Anxieties of Interdisciplinarity

Abstract

Anxieties provoked by interdisciplinarity have been part of broader ideological disputes about the legitimacy of boundaries. This essay looks at how critics have uncovered how the structures of the academy limit or direct interdisciplinary efforts, and the ways these connections impact the allocation of the university’s intellectual, labor, and material resources. It then turns to look more specifically at the field of South Asian studies in the United States. It offers a critical history of contemporary discussions about interdisciplinarity especially as they took place in the humanities, and contextualizes those conversations taking place within South Asian studies programs and curriculum. Inspired by the scholarship that relates interdisciplinarity to the neoliberal university, it considers how new interdisciplinary development in these programs has increasingly been aligning with neoliberal projects of globalization within the academy, and connects those developments back to the field’s early history. As a way of analyzing the stakes and relevance of interdisciplinarity for South Asian studies specifically, this essay thinks through how the project has been set up at the intersection of spatial constructions – a crossroad of traffic – and posits using metaphors of movement to retain the political viability of interdisciplinary processes.