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Summary Philosophy of the Humanities 1 Lectures
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Class notes Philosophy Of The Humanities 1 History and Philosophy of the Humanities, ISBN: 9789463724937
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Philosophy of the Humanities IInotes
Lecture 1
In the first block, what was specific for European studies?
1. The Western Canon: how does Europe relate to the world, who are the most decisive
and influential philosophers of the European canon?
2. Interdisciplinary: What is this, how can you conduct interdisciplinary research
projects, what is the method?
Rumford
He starts off rather negatively, he argues that there is no such thing as European
studies, that it is not a proud and self-conscious discipline. there seems to be a rift
between:
- The idea of inter EU studies (e.g how you can explain the success/crumbling of the
EU project, what is typical of this is that this only looks at the EU from an inside
perspective) compared to looking at the EU from a global perspective.
Obviously there is a paradox that Europe (most of it) was integrating, while another
significant part of it was disintegrating e.g Yugoslavia. That it keeps on changing shape,
and the tendency is to disintegrate. how is it then possible that Europe moves forward in
time, while the Balkan’s go backwards? you realise that in order to give conclusive
answers, you need to also look in other departments and disciplines e.g the end of
communism, economic reasons, the political culture of the Balkans (Balkanisation),
nationalism (though if you were to say that it is all about nationalism, this would not cover
the whole picture).
how can you explain (for example) the phenomenon of Karadzic?
,interdisciplinary
Rumford says that there is a lot going on in the many departments that concern Europe,
that European studies involves all of that while also being somewhere in-between. that
there is a common research agenda to European studies. Even though it is not that visible
there is even a common methodical notion that he calls the constructiveness of
1
Europe. He argues that this shows that European studies is a multidisciplinary
discipline.
- ‘European studies is centrally concerned with questions of cultural identities, of
Europe’s relation to the rest of the world, of transnational communities, of cross-
border mobilities and networks, of colonial legacies, and of the heritage of a
multiplicity of European peoples.’
If all of these scholars are together, who sets the agenda, who's method are you going to
use. e.g a historian working with legal documents, would use different methodology than a
lawyer...
Rumford also argues that European studies has a common object (the thing you are
looking at), that he calls the transformation of Europe. Once we have labelled the object
of European studies, we can label the list of themes that European studies involves. these
include: mobilities, hybridity, governmentality, risk society, public sphere, post-national,
citizenship, Europeanisation, Borderlands. and to these we can add: European, memory,
nationalism, minorities, post-colonialism, diversity, multilingualism etc.
if all of this true (the huge variety of themes and disciplines), than you need more than
just multidisciplinary to work, that you need interdisciplinary, you need to exchange you
methods and tools. but what is the interdisciplinary perspective?
European studies in Amsterdam: the program has existed since 1988, it first started
because there was a demise in traditional language programs. Whereas this used to be a
popular choice for students, during the 1980’s it lessened in popularity as they thought that
career prospects required you to have a broader perspective. Amsterdam came up with
this multidisciplinary program that incorporated many differing disciplines. At the time, right
,after the cold war, European studies was in effect western European studies, there existed
both European studies for eastern Europe and Western Europe. However, now it is a
transnational perspective that we take; that we have left this outspoken national
perspective behind, but have we really become interdisciplinary?
what is interdisciplinary?:
UNESCO 1972 definition: ‘the interactions between disciplines [...] ranging from simple
communication of ideas to the mutual integration of organizing concepts, methodology,
procedures, epistemology, terminology, data [...] an interdisciplinary group consists of
persons trained in different fields of knowledge [...] organized into a common effort on a
common problem’
- If you are doing one major, you are not just taking a multidisciplinary approach. there
is already some interdisciplinary hidden in the program we are enrolled in. but does
2
the UvA offer an interdisciplinary methodology? no not really, this we do ourselves
through our research.
- consensus: nobody really tries to define how they are going to combine methods.
There are philosophers of science who claim that disciplines are outdated, that the future
lies in interdisciplinary studies. Steve Fuller for example argues that ‘disciplines are
artificial holding patterns of inquiry whose metaphysical significance should not be
overestimated... enquiry needs a special space where it can roam freely’
Nowadays, interdisciplinary is fashionable at the moment, it is what Thomas Kuhn calls
normal science.
critique of interdisciplinary:
- There are people who claim that true knowledge require disciplinary work. e.g that an
art historian should be the one to analyse a Rembrandt painting, because they are the
expert, and that if you interdisciplinary you are an amateur. the idea that mastering more
than one discipline is too difficult. the results of interdisciplinary research (according to
the critics) are not sound research; indeed, that it is long on pretence, and short on
rigour.
, - Mieke Bal, received a lot of critique for her work from art critics. That a feminist
scholar could not possibly present new ideas, as her methodology was apparently
shaky and not correct. But in reality her work was well research and looked at
Rembrandt from a new perspective.
It is not that there was an era where there was only disciplinary study, then that it moved
into interdisciplinary. Indeed, no discipline is fixed, they are in flux, constantly changing. e.g
literary studies: a branch of history in the 19th century then in the 1970’s it has become a
branch of linguistic. Then in the present it is more attune to cultural studies.
Explanations: one is internal (when you only look with at a historical perspective at a
text, you miss the content because you are only looking at the context, that you are
missing the text and the plot.) the other is external (that political and social changes
urge you to take a different view of the same object e.g with a Rembrandt painting).
Turns in the Humanities (and social sciences): there are many turns e.g: linguistic turn,
cultural turn, affective turn, sensory turn, reflexive turn, digital turn, participatory turn,
narrative turn, biographical turn, spatial turn, social turn.
This notion of turn is important: e.g in the natural sciences we speak of the paradigm shift
as a turn, but is this the same for all disciplines? That a paradigm shift entails a complete
shift in how we understand something, can the same be said of a Rembrandt painting for
example?
3
There seems to be a difference between the hard sciences (maths and physics) and the
soft sciences (humanities and social sciences). the difference lies in: ‘the object of natural
science exists independently of the existence of science itself [...] in the humanities, the
condition for the existence of their subject is the existence of the people who create this
subject.’ (Kubicki)
That these turns are not paradigm shifts, because there is no radical change, but there is
exchange and interchange of methodology.
Bal describes how as a scholar in Tel Aviv, the concept of narratology emerged. e.g what
is subjectivity in a textual surrounding, and how this concept started to expand. Today we
see that narratology is used a lot with people who have suffered trauma, that trauma
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