Breaking the Disciplines: Reconceptions in Art, Knowledge & Culture

257 Pages·2003·1.653 MB·English

by  Martin L. Davies, Marsha Meskimmon

breaking the disciplines

breaking the
disciplines
reconceptions in
knowledge, art
and culture
edited by
martin l. davies &
marsha meskimmon
Published in 2003 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
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In the United States of America and in Canada distributed by
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Copyright © Martin L. Davies & Marsha Meskimmon, 2003
The right of Martin L. Davies & Marsha Meskimmon to be identified as the
authors of this work has been asserted by the authors in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or
any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
ISBN 1 86064 917 3
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress catalog card: available
Typeset in Slimbach by Steve Tribe, Andover
Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin
contents
List of Illustrations vi
Acknowledgements vii
Editorial Dialogue 1
Section I: The Imperative to Challenge Disciplinary Orthodoxy
Thinking Practice: On the concept of an ecology of knowledge
Martin L. Davies 9
Becoming Academics, Challenging the Disciplinarians: A
philosophical case-study Helen C. Chapman 35
Section II: Hybrid Objects/Hybrid Methods
Real Milk from Mechanical Cows: Invention, creativity and
the limits of anthropological knowledge Mark T. Shutes 61
Clockwork Prayer: A sixteenth-century mechanical monk
Elizabeth King 84
The Research Methods of an Artist-Ethnographer on the
Congo Coast of Panama Arturo Lindsay 129
Section III: Performance, Aesthetics and Knowledge
Word of Honour Alphonso Lingis 163
Reconceptualizing a Pictorial Turn: Lessing, Hoffmann, Klee
and elements of avant-garde language Beate Allert 187
Practice as Thinking: Toward feminist aesthetics
Marsha Meskimmon 223
Index 246
illustrations
1. Automaton figure of a monk, c.1560 84
2. Comparison of the monk’s head with an engraved portrait
of San Diego de Alcalá 91
3. Cornelius Galle, Diego de Alcalá (vita), engraving, 1614 96
4. Components of the internal mechanism of the monk
and X-ray of the interior of the monk’s head 103
5. Automaton, Cister-Spielerin; Mechanism, Cister-Spielerin;
Automaton monk, c.1560; Music automaton 105
6. Death mask of S. Giacomo della Marca 114
7. Photograph of Archangel and angels confronting
the Diablo Mayor, Portobelo, 2000 138
8. Arturo Lindsay, Rey Bayano, 1994 148
9. Arturo Lindsay, Rey Bayano, installation view, 1994 150
10. Arturo Lindsay, Retorno de las ánimas Africana, 1999 153
11. Arturo Lindsay, Santuario para las ánimas Africanas, 2000 154
12. Arturo Lindsay, Spirit Box for Ronald Smith, 1997 157
13. Paul Klee, Hoffmanneske Geschichte, 1921 209
14. Jenny Holzer, Lustmord, 1993–4 224
acknowledgements
As editors, we are grateful to many people for the efforts they invested
in this project – from its inception in exciting conversations with
colleagues, to its emergence and development as a viable configuration
of ideas and arguments during the symposium Reconceptions: New
Ecologies of Knowledge (1999) and finally, here, as it reaches a new
audience in published form. We would like to thank, especially, the
Research Committee of Loughborough University School of Art and
Design, who made the Reconceptions symposium possible through a
generous grant, all the participants in that event and Graham Seamon,
who designed the promotional material for Reconceptions with careful
attention to its conceptual framework. We would also like to thank
our editorial team at I.B.Tauris, Philippa Brewster and Susan Lawson,
who remained committed to the project and its potential throughout
the process of publication. Finally, to our contributors, many heartfelt
thanks for continuing the dialogue over these past years with such
grace and eloquence.
This book is dedicated to my brother, Mark T. Shutes (1947–2001),
whose life and scholarship were motivated by a determination to
challenge intellectual complacency and change the future for the
better. While the loss of his warmth, humour and generosity remain
painful, the memory of his enthusiasm for Reconceptions made the
editing of this volume a joyous task.
Marsha Meskimmon
I got to know Mark only for a short time. I didn’t suspect how short
it would be. He had a wide range of knowledge. He was fascinated
by human behaviour, by ideas – and he knew how to get you thinking.
His essay is poignant as a fragment of all this. His work, his public
intellectual commitment, meant a lot to very many people. Then I
looked forward to continuing the discussions we started. Now the
regret that this will not happen is as sharp as ever.
Martin L. Davies
editorial dialogue
MM: Any edited collection emerges as the result of dialogue and
negotiation over time; the editors debate a topic, invite scholars to
share their views on the subject, further refine the initial premises
through argument and discussion and, finally, publish the work. In
some senses, Breaking the Disci-
plines: Reconceptions in Knowledge, Reconception is a recurrent theme
in the present volume and one of the
Art and Culture followed this route,
keywords of its title. Stressing the
beginning life in our own animated materiality of knowledge and the
creative activity of thought, re-
conversations, moving forward
conception rejects the existence of
through the work of a fascinating universal truths which precede ar-
ticulation, arguing instead that it is
group of scholars, reaching a in articulation itself, whether that be
pinnacle during the Symposium through words, texts, objects or im-
ages, that subjects negotiate a
Reconceptions: New Ecologies of meaningful place in the world. Addi-
tionally, reconceptions are open to
Knowledge (Loughborough Uni-
contingency and change; they are
versity, September 1999) and, now, processual modes of thinking, which
permit exchanges between and
culminating in published form. But
across conventional intellectual, po-
this project is not so much linear as litical and cultural borders. Through
a continual process of reconception,
lateral: the varied work which has
thought remains relevant, useful and
at one or another time driven our capable of responding to the ever-
changing circumstances of indi-
thinking and changed its parameters, vidual subjects in the present. In
cannot be contained by a narrative reconception, the ‘knower’ is located
within the frame of the ‘known’; par-
chronology centred on the pro- ticipant-action research, the respon-
duction of this volume. Indeed, only sibilities of the ethnographer, the
ethical implications of intellectual
one term has remained a constant disciplinarity and the role of aca-
demic institutions figure prominently
throughout the process of discussion,
in the pages of this volume. These
debate and writing and that term is are not explored from beyond, but
from within and their reconceptions
neither an origin point nor a def-
have material consequences for
inition, but an axis for intervention. both writers and readers.
That term is reconception.