Whoa. So that happened.
I’m giving a paper at the ACLA in April – on a panel with my dear undergrad professor! – on the topic of human rights and artistic representation. I’m a part of a human rights grad student colloquium at UW, and as the only member from the humanities, I often feel an untoward amount of pressure to defend the likes of things such as the importance of discourse, the meanings of language, etc, ad nauseum. Mostly, it’s fun. But last night – last night! – I presented my paper for practice. The group was sympathetic, supportive; they understand what I’m talking about as much as I understand their arbitrations of international law and policy, but we do fine.
There was one Poli Sci professor there. He waited till everyone had said her piece, and then opened the tirade – the dressing down – the umbrage that you never really expect is coming your way.
I won’t bore you with details, but 3 things came out of this for me:
1. I can actually hold my own. No: more than that: I got upset. Reader, for all of my wafflings about the political import of academia and my seeming inability to ever commit to anything (I like to call it a poststructuralist malaise), I suddenly realized that I do have something at stake in this conversation. I felt this amazing surge of energy and desire to be able to explain that words do mean something – nay, words actually make something - and the ability to represent/ be represented is, actually, just as keenly important as “actual” human rights.
2. I can raise ire.
3. The disciplines talk really, really differently. We hold profoundly different things important. We think we know what each other are talking about, but we don’t. When we come to an impasse, we tend to dismiss the other as stupidly concerned with the wrong thing.
So after the presentation R and I went and drank Mexican beers and I talked myself into a real flurry, convincing myself again and again why it is as important to discuss the discursive practices of human rights as “actual” human rights. Today the point seems bigger. What happened, at that table? What happens when English and Political Science sit down together? What is lost when we’re so narrowly in our own little worlds – or, alternatively, what stands to be lost by listening to outside voices?
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Wow, that sounds like an intense evening of conversation, A. I found it interesting because the majority of my program at Evergreen was spent trying to dissect and understand those barriers between disciplines...in hopes to rebuild them. My program was called "an interdisciplinary approach to the environment". In reality, it just highlighted this dilemma over and over again.
ReplyDeleteI think it will take a new generation of thinkers to bridge this gap...to embark on their studies as interdisciplinarians. It will require an immensely broad vocabulary and a grasp of the big picture, but I think someone like you is up to that challenge.