Breaking the disciplines : reconceptions in knowledge, art, and culture / edited by Martin L. Davies & Marsha Meskimmon.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Davies, Martin L.

Meskimmon, Marsha.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Knowledge, Sociology of.

Physical Description:

248 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : I.B. Tauris, 2003.

Summary:

What constitutes 'knowledge'? How is it produced and, crucially, whose purposes does it serve? In this pioneering book, noted international scholars explore the limits and definitions of thought and meaning as we move into the twenty-first century. Coming from fields as diverse as anthropology, philosophy, literature, aesthetics and art practice, together they break down the boundaries between entrenched domains of knowledge and show how thinking -- that seemingly most solitary of activities -- functions in a dynamic relationship with constantly shifting cultural systems. How are we situated in this 'ecology' of knowledge, indeed how do we think in the world? Contributors address such issues as: what it means to be a 'philosopher'; how art and literature can inhabit the spaces between text and image and how contemporary women artists are attempting to breach the traditional body-mind split in their work. Others show how close studies of objects which confound traditional definitions -- including a mechanical cow invented by an Irish farmer and the curious case of a mechanical monk -- can, paradoxically, open up dynamic new 'reconceptions' of traditional systems of knowledge. With the social uses of knowledge and the increasing commodification of the education system currently matters of public debate, this is a timely and highly original book.

Contents:

Section I The Imperative to Challenge Disciplinary Orthodoxy

Thinking Practice: On the concept of an ecology of knowledge / Martin L. Davies 9

Becoming Academics, Challenging the Disciplinarians: A philosophical case-study / Helen C. Chapman 35

Section II Hybrid Objects/Hybrid Methods

Real Milk from Mechanical Cows: Invention, creativity and the limits of anthropological knowledge / Mark T. Shutes 61

Clockwork Prayer: A sixteenth-century mechanical monk / Elizabeth King 84

The Research Methods of an Artist-Ethnographer on the Congo Coast of Panama / Arturo Lindsay 129

Section III Performance, Aesthetics and Knowledge

Word of Honour / Alphonso Lingis 163

Reconceptualizing a Pictorial Turn: Lessing, Hoffmann, Klee and elements of avant-garde language / Beate Allert 187

Practice as Thinking: Toward feminist aesthetics / Marsha Meskimmon 223.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1860649173

OCLC:

51994010