However, some of the comments uncovered a core issue which I think is more difficult to negotiate. My art practice has been categorised as 'cross-disciplinary', a label I am delighted to wear. I think that one of my most useful skills is being able to connect seemingly disparate things - it is something I am passionate about and if I am good at it, it is because I want to be and spend a lot of time doing it. But one of the issues here is that when one is trying to work across disciplines, there is just that much more theoretical background one has to be aware of. In practical terms this means that if I am linking two or three different disciplines (which is what I am doing) then I have to provide some background for them all before I can discuss how they cross over. In a 40,000 word exegesis this doesn't really leave much room for presenting my argument.
The other problem is that I am pulling in what the academies perhaps think of as 'obscure' theories. I was a bit gobsmacked by the comment from one of the reviewers, who made some really good coments also, that they were not a Jungian (which I accept) and that they were therefore 'skeptical about calls to universality and a collective unconscious' (which I don't accept) The point is, it's irrelavent whether this person 'agrees' or not, the idea of a collective psyche has been around since the days of the early Greek philosophers, even if you disregard the large numbers of other philosophies that are based on a holistic world view. I mean, how the hell do I make an argument when I first have to convince so many people that my frame of reference is even worth considering?
So it was quite serendipitous that I received this call for papers from Curtin the next day. Did I let out a loud 'guffaw'? Do I want to write about this? You bet, but I am now even more determined to get the argument for my thesis right.
'Academic disciplines have been routinely dominated, both in terms of research agendas and dissemination practices, by a concentration on a relatively small number of “canonical” thinkers and writings. A tacitly accepted “principle of economy” makes that, in our research, we (almost) always gravitate toward “canonical” authors, texts, and themes. Teachers, for instance, tend to persuade their students to pay attention to the “central” aspects of any given problem and stay away from the allegedly “marginal” or “peripheral” ones, which are thus deemed to be either too risky or otherwise unworthy of sustained consideration. Not surprisingly, we end up spending most of our time concentrating on what the academic community considers to be the “core-issues” in various academic disciplines, just as we tend to focus our projects on the study of various “mainstream” authors, “central” themes and “canonical” texts. As a result, our systems of reference – in scholarship, but also in every-day life, morality, art, politics and religion – have come to rely heavily on the assumption of an intrinsic superiority of the “center,” the “canonical” and the “mainstream,” to such an extent that “marginal” and “peripheral” are epithets customarily used with (and perceived as carrying) pejorative connotations.
This special issue of The European Legacy seeks to challenge this assumption.....'
And so say I........
image: (removed) Model for Consciousness, Frantom, pen drawing. This image spontaneously appeared in my mind one day, so I drew it, not realising what it signified until later.
