Thoughts on the "global turn" as a disciplinary future

Abstract

With a special emphasis on regional studies, this chapter takes up the challenge to theorize about the complexities of cultural interaction without imposing ethnocentric categories such as those that historically defined the discipline of art history on Euro-American terms. One of the primary obstacles to rethinking the discipline of art history has been the segmentation of our archives by period style and national culture. How can we access this past (and present) without also passing on values that may no longer be tenable but are inherent in our classifying terms and structures? I review issues of shared concern across a wide expanse of methods and subjects under four categories: (1) the problem of universals and universalism; (2) working within a national culture model in a transcultural setting; (3) the epistemic and ontological ground of research; and (4) the ethics of scholarship. I advocate for a material-based, non-transcendental ontology capacious enough to appeal to many different interpretative aims at the center of transcultural approaches, such as what happens when values, beliefs, and information are not held in common. In such cases, interpretation focuses on the heterogeneity of the artwork itself.