disciplines, inter-disciplines and languages, seminar 2011

8/14/2019 Disciplines, Inter-disciplines and Languages, Seminar 2011

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Disciplines, Inter-disciplines and Languages

Prathama Banerjee

This essay seeks to contextualise the current moment of higher education reform in

India, in terms of a longer history of disciplines and interdisciplinarity.

History

Social science disciplines as we know them today emerged in the early 20 thcentury in

India. ntil then, most self!consciously modern intellectuals wrote essays, which

free!wheeled through a "ariety of themes, philosophical, historical, literary and

scientific. #arly 20thcentury intellectuals $egan criticising this %&th!century

amateurish and meandering style of intellection. 'engali historians, for instance,

argued that 'ankimchandra (hatter)ee had done a great disser"ice to knowledge $y

proposing that history!writing was any and e"eryones patriotic duty, with the result

that e"ery other local literate was churning out unruly narrati"es in the name of

history. Social sciences henceforth $egan to $e imagined as a form of knowledge

$ased on technical training and specialised skill, distinct from the calling of

intellection as such. *nd social scientists $ecame pedagogic figures distinct from that

of the general pu$lic critic and commentator. (learly, this was a moment of

disciplining of knowledges. This was also the moment when separate departments

$egan to $e set up in our uni"ersities + economics and political science seceded from

history, "ernacular literature $ecame separate from #nglish literature, and the num$er

of )ournals and writers pu$lishing on science and social science, within the same

argumentati"e framework, $ecame fewer and fewer. The primary emphasis now was

on methodas that which defined and delimited each particular discipline.

In the post!%&- decades, the disciplinary format was reconsolidated in a new

way. The already well!esta$lished separation $etween the arts and the sciences was

now supplemented $y a new distinction + that $etween applied and $asic research.

The di"ision of disciplines, thus, $ecame predicated upon the endsto which a

particular knowledge!form could $e put. In other words, disciplinary distinctions

were no longer simply to do with method, $ecause $y this time, the so!called


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scientific method had colonised all disciplines, including a con"entional humanities

su$)ect such as history. This was the hegemonic moment of Indian

de"elopmentalism. igh!end technological and applied research $egan to $e seen as

the dri"ing force of nation!$uilding. #ducation policy $egan to emphasise primary

education as a $asic de"elopmental index, and neglect general uni"ersity education as

that which, from colonial times, had turned India into an unemploya$le mass of low!

le"el clerical population with graduate degrees, e"en as it promised to produce good

citi/ens. Soon, from within uni"ersities, technical sciences and economics were taken

out and housed in new institutions such as the IITs and the Institution of #conomic

rowth 1I#. Su$se3uently, sociology, political science and de"elopment studies

1to the exclusion of humanities found new homes in what $ecame I(SS4 centres.

These $ecame the locus of research and de"elopment, aside of the uni"ersity, which

continued to offer general education to the mass of the nation. *ll this produced, as

we know, a social and academic hierarchy amongst students of sciences, social

sciences and humanities, )ust as it produced long!lasting contradictions $etween

research and teaching, pedagogy and policy, criticism and expertise.

The %&-0s saw a re"olt against disciplinary regimentation and exclusion.

This was the moment of the rise of anti! as well as cross!disciplinary endea"ours,

primarily with the coming of gender studies. Su$se3uently, in the %&50s and &0s,

postcolonial studies, dalit studies and to a limited extent in India, cultural studies also

emerged as self!consciously interdisciplinary fields. This criti3ue of disciplines was

grounded in the rise of new political identities in India + the woman, the dalit, the

colonised, the minority and so on. 6nowledge $egan to $e rethought through the

3uestion of su$)ecti"ity, recasting method as a political rather than merely an

epistemological 3uestion. 7et, these new interdisciplinary fields were typically

accommodated in the system through the creation of separate programmes and

centres, thus allowing the parent disciplines to remain more or less unpertur$ed,

especially in the uni"ersity system. This was also the inaugural moment, it is

important to remem$er, of the so!called massification of higher education, with

hitherto excluded classes and castes demanding not only de"elopment, literacy and

employa$ility $ut also inclusion in the social and intellectual space of the academy.

This changed the nature and dynamic of the classroom, making it a more explicitly

political and socially fraught space + and re3uiring, at least in principle, a greater


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degree of disciplining. The domain of research, increasingly distant from teaching

and increasingly a domain of expertise, on the other hand, $oasted more and more of

methodological flexi$ility and therefore of interdisciplinarity. 'ut e"en here,

interdisciplinarity took the form of a methodological eclecticism across archi"al,

ethnographic, philosophical, linguistic and literary techni3ues + an eclecticism which

mostly remained at the le"el of contingent and indi"idual academic practice and did

not emerge as a collecti"e rethink of our education system in general.

The current moment

The 2000s are a new moment. The de"elopmental take on knowledge has $y now run

thin. #arlier, research pro$lems seemed o$"ious + po"erty, illiteracy,

underde"elopment, traditionalism, transition and so on. 8ow uncertainties of a

different order face us + whether a$out the future of the planet or capital or

proliferating technology or genetics or mutating "irus. 9ro$lems, therefore, are no

longer self!e"ident, nor easy to diagnose and grasp, e"en $y the expert.

(onse3uently, today we ha"e a new take on knowledge + namely, that all forms of

uncertainty and risk can and must $e turned into epistemological models, into

knowledge pro$lematics. ence the call for newforms of knowledge and catchwords

such as research and innovation1rather than, as earlier, research and de"elopment.

ence also terms such as knowledge economy and knowledge worker + symptoms

of a new kind of hegemony of the "ery idea of knowledge as such o"er our social and

political life.

Today, we see two distinct turns in pu$lic discourse. :ne, we see a new

emphasis on reforming higher education, instead of )ust focussing on primary or

uni"ersal education. igher education is meant to create citi/ens of the knowledge

economy $ut also capitalise the population itself, till now seen as lia$ility, as

economic resource. *nd two, we see an official preference for interdisciplinarity,

which is nota$le gi"en that interdisciplinarity was till "ery recently an unofficial,

radical academic position. ere I shall focus on interdisciplinarity as such.

;e ha"e two official imaginations of interdisciplinarity at work in todays

India. :ne is $ased on a criti3ue of increasing specialisation and fragmentation of


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knowledge as has happened in the last half a century in India. This position, as

reflected in the 7ashpal report, argues for complete or holistic education and seeks to

$ring together professional training and social science education. ;e ha"e seen

some concrete mo"es on these lines recently + such as in the reconstitution of pass

courses in =elhi uni"ersity colleges, in the diktat $y the uni"ersity executi"e that all

departments should offer interdisciplinary courses, and in the setting up of the

school rather than departmental system in new uni"ersities. 1Thus, the *m$edkar

uni"ersity in =elhi departs from the earlier >8 school model through the

institutionalisation what were hitherto dissenting, cross!disciplinary fields + such as

gender studies, performance studies, de"elopment studies, en"ironmental studies and

so on. *t the same time, we see a restructuring of management and technology

curricula with greater components of social sciences in them + marked $y the

transformation of earlier ideas of social work 1a la TISS into ideas of corporate social

responsi$ility, pu$lic accounta$ility and institution of research and dissemination

funds $y capital. 8ote that the goal of this imagination of interdisciplinarity is a

future unity of knowledge, which seemingly was lost in the professionalisation and

instrumentalisation of knowledge $y the earlier de"elopmental imagination. This

imagination of interdisciplinarity takes teaching and mentoring as the main medium

through which knowledge would e"entually change for the $etter.

The other official imagination of interdisciplinarity is somewhat different, and

is reflected in an emphasis not so much on teaching as on high!end research. This

imagination is "oiced $y the knowledge commission and $y many corporate research

initiati"es currently. This is a pro)ect of setting up a research space around a new and

difficult o$)ect of research + such as alternati"e energy, en"ironment or genetics + and

then assem$ling a di"erse group of intellectuals from different disciplines around it.

The idea of inno"ation uni"ersities is precisely this, though this kind of initiati"e has

"ery much $een glo$ally the structure of medicinal and science research in the last

decade or so. 8ote that this is an a"owedly pragmatic model of interdisciplinarity,

where the o$)ect of study itself is meant to generate an epistemological pull,

transforming existing disciplines in unprecedented ways $oth in terms of method and

intellectual su$)ecti"ity. Indeed, many academics in India too ha"e $een arguing in

fa"our of this o$)ect!centric model of interdisciplinarity, especially from within

en"ironment and ur$an studies.


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Interdisciplinarity

ow does one engage with these official mo"es for interdisciplinarity today? * set of

3uestions come to mind. The first set of 3uestions is a$out the institutional form

interdisciplinarity assumes. ;ithin the uni"ersity model of teaching, are we looking

at a future integration of disciplines + a dissolution of $oundaries and a proliferation

of courses under one large and heterogeneous social science ru$ric as has $een

attempted $y (entre for Studies in Social Sciences, 6olkata in their @9hil course in

the social sciences? :r are we looking at curricular changes within the existing

departmental structure, in which e"ery discipline creates a set of interdisciplinary

courses from a particular perspecti"e and offers it to students across the $oard, in the

process perpetuating a formal distance $etween their core and interdisciplinary

courses? :r should we simply consider turning the uni"ersity into a "ast and di"erse

faculty, and setting up multiple programmes through different disciplinary

com$inations? =o we institute interdisciplinarity at the undergraduate le"el,

encouraging specialisation @* onwards, or "ice "ersa? *t which stage of study does

interdisciplinarity $ring in greatest returns? ;hat is the way of thinking of

interdisciplinarity across sciences, social sciences and the humanities, which goes

$eyond the two currently a"aila$le modes + one, the instrumental use of the social

sciences to esta$lish pu$lic accounta$ility for the sciences and two, the creation of

su$!disciplinary fields such as philosophy of science, history of science and science

studies, which is really a sociological take on science? *gain, if we assume that

interdisciplinary set!ups must $e esta$lished around new o$)ects of study, are we then

looking at an infinite proliferation of centres and institutions of research? ;hat else

could $e the mechanisms of incorporating newer and newer o$)ects of study, and

institutionally accounting for o$solescence of older and exhausted ones? Ainally, how

do we rethink the classroom, the la$oratory and the seminar in context of

interdisciplinarity?

The second set of 3uestions is more difficult + namely, how do we think a$out the

parameters of criticism and e"aluation in context of interdisciplinary research? ;e


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know that historically, disciplines grow and change through the de"elopment of an

internal tradition of criticism and e"aluation. :f course, indi"idual disciplines $orrow

insights from other disciplines too in order to effect internal changes. *nd yet

through all these cross!disciplinary ad"entures, the attempt remains to sharpen the

particularity of a disciplines own critical tradition. istory, for instance, has

fruitfully rein"ented itself in the last hundred years through encounters with first

economics, then anthropology and then literary studies + and yet $y "irtue of that "ery

fact further consolidated its own disciplinarity and indeed, in India, transformed

neigh$ouring disciplines such as political science and literary studies $y turning them

more and more historical. This is indeed the story of the success of a discipline $ut

"ery far from a story of interdisciplinarity.

In other words, if we take interdisciplinarity seriously, we must think hard a$out

critical and e"aluati"e criteria that are autonomous of criteria internal to the

antecedent disciplines. It could $e said that in the model of interdisciplinary set!ups

around particular o$)ects of study, the o$)ect itself could $e the ground for generating

such critieria. owe"er, this could lead to a new kind of instrumentalisation of

knowledge. *lso, as @arilyn Stratherns important work on audit has shown,

e"aluation across different knowledge set!ups necessarily produces the need for a

supra!authority, which undertakes criticism and e"aluation, not necessarily $y

claiming to $e an academic entity itself $ut through a general and generic audit

acti"ity.% In this format, academia is meant to self!assesses and self!regulate, $ut

according to what appears as a set proforma. This supra!authority could take, as far

as I can see, many forms. It could $e a managerial $ody 1as with funding institutions

or it could $e a regulatory $ody 1as with other domains of ser"ice such as

telecommunication or indeed, it could simply $e the notion of a society or ethics,

which is seen to offer o$)ecti"e criteria across the $oard such as rele"ance, time!

line, outreach, producti"ity, accounta$ility and so on. The point, howe"er, is

o$"ious + that such supra!disciplinary criteria might at $est produce e"aluation, $ut

hardly e"er criticism. *re we then looking at a context where e"aluation and

criticism $ecome two distinct imperati"es? ;hat would $e the implications of this?


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Language

The third set of 3uestions I ha"e in mind is a$out language. The issue of language has

$een most commonly raised in India in contexts of teaching. ere, language is

primarily a matter of communica$ility, gi"en that most higher!le"el teaching happens

in #nglish which is not the first language of most students. (onnected to this is the

3uestion of a"aila$ility of reading materials in Indian languages. *s of now, in

teaching contexts, language thus comes up as primarily as a translata$ility 3uestion.

ence the recent go"ernmental initiati"e of the 8ational Translation @ission, which

howe"er seems defunct $efore e"en taking off. To my mind, the pro$lem here is that

we ha"e failed to esta$lish translation itself as a worthwhile academic act + $ased on

research, offering employment at par within academic institutions and $ringing formal

credit to students specialising in it. *lso, in contexts of research, the language

3uestion is $arely e"er raised. It is presumed that high!end research would happen $y

default in #nglish. Indian languages will of course figure in such research if they are

social sciences, $ut only as primary materials 1drawn from archi"es, field!work,

inter"iews etc., su$se3uently cooked in #nglish $efore $eing ser"ed as knowledge, as

it were. Ainished products of research then would $e translated $ack into the

"ernaculars for purpose of dissemination.

It is important to note here that since the %&B0s, translation of regional literature

into #nglish, especially under the aegis of the Sahitya *kademi, has $een central to

our cultural imaginary. @ore recently, translations of feminist and dalit writings from

the bhashas into #nglish ha"e further reinforced this centrality of translation and ha"e

impacted social sciences positi"ely. 7et, what this has also done, paradoxically, is

create an image of the Indian languages as primarily literary, i.e. structurally

resistant to academic articulation + and this, despite the large "olume of intellection

that goes on routinely in "ernacular domains, often outside enclosed academic

institutions and in the larger pu$lic sphere of essays, )ournals and little maga/ines. In

this context, I think it is useful to draw in the language 3uestion within the pur"iew of

our thoughts on interdisciplinarity.


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Airst of all, we could consider if it is worthwhile to set up translation studies,

within or outside uni"ersities, in the shape of an interdisciplinary field + rather than

simply presume that translation is either a matter of indi"idual multilingual skill or a

su$sidiary field to language and literary studies. ;e must admit that different

disciplines ha"e e"ol"ed different languages of thought, and academic translation

re3uires a simultaneous engagement with these distincti"e conceptual languages. The

3uestion of academic language thus is tied to $ut not reduci$le to the 3uestion of

#nglish "ersus "ernacular or spoken "ersus literary. ;e must ask then whether social

sciences share the same conceptual language irrespecti"e of whether they are carried

on in #nglish or 'engali or @alayalam? If not, which is most likely, then the

interface $etween "ernacular social science domains and the formal, academic domain

is not merely that of translata$ility $ut also of interdisciplinarity. That is, the

language 3uestion here is em$edded in the larger 3uestion of the relationship $etween

distinct $odies of knowledge with different norms, forms, protocols and textual

genres. In other words, translation studies must open unto the interdisciplinarity

3uestion + $ecause in context of the social sciences, translation is a matter of $oth

conceptual and linguistic translation, of transactions $oth across disciplines and across

language domains.

Secondly, we can also re"erse the a$o"e 3uestion. That is, we can ask if

interdisciplinarity itself should $e seen through the prism of the language 3uestion. In

other words, when we put two disciplines such as history and economics face to face,

are we actually also looking at two languages of articulation, which can only speak to

each other through translation or through the mediation of an altogether different,

third language, which gets produced out of the e"ent of coming face!to!face? In other

words, do we get any further purchase in thinking interdisciplinarity $y seeing

disciplines as different languages seeking to access a common or a shared o$)ect of

knowledge, rather than $y seeing disciplines as primarily constituted $y

incommensura$ly different o$)ects of knowledge and different methods?

Ainally, we can also consider setting up in our academic institutions centres of

regional studies + somewhat similar to yet distinct from the area studies model of

S uni"ersities. ;hat this does is to su$sume yet critically foreground the language

and translation 3uestion within a larger pro$lematic of what is today $eing called the


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"ernacular domain. These centres, of say Tamil studies or 'engal studies or 8orth!

east studies, would call upon all social science disciplines 1including economics, film

studies and en"ironmental studies to simultaneously engage with the region in

India. It will $e within this larger framework, then, that we address simultaneously the

3uestion of language, of "ernacular social science, and of translation. 8eedless to

say, this would re3uire a critical rethinking of what it is to mark out regions, without

simply "alidating the political $oundaries of the Indian federal space.

Det me end here. *ll this has $een only $y way of pro"isional thoughts,

seeking out further discussion amongst academics, students and policy!makers. :ne

thing seems certain to me, though + that talking higher education today calls for not

)ust a discussion on pedagogy and research in the a$stract. ;e need also to raise the

3uestions of disciplines, interdisciplinarity, institutional form, e"aluation and a$o"e

all, language + all this in the same $reath. This essay has $een a modest attempt to do

exactly that.


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%@arilyn Strathern * (ommunity of (riticsE Thoughts on 8ew 6nowledge,Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute,

%21%, 200C, %&%!20&.

disciplines, inter-disciplines and languages, seminar 2011

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