Disciplinarity at the Fin De Siecle

by Anderson, Amanda; Valente, Joseph

• ISBN13: 9780691089614
• ISBN10: 0691089612
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-01-01
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

Contemporary celebrations of interdisciplinary scholarship in the humanities and social sciences often harbor a distrust of traditional disciplines, which are seen as at best narrow and unimaginative, and at worst complicit in larger forms of power and policing. Disciplinarity at the Fin de Siècle questions these assumptions by examining, for the first time, in so sustained a manner, the rise of a select number of academic disciplines in a historical perspective.This collection of twelve essays focuses on the late Victorian era in Great Britain but also on Germany, France, and America in the same formative period. The contributors--James Buzard, Lauren M. E. Goodlad, Liah Greenfeld, John Guillory, Simon Joyce, Henrika Kuklick, Christopher Lane, Jeff Nunokawa, Arkady Plotnitsky, Ivan Strenski, Athena Vrettos, and Gauri Viswanathan--examine the genealogy of various fields including English, sociology, economics, psychology, and quantum physics. Together with the editors' cogent introduction, they challenge the story of disciplinary formation as solely one of consolidation, constraint, and ideological justification.Addressing a broad range of issues--disciplinary formations, disciplinarity and professionalism, disciplines of the self, discipline and the state, and current disciplinary debates--the book aims to dislodge what the editors call the "comfortable pessimism" that too readily assimilates disciplines to techniques of management or control. It advances considerably the effort to more fully comprehend the complex legacy of the human sciences.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Introduction. Discipline and Freedom	1	(18)
Amanda Anderson
Joseph Valente
PART I. Disciplinary Formations
Literary Study and the Modern System of the Disciplines	19	(25)
John Guillory
Disciplinarity and Radicality: Quantum Theory and Nonclassical Thought at the Fin de Siecle, and as Philosophy of the Future	44	(43)
Arkady Plotnitsky
PART II. Disciplines and Professionalism
How Economics Became a Science: A Surprising Career of a Model Discipline	87	(39)
Liah Greenfeld
Professional Status and the Moral Order	126	(27)
Henrika Kuklick
Durkheim, Disciplinarity, and the ``Sciences Religieuses''	153	(24)
Ivan Strenski
PART III. Disciplines of the Self
Subjecting English and the Question of Representation	177	(19)
Gauri Viswanathan
Dying Twice: Victorian Theories of Deja Vu	196	(23)
Athena Vrettos
Oscar Wilde, Erving Goffman, and the Social Body Beautiful	219	(16)
Jeff Nunokawa
PART IV. Discipline and the State
Character and Pastorship in Two British ``Sociological'' Traditions: Organized Charity, Fabian Socialism, and the Invention of New Liberalism	235	(26)
Lauren M. E. Goodlad
Victorian Continuities: Early British Sociology and the Welfare of the State	261	(22)
Simon Joyce
PART V. Disciplinary Contests and the Present Horizon
The Arnoldian Ideal, or Culture Studies and the Problem of Nothingness	283	(29)
Christopher Lane
Notes on the Defenestration of Culture	312	(21)
James Buzard
Notes on Contributors	333	(4)
Index	337