Modernist vs. Postmodernist Interdisciplinarity

Leitch, Vincent B. “Postmodern Interdisciplinarity.” Profession (2000): 124-31. Print.

While this is a brief article without much detail and is perhaps becoming a little dated in some of its views about the lack of institutionally sanctioned interdisciplinarity, it does draw attention to some key obstacles to interdisciplinarity. It focuses on four areas/issues related to interdisciplinarity: “that university professors in North America are disciplinary subjects, that academic interdisciplinarity work does not alter the existing disciplines, that the university is a disciplinary institution in a disciplinary society, and that the conception of interdisciplinarity is currently undergoing significant change” (124).

In his (brief) explorations of these issues, Leitch does offer some good/useful points to consider. One such point is that interdisciplinarity is necessarily bound up with disciplinarity. While this seems obvious, I had not considered the importance of disciplinarity for interdisciplinarity. Part of this is because perhaps I had been considering interdisciplinarity in its modernist form. This form, Leitch argues, attempts to gloss the differences in favor of a near-seamless interdisciplinarity. Such an approach instead of promoting greater creativity and investigative power actually reinforces the modernist view of the narrow and stark structure of the university. Leitch contrasts this with the postmodern view of interdisciplinarity. This view does not try to avoid acknowledging the role of different disciplines in forming an interdisciplinary field of study. Rather, it highlights those different disciplines, valuing the varied contributions to create the whole. Furthermore, Leitch extends this view to the disciplines themselves, recognizing the interdisciplinary nature within what we might call more “traditional” disciplines. He points to the contributions of mathematics, chemistry, and astronomy to the discipline of physics as one example. Yet, Leitch’s other discussions point to the dominance of disciplinarity in the modernist sense, mostly because of the structure of universities and of the wider society that they serve.

As I work on exploring how a rhetoric/composition specialist may need to function as a generalist in a smaller department, the ideas Leitch sketches here will likely be important ones for me to consider. If the institution looks to disciplinarity, how does that complicate how a rhetoric/composition expert can function within those smaller departments? And how does that affect how her/his colleagues and administrators view their work? On the other hand, if interdisciplinarity is becoming more commonplace and accepted, how much of a concern is this anymore? Are smaller departments better at embracing such interdisciplinarity given the nature of the work required of faculty in those departments?