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The Different Scenarios and Dilemmas of Interdisciplinarity

  • Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University
  • 2017, 74(4), pp.415-440
  • DOI : 10.17326/jhsnu.74.4.201711.415
  • Publisher : Institute of Humanities, Seoul National University
  • Research Area : Humanities > Other Humanities
  • Received : October 11, 2017
  • Accepted : November 13, 2017
  • Published : November 30, 2017

Kim, Hyena 1

1대구대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Interdisciplinarity has been established as a useful way of legitimization for the university, which is presently facing an identity crisis. Accompanying rhetoric, such as flexible, free, innovative or resistant, testifies to its stratagem to assimilate diverse political and epistemological positions through dereferentialization. This paper presents a critical examination of different discourses surrounding interdisciplinarity, categorized into technocapitalism, liberalism, and radicalism, in order to debunk the ‘interdisciplinarity myth’. Among these discourses, technocapitalism seems to dominate the battlefield of interdisciplinarity with the hype of innovation, problem-solving, and accountability. Despite its disguised neutrality, it successfully achieves accumulation of capital by technocracy in a broad sense. Liberalism, as a descendant of the Humboldtian idea of the modern university, pursues liberation of humanity based on the unity of knowledge. But such nostalgia has lost its sway in the posthistorical university, leaving the existing system intact. As a more recalcitrant counterpart to the aforementioned approaches, radicalism challenges all disciplinary divisions in the world predicated on boundary work. However, it has also been disempowered in a contradictory relationship with the system. Meanwhile, interdisciplinarity, armed with inclusion rather than exclusion, has developed into an excellent instrument to satisfy the desire of the capital. A critical reflection on the different scenarios of interdisciplinarity leads to the conclusion that interdisciplinarity shares the cognate pathologies of disciplinarity, including the division of labor, production, and abstraction. The question that lies before us is whether or not we still need another new script to struggle with the simulacrum of interdisciplinarity and to eradicate the pathogen of repetitive restructuring.

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