Like most things in my life my trajectory through education has been convoluted. I find myself not only doing a PhD but straddling two disciplines when, in all honesty, staying in one discipline is already placing me out of my depth because of my lack of academic training. After some comments from a fellow blogger I thought hard about why this was proving to be such a huge task when I believe I am 'good' at making 'connections' between disparate things and I really do love the research and writing. Of course I came back to the realisation that some of the difficulties I am experiencing are probably specific to interdisciplinary research.
One writer claims that there is a 'subtle restructuring of knowledge in the late twentieth century' that is breaking down traditional boundaries between theoretical disciplines. This is fantastic of course and a necessary consequence of the move towards a holistic approach to life in general in many fields of endeavour, which in itself is archetypally driven. Interdisciplinarity is the new 'God', and not just in academia.
What this means in practical terms is extremely complex because as usual the academics have gotten hold of it and made it so. Working across disciplines means that you are cross-referencing ideas ie finding "equivalents" for which I have identified some core problems right here, off the top of my head:
If you are crossing theoretical disciplines you need to have a sound knowledge of more areas than you would normally need. This is a huge undertaking in time and effort.
Because your audience is coming from at least two different areas you have to supply basic theoretical background for at least two disciplines. This means that before you get to present your argument a lot of your introductory blurb can get bogged down setting up the framework. It is difficult to make some of this interesting to the reader and would be much easier if you were simply 'on the same page' already.
For academia itself the idea of crossing disciplines is problematic because academics pride themselves on "specialising". They work hard to get knowledgeable in their chosen field and they do not give ground easily. It is mostly in their interests to protect the uniqueness of their discipline.
If you are an artist and 'knowledge' seems to come directly from its source sometimes you just 'feel' that something is right. Try justifying that to a very left-brained academy.
Basically, overall, my struggle with this is just an extension of being a woman in a patriarchally dominated culture: you have to work twice as hard and be twice as good to be considered equal. So why do it?
The hard truth is that if you want to be heard you have to infiltrate the system. The other choice is, of course, to stay with the earlier model for the arts and rebel, protest and stay in opposition. This simply keeps us see-sawing from one polarity to the other and undermines the very core of what you are trying to achieve in entering the interdisciplinary field in the first place.
Life is full of amusing paradoxes.
Ref: Interdisciplinarity: history, theory, and practice, Thompson Klein
