Disciplinarity at the fin de siècle / edited by Amanda Anderson and Joseph Valente.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Anderson, Amanda, 1960-

Valente, Joseph.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Great Britain--Intellectual life--19th century.

Great Britain.

Intellectual life.

English literature--19th century--History and criticism--Theory, etc.

English literature.

Universities and colleges--Curricula--Great Britain.

Universities and colleges.

Universities and colleges--Curricula.

Great Britain--History--Victoria, 1837-1901.

History.

Physical Description:

vi, 342 pages ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, [2002]

Summary:

Contemporary celebrations of interdisciplinary scholarship in the humanities and social sciences often harbor a distrust of traditional disciplines, which are seen as at best narrow and unimaginative, and at worst complicit in larger forms of power and policing. Disciplinarity at the Fin de Siecle questions these assumptions by examining, for the first time in so sustained a manner, the rise of a select number of academic disciplines in a historical perspective.

This collection of twelve essays focuses on the late Victorian era in Great Britain but also on Germany, France, and America in the same formative period. The contributors -- James Buzard, Lauren M. E. Goodlad, Liah Greenfeld, John Guillory, Simon Joyce, Henrika Kuklick, Christopher Lane, Jeff Nunokawa, Arkady Plotnitsky, Ivan Strenski, Athena Vrettos, and Gauri Viswanathan -- examine the genealogy of various fields including English, sociology, economics, psychology, and quantum physics. Together with the editors' cogent introduction, they challenge the story of disciplinary formation as solely one of consolidation, constraint, and ideological justification.

Addressing a broad range of issues -- disciplinary formations, disciplinarity and professionalism, disciplines of the self, discipline and the state, and current disciplinary debates -- the book aims to dislodge what the editors call the "comfortable pessimism" that too readily assimilates disciplines to techniques of management or control. It advances considerably the effort to more fully comprehend the complex legacy of the human sciences.

Contents:

Discipline and freedom / Amanda Anderson and Joseph Valente

Literary study and the modern system of the disciplines / John Guillory

Disciplinarity and radicality: quantum theory and nonclassical thought at the Fin de Siècle, and as philosophy of the future / Arkady Plotnitsky

How economics became a science: a surprising career of a model discipline / Liah Greenfeld

Professional status and the moral order / Henrika Kuklick

Durkheim, disciplinarity, and the "sciences religieuses" / Ivan Strenski

Subjecting English and the question of representation / Gauri Viswanathan

Dying twice: Victorian theories of déjà vu / Athena Vrettos

Oscar Wilde, Erving Goffman, and the social body beautiful / Jeff Nunokawa

Character and pastorship in two British "sociological" traditions: organized charity, Fabian socialism, and the invention of new liberalism / Lauren M.E. Goodlad

Victorian continuities: early British sociology and the welfare of the state / Simon Joyce

The Arnoldian ideal, or culture studies and the problem of nothingness / Christopher Lane

Notes on the defenestration of culture / James Buzard.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0691089612

0691089620

OCLC:

47162142