Transcending Disciplinary Boundaries

Abstract

■ Modern modes of inquiry into the human condition have been charac terized by a disciplinary mode - we make sense of the world through particular, specialized and bounded disciplines. But if the rigid boundaries between disci plines have characterized the triumphant moment of the modern world, the recent moment has shown us a different picture where the rigid boundaries between disciplines are slowly breaking down and where we find more fluidity and permeability. This article provides a glimpse of this permeability. It describes a few creative experimenters of our times who, in their works, embody a trans- disciplinary conversation and create new kinds of knowledge; knowledge which stands at the alchemical meeting point of several disciplines. Building upon these experiments, this article argues that transcending disciplinary boundaries is not possible unless we understand the limitations of the discourse and institutions of modernity. Since the rigidification of boundaries of knowledge in the contem porary world owes a lot to the logic of modernity, transcending these boundaries on the way to creating knowledge and a new mode of relationship must necess arily involve critiques of modernity and discover ways out of it. This article strives to illustrate this by pointing to the limitation of the very phrase 'interdisciplinary research' to capture the simultaneous process of transcendence and immanence that is involved in this alternative process of knowledge.