[Air-l] What is a discipline.

[jeremy hunsinger]

it might be interesting to put forth some positions here on a variety 
of topics.

we have by my reckoning within the last year in various places some 
assertions that internet studies or internet research is:
a discipline
an interdiscipline
a transdiscipline
a postdiscipline

(warning sts rant ensues)

i'm pretty sure it is some of the last 3, primarily because of certain 
overlaps, but i a certain that it isn't the first, but i'm hoping it 
never becomes that centralized.  so what are these categories, if 
anything,...?  well it very much depends on your own personal context.  
for me, they are primarily terms of analysis, i look at say the 
disciplinisation of the social sciences, communication studies and 
other 'special sciences' within a historic framework that depends very 
much on a highly contingent set of historical facts, such as the 
reaffirmation of social science post wwiii, etc. etc. etc.  you can't 
have a discipline for me without this set of historical contexts, but 
what has to happen for a discipline to really occur is the 
decontextualization, the dehistorization of the research in the field 
at a certain level, a transformation of the field from a subject of 
study to an object of study, and with that objectification, you usually 
have a tendency for the rise of predominant methodologies or minimally 
a set of methods that are accepted as 'scientific', even if they only 
are manifestations of the fetish of objective science, or scientism.  
now, for me, what this means is that as internet studies advances, 
while there will be a tendency to say unify in one sense the tendency 
to pluralize should help us overcome this, i think this is in part due 
to the transdisciplinary subject, which in the guattarian sense has a 
globality that transcends disciplines, making any method or approach 
meager before it, except as a  way of adding to the body of knowledge, 
as an interdiscipline, which we also surely are, we are a whole that is 
greater than the parts, each person bringing their own disciplinary 
perspective to the knowledge game, and as a post discipline, well. that 
is all there really is in the profit driven academia of the future 
perhaps, and i think there are tendencies to put our research to such 
applications.  nonetheless, as the peripheries become the core in 
things like internet studies, i prefer to follow the mantra of 
plurality, interdisciplinarity, within a deeply contextual 
understanding of the histories and technologies involved, including 
their inherent subjectivity in relation to us, for many of us aren't 
only researching the internet through our actions we are actively 
creating it on many different levels

now it is bedtime, rant time is over;)


jeremy hunsinger
jhuns at vt.edu
on the ibook
www.cddc.vt.edu
www.cddc.vt.edu/jeremy
()  ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail
/\                        - against microsoft attachments