Management Education (secretariat inVarese, Italy). He also worked as an invited professorin the Dauphine University in Paris, France and asa visiting professor in the Metropolitan University ofMexico City. He was a member of the academic teamthat prepared the Doctoral Program in TransdisciplinaryStudies of the University Veracruzana in Xalapa, Mexico.

He is a member of the Interuniversity Research Pro-gram on Climate Change (PINCC), initiated by the Na-tional Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and amember of the Mexican National Network of Researchersin Social-Cultural Studies of Emotions (RENISCE),equally initiated by the UNAM; a member of the Na-tional System of Researchers of the Mexican Council ofScience and Technology (Conacyt), a fellow of TheAtlasand a member of the European Sociological Association.He is a co-founder and honorary member of the inter-national NGO Cultura21 specialized in cultures ofsustainability, with offices in Germany, Denmark, Franceand Mexico. He co-received two national Dutch distinc-tions for his work in Education for Sustainability andis a co-receiver of a 2010 national Mexican distinctionfor the development of the Sustainability Plan for theMetropolitan University of Mexico City.

His main research themes are sustainability, education,art and transdisciplinarity. Specific themes are episte-mology (of the South), transdisciplinary hermeneutics,reflective practice, emotional intelligence and embodiedcognition and multilevel governance. The past 15 years hehas been working on the development of the field of Artand Sustainability that allows him to integrate several ofthe above-mentioned themes.


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