The aims of this book are to examine the current status of the interaction between literary studies and the philosophy of literature, to articulate some of its potentialities and difficulties, and implement a genuinely interdisciplinary dialogue between the two fields by featuring twelve essays on shared issues written by scholars from both disciplines. The chapters have been written with a cross-disciplinary audience in mind and in all cases we and the authors have striven to make the contributions interesting, understandable and relevant when viewed from the perspectives of those working in either field. Neither we nor the contributors attempt to disguise or ignore the difficulties that underlie writing for such a collection and engaging in interdisciplinary dialogue; indeed, we highlight some of them in this Introduction. Despite the difficulties, however, we thought it worthwhile to try and achieve these aims, at least in part, because in our own practice we have found the insights provided by committed engagement with the âotherâ field useful in shedding new light on some of the problems we have encountered in our work. Andrea Selleri found that the discussions about intentionality undertaken in the philosophy of literature helped him define the theoretical stakes of his historical work on the idea of the author in nineteenth-century literary culture, and Philip Gaydon found working in the University of Warwickâs English and Comparative Literary Studies department on childrenâs literature opened up his study of epistemological questions within the philosophy of literature in novel ways.
That the fields of philosophy of literature and literary studies can potentially provide such insights into each other should not be a matter for surprise. After all, at least some strands these two fields share an object (literature), to some extent a methodology (at a minimum, an investment in proposing generalisable theses about literature), and a number of crucial issues (such as how to define literature, how to determine the value of our object of study, how we can learn from fiction, what the role of the author is in understanding a literary work, and so on). Each of the fields has given a range of answers to these questions, and their reciprocal relevance is often clear to those who have achieved some level of acquaintance with both. We think that there should be a platform for an open discussion about the mutual usefulness of the two disciplines which equally represents both and directly addresses the nature of and prerequisites for interdisciplinary interaction. This is our attempt to help build one.
*
In contemporary Anglophone academia, âliteratureâ is part and parcel of important strands of research in more than one discipline in the humanities and social sciences. The study of literature lies at or near the centre of the activities undertaken in departments of English and modern languages, and many other disciplines, such as sociology, linguistics, psychology, philosophy and, of course, its sub-discipline the âphilosophy of literatureâ, are also concerned with it. There are journals (such as Philosophy and Literature and New Literary History), a number of collections (see below and notes 8â10), and some local initiatives (such as the University of Warwickâs Centre for Research in Philosophy, Literature and the Arts, and the online hub, âOrdinary Language Philosophy and Literary Studiesâ) which attempt to merge some of these in meaningful ways. However, this spread of disciplines, each with their own institutional identity and historical genealogy, has resulted in widely divergent epistemologies, argumentative procedures, rhetorical styles, frames of reference, and conceptions of the aims of âresearchâ when it comes to the study of literature. These differences are rarely addressed head on and have, instead, become deeply entrenched and taken as given.
This is not a situation that is peculiar to the areas of study concerned with literature and literary studies. Due to a rigidly compartmentalised higher education framework, disciplines tend to be more willing to judge other disciplinesâ procedures and results than engage in such a self-aware and collaborative process as interdisciplinary dialogue. As a consequence, in contemporary universities and academic institutions, it often appears as though only lip service is being paid to the idea of interdisciplinarity and that those institutions remain âcradles of disciplinarityâ. 1 This may well be for understandable practical reasons: disciplines already have developed expert communities with agreed-upon methods and standards of practice, the usefulness of which cannot be overestimated if one of the aims of university education is the formation of a studentâs professional identity and relevant knowledge basis; choosing a discipline is a particular way of expressing what one takes to be valuable about the world, and students are thus motivated to âseek homes for supporting their research and teaching passions in a disciplinary baseâ, 2 and administrative efficiency is a powerful and valid motivator. As a consequence, it is unsurprising that âthe disciplineâ remains very much in control of academic appeal and reputation. 3 However, the institutionalisation, formalisation, and professionalisation of such disciplinary boundaries, which the disciplines relevant to the intersection addressed in this collection are certainly not exempt from doing, often lead to tension, mistrust, and reciprocal caricaturing and too little genuine understanding. This negatively affects the conduct of knowledge politics in higher education, and, in terms of career development, taking time out for interdisciplinary projects can still be interpreted as somewhat counter-productive. 4 It often takes a scholarâs unprompted desire and self-motivated effort to broaden their scope beyond the confines of their affiliationâin this case, to understand what is at stake in studying literature from within both literary studies and the philosophy of literatureâin order to see what this broadening of horizons could do for their own practice. This is a task that we and the authors of this collection have taken on as worthwhile.
Apart from the simple fact that work in the philosophy of literature and work in literary studies take place in different departments, interdisciplinary interaction between the title areas of this collection has been fraught with difficulty due to the reciprocal mistrust that continues to linger between âanalyticâ and âContinentalâ approaches to philosophy. 5 The divide that interests us in this collection is disciplinary rather than approach-based but it would be disingenuous to ignore this second divide as it is responsible for many of the difficulties that beset reciprocal understanding. While literary studies has historically been quick to incorporate some parts of Continental philosophy, such as Marxism and post-structuralism within its purview, the same, with some exceptions, cannot be said about its willingness to engage with philosophy in the analytic and ordinary language traditions. As for the philosophy of literature, while its line of descent is long and complex, its practice today seems to be influenced primarily by just these two traditions. 6 Perhaps the most prominent example of the negative ideal that we want to avoid here, one predicated on this very divide, is the confrontation between John Searle and Jacques Derrida on whether and how âcontextâ (including intention) is constitutive of communication. 7 Whatever the merits of the respective positions, it is clear that neither combatant made any sustained attempt to understand the otherâs framework, relying instead on abrasive rhetoric and point-scoring which were replicated in the reception of the exchange, which saw most commentators reasserting their loyalty to âtheir ownâ without admitting that the âotherâ might have something valuable to say. Here we do not wish to insist on the analytic-Continental divide. Indeed, one of the aims of the collection is to weaken it in order to focus instead on what the collectionâs title disciplines can do for each other.
Even putting aside the analytic-Continental divide and focusing upon the two disciplines represented in this collection, however, the disciplinary and institutional compartmentalisation noted above is very much active. A brief survey of the scholarly literature devoted to âphilosophy of literatureâ and âphilosophy and literatureâ up to this point reveals that while there have been several monographs and essay collections, both introductory and of the âstate-of-the-fieldâ variety, these volumes are all clearly identifiable as being part of one discipline, almost always philosophy. That is, while literature is their object, they are generally written by philosophers for philosophers, with primarily philosophical concerns and methodology. 8 As concerns literary studies, although a number of individual scholars have mobilised some of the insights provided by the philosophy of literature (typically in the ordinary language tradition) for the exploration of literary topics, there is even less material that might be considered as attempting to bridge the two disciplines. 9 There are a few volumes that have made notable attempts to explore one discipline from the standpoint of the other. 10 Up to this point, however, little has been done to explicitly address what the two disciplines can do for each other, and never, as far as we are aware, in a site of engagement that was itself interdisciplinary, in the sense of including a balanced representation from each field and keeping in mind the needs and expectations of both while locating and addressing shared questions. This collection seeks to redress this comparative neglect and to achieve interdisciplinary interaction that is both fair to and stimulating for those working in and moving between both fields.
The notion of achieving interdisciplinary interaction brings us to another problem faced by those attempting to engage in it: despite its prominence in funding applications and blue-sky discussions in Anglophone higher education, âinterdisciplinarityâ is a term which is still in a state of definitional flux and lacks a generally accepted, underpinning goal. 11 In order to overcome this issue, and so that we might spell out in more concrete terms how we see this collection in relation to further interdisciplinary study, we will lay out our working definition of interdisciplinarity and situate it in relation to its sister terms of multidisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity.
Multidisciplinarity is used mainly as a label for the coming together of academics from various disciplines to consider a topic without any noteworthy integration of those disciplinesâ ideas or methodologies. For example, a conference or collection may be organised around a broad theme and contain contributions from scholars of multiple disciplines. Audience members can thus gather a sense of what is currently being studied in another field and how to positon their own work in relation to this, as well as, often accidentally, having ideas stimulated through their exposure to alternative ways of expressing or approaching the topic. Interdisciplinarity, however, is seen to involve more of an active partnership between representatives and ultimately a âsynthesis of disciplinary knowledgeâ. 12 Proponents of each discipline will attempt to engage with and understand each other in order to further their collaborative inquiry into a topic. Each participant should be able to identify in the process and/or result of the inquiry the methodologies and concepts from their field and feel that these have been fairly represented and utilised where appropriate. Interdisciplinary study is usually undertaken in order to find a solution for or insight into a problem too large or complex for a single discipline, thus, resulting in an outcome âmore interesting than the sum of the partsâ. 13 Interdisciplinarity has also been interpreted as containing a normative element insofar as some of its proponents claim that it aims for a certain form of unified or âholistic understandingâ 14 and signals a âpost-academic type of knowledgeâ, 15 a ânew mode of epistemic knowledge productionâ, 16 or âa more radical questioning of the nature of knowledge itself and our attempts to organize and communicate itâ. 17 However, while engaging in int...