Transdisciplinarity and the Humanities: Problems, Methods, Histories, Concepts

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In the late twentieth century, the humanities in the English-speaking world were transformed by the reception of types of French and German philosophy and critical theory that, in one way or another, work across the boundaries of existing disciplines. However, this reception took place in a range of specific disciplinary contexts (especially English literary studies), isolated from the consideration of the nature and innovative potential of the 'transdisciplinarity' of these works. This project is a theoretical investigation into the way certain concepts - for example, art, gender and the new - function across disciplinary borders in the humanitiesResearch contextExplicit discourses about 'transdisciplinarity' have recently been developed in both Science and Technology Studies and Education Studies. However, these are primarily focused on technological approaches to problem solving (in everyday and policy contexts) and the social organization of knowledges. In neither instance has the idea been connected up to developments in the humanities since the 1960s, or to issues of a fundamental theoretical character about the unity of the humanities as body of knowledge and practice (or the unity of 'the human' itself). Traditionally, philosophy has conceived of itself as providing the forms of universality that span other disciplines. However, for reasons of its analytical formation, English-language philosophy has shown little interest in the question of the status, character and modes of functioning of general concepts across disciplines in the humanities. This is, however, a characteristic of philosophical Romanticism. The study of transdisciplinarity in the humanities must thus address both the existing literature on transdisciplinarity in other areas and the question of the relationship of transdisciplinary concepts to philosophical concepts, historically and analytically - through a new approach to the legacy of philosophical Romanticism.Aims and objectivesThis project aims to address the basic questions: What is transdisciplinarity in the humanities? And to what extent and in what ways is the creativity of a concept linked to its transdisciplinary construction, application or potential? It has among its objectives: 1) the production of case studies, and critical and comparative analyses, of the transdisciplinary structures and dynamics of one major, philosophically informed transdisciplinary text from each of the German and French critical traditions - books which have had a significant impact on recent English-language work. We propose to compare Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944; 1947) and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's two-volume work comprising Anti-Oedipus (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980). 2) the production of case studies of two transdisciplinary 'problematics' (or fields of problems): anti-humanism and gender study. 3) The exploration of a distinctively 'Romantic' transdisciplinarity, through a retrospective investigation of the transdisciplinary dynamics of early German Romanticism (1785-1800), including analyses of the function of the general categories of 'art' and 'the new'.Potential applications and benefitsThe theoretical breadth of this project and its diverse case studies mean that it should be of interest to a very broad constituency of academics and others in the arts concerned with what is currently thought of as 'interdisciplinary' studies in the humanities. It aims to reorient this field away from the more conservative notion of interdisciplinarity towards the open, more experimental field of transdisciplinary constructions. As such, it should also be of benefit to those in Science and Technology Studies and Education Studies who use the existing discourse of 'transdisciplinarity', by its criticisms of it and its extension beyond its current limits.