disciplines, norms and identity: women’s and gender

New Zealand Online Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies. Volume 1, Issue 2.

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Disciplines, Norms and Identity: Women’s and Gender

Studies and Interdisciplinarity

Contact Details:

Michael Hemmingsen – [email protected]

Department of Philosophy,

McMaster University,

1280 Main Street West,

Hamilton, Ontario L8S4L8

Canada

Biographical Statement:

Michael Hemmingsen is a Ph.D. Candidate in Philosophy at McMaster University, Canada. He

received an M.A. in Philosophy and a Master of International Relations from Victoria University

of Wellington, New Zealand. Hemmingsen established and ran the interdisciplinary organisation,

the Society for Philosophy & Culture, at VUW, and currently runs the branch at McMaster

University.

Introduction

In the past decade there has been an ongoing conversation attempting to pinpoint the nature of

Women‟s and Gender Studies (WGS), particularly in regards to its interdisciplinarity

(Braithwaite, Heald,Luhmann& Rosenberg 2004;Ginsberg 2008; Scott 2008a; Orr, Braithwaite

& Lichtenstein 2012a). Though there is some debate as to whether or not WGS is a discipline,

few would argue that WGS is not interdisciplinary, either instead of(Rooney 2008), or in

additionto(Boxer 2000, p. 126; Buker 2003) being a discipline. For instance, Judith Allen and

Sally Kitch argue that “feminist scholars usually think of „interdisciplinary‟ and „women‟s

studies‟ as inherently and inextricably linked” (1998, p. 275).Quite what is meant exactly by

“interdisciplinary” is harder to determine, however. As Marjorie Pryse points out, we usually

operate with “casual and unexamined understandings of interdisciplinarity” (2000, p. 106).

Catherine Orr, Ann Braithwaite and Diane Lichtenstein agree, suggesting that we tend to define

“interdisciplinary” in an “I-know-it-when-I-see-it” kind of way (2003b, p. 2-3).So, of course, it is

impossible to give an adequate answer to the nature of WGS without being able to specify

precisely what is meant by such key terms as “discipline” and “interdisciplinary”.

mailto:[email protected]


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While at first blush questions about the nature of WGS‟ disciplinarity or interdisciplinaritycan

appear to be mere navel-gazing, in fact they have a number of important practical implications.

For example, the answers enable us to determinewhat it is exactly we see as valuable in

interdisciplinarity, which in turn can help to direct research in more productive directions. We

can also be clearer as to the nature of the interdisciplinary training that WGS is supposed to be

providing graduate students, modifying PhD programmes accordingly (Boxer 2000, p. 126). In

addition, we can get a more definite idea about how to go about designing the institutional

structure of an interdisciplinary department to begin with, and how we relate a WGS department

to other departments and disciplines in the academy, and the feminist scholars of which the field

is composed (Kennedy &Beins 2005; Burghardt&Colbeck 2005).

While this paper does not attempt to answer these more practical questions, I aim to further the

debate regarding the nature WGS by examining what it is for a field to be “interdisciplinary.”I

examine some possible interpretations of the nature of interdisciplinarity by comparing WGS to

“traditional” disciplines, and show why these various conceptions of the term are ultimately

mistaken. I settle on the idea that interdisciplinarity consists in having a cosmopolitan academic

identity that allows one to move back and forward between different disciplines, thereby opening

up space for a productive critique of both fields. In doing so, I also hope to shed light on the

nature of disciplinarity generally, arguing that disciplines are defined more in terms of their

genealogy,social identity and normative pull than strictly in terms of their areas of interest or

methodology (though of course such things can themselves carry normative force).

Plural Interests, Plural Methods

One idea about the nature of interdisciplinarity is that fields like WGS do not limit themselves

with the typical, singular objects of study and methodologies of disciplines such as philosophy,

psychology, sociology or political science. Under this view disciplines are thought of as

“focus[ing] on specific objects of investigation [and] are defined as much by what they exclude

as what they include.” They are“a way of carving up areas of study and regulating what

constitutes proper investigation in each area” (Elam 1994, p. 95). In opposition to this, WGS

utilises methodologies, objects and ideas from across a range of disciplines and synthesises them.

It is not constrained, it does not exclude, and it does not (or, at least, should not) regulate what

constitutes proper investigation. In this way, WGS can “overcome the professionalized divide

between knowledge domains in the university” (Wiegman 2008, p. 58). That is,

interdisciplinarity consists in being open to any and all approaches and topics, and in doing so

bridges the gaps between the traditional disciplines, bringing them into dialogue with one

another.


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However, if it is the case that an interdisciplinary field is constituted by its desire not to exclude,

then what is it that separates WGS from other interdisciplinary fields? If WGS and Peace

Studies, for example, are both constituted by their lack of exclusion, then what distinguishes

them from each other? WGS is a particular field that can be distinguished from other fields:WGS

is not Peace Studies, and it doesn‟t take much to be able to distinguish between the two in

practice. So, then, the question is that, if WGS is not absolutely lacking in exclusion, on what

basis is it excluding? One solution is that WGS has a particular topic, but that the way it

approaches the topic is interdisciplinary, i.e. it utilises techniques from across the traditional

disciplines. Under this understanding, interdisciplinarity is

a process of answering a question, solving a problem, or addressing a topic that is

too broad or complex to be dealt with adequately by a single discipline or

profession… [that] draws on disciplinary perspectives and integrates their insights

through construction of a more comprehensive approach. (Klein & Newell 1996, p.

3)

Historically, then, WGS‟ topic of study is women and gender. WGS‟ as an interdisciplinary field

consists in studying women and gender – anything that is not about women or gender can

therefore be excluded on the basis of being inappropriate as an object of WGS inquiry. However,

this account retains an important lack of exclusion; that is, it does not exclude any kind of

methodology – it is methodologically open, but limits the objects of study.

But if we push a little further, can we really say that this is the case? If this were a true account

of WGS as a field, it ought to be that any research into women or gender counts as WGS

research. This is not, however, what we tend to find. WGS departments typically do not allow

just any course to be associated with their programme. Rather, certain courses relating to women

and gender are allowed to be part of the programme, while others, which do not approach the

topic with an appropriately feminist sensibility, are excluded. As such, we cannot really claim

that WGS is open to all methodologies: in fact, there are certain “feminist” methodologies that

are acceptable, and others than are not.

Similarly, it can hardly be said that WGS is limited solely to issues regarding women and

gender: in the words of LayliMaparyan, “today we describe [WGS] as being about ending

sexism, racism, classism, heterosexism/homophobia, xenophobia, ableism, ageism, human

domination of the natural environment and a host of other injustices” (Maparyan 2012, p. 31).

Rather than having one or two interests, WGS now has a very wide range of interests.

In saying this, I am not suggesting that WGS is limited to a singular “feminist” methodology.

Nor am I arguing that WGS‟ topics of interest are unlimited. Clearly, WGS utilises a wide range


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of methodologies, and just as clearly the topics of interest to WGS scholars are, while many, not

infinite. However, it is important to note that a characterisation of WGS as excluding on the basis

of (a narrow range of) objects(s) of study, but not on the basis of methodology, is incorrect: in

terms of both topics of interest and methodologies, WGS is wide-ranging, but finite.

So is the fact that WGS is plural in its interests and methodologies enough to make WGS an

interdisciplinary field? It seems clear that whatever makes WGS interdisciplinary must be a

characteristic not possessed by traditional, non-interdisciplinaryfields. Something must

distinguish interdisciplinary fields from non-interdisciplinary fields. The quality of

interdisciplinariness, by definition, must not be present within non-interdisciplinary fields.

Furthermore, it must be the case that there are fields that are non-interdisciplinary in order for

WGS‟ interdisciplinarity to have any meaning, i.e. if it turns out that philosophy, or sociology, or

psychology, are inherently interdisciplinary, why bother emphasising WGS‟ interdisciplinarity at

all? In short, whatever it is that makes WGS interdisciplinary must be a quality that is not found

within the traditional, supposedly non-interdisciplinary disciplines. If it turns out that what WGS

scholars identify as consisting of the essence of interdisciplinarity is also shared with these

traditional disciplines, the term ceases to point to a feature that distinguishes the interdisciplinary

from the non-interdisciplinary.

With this rather obvious thought in mind, I‟d like to look at some more ideas of what

interdisciplinarity could potentially be. To begin with, there is the idea that WGS‟

interdisciplinarity lies simply in the fact that it utilises a range of methodologies, epistemologies

and ontologies, whereas disciplines like philosophy and political science have only one. This,

however, is simply not an accurate description of traditional disciplines.No discipline has a

single methodology; there are always a range of approaches existing within any given discipline.

Briefly perusing my own philosophy department‟s faculty list, I found the following range of

interests:

Theory of Knowledge; Aesthetics; Philosophy of Technology; Chinese Philosophy;

Philosophy of Time and Space; Peace and Health in Complex Ecological-Social-

Cultural Systems; International Law and Policy; the Arctic Region and

Globalization; Adaptive Co-management; Moral and Political Philosophy; Peace

and Conflict Studies; Contemporary Continental Philosophy; History and

Philosophy of Science and Mathematics; History of Materialism; Feminist Bioethics;

Philosophy of Law; Philosophy of Religion; Environmental Philosophy;

Philosophical Logic; Epistemology; 19th and 20th Century Intellectual History;

Theory of Argumentation (Informal Logic); Ancient Greek Philosophy; Applied

Ethics; Moral Psychology.(McMaster 2014)


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It is simply not the case that these diverse topics are all approached with a singular

“philosophical” methodology. Not only are historical and non-historical philosophers quite

divergent in their methodologies, but within the history of philosophy there are a number of

different ways of approaching the subject: are we trying to recreate what the philosopher really

thought, or do we want to create the most charitable systematic interpretation of their ideas, or do

we merely want to find useful concepts that can be used in the context of contemporary

philosophical problems?There is also a huge range of methods in non-historical philosophical

research, utilised in the study of topics as diverse as bioethics, moral psychology, applied ethics,

theories of knowledge, environmental philosophy and the philosophy of religion, to name just a

few. Hence, the idea that WGS and other interdisciplinary fields differ due to having a plurality

of methodologies cannot be true: if anything is a “traditional” discipline it is philosophy, yet it,

like WGS, utilises a wide range of methodological approaches.

Methods

If WGS is not interdisciplinary due to its plurality of methodologies, perhaps it is so because of

the nature of the methodologies included. WGS, by this account, utilises methodologies which

overlap between the traditional disciplines. Conversely, despite having a plurality of

methodologies, these are all clustered in the case of traditional disciplines; they have firm

borders, are self-contained, strictly exclude methodologies from other disciplines, and their own

methodologies are found nowhere else. The following diagram illustrates this picture of

traditional disciplines.

Diagram 1.1: Disciplines as separate, self-contained entities


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By this account WGS fits over the top of these disciplines, crossing the borders between them,

utilising methodologies from many or all. WGS‟ borders are porous, whereas the borders of

traditional disciplines are strict and impermeable, such as in the following diagram:

Diagram 1.2: Disciplines as separate, self-contained entities, with WGS

But is this an accurate description of traditional disciplines? Just looking at the range of interests

on the website of my alma mater shows a huge overlap(in terms of topics of study, at least). I

found individuals researching philosophy from within Classics, Film, and Religious Studies;

people studying religion from within Psychology, Architecture and Philosophy; and faculty

investigating psychology in Religious Studies and Philosophy (VUW 2010). Various issues were

also researched university-wide: regarding affect and the emotions, there are those in the

university who focus on philosophy of the emotions, those in Religious Studies who explore the

intersection between the emotions and religion, as well as interest on the part of sociologists,

architects, designers, and those who study film. Likewise, those researching the broad

constellation of issues surrounding cultural identity, ethnicity and migration are situated within a

wide range of departments: Linguistics, Psychology, Political Science, Sociology and Media

Studies, to mention just a few. As Biddy Martin says, referring to taking on an administrative job

in the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University, there is an “extraordinary

redundancies of scholarly interests among the faculty and in curricula across the disciplines”

(Martin 2008, p. 171).

Now, the fact that different departments research the same topics does not imply that they share

methodologies. But similarly, the idea that scholars researching identical topics in different

disciplines use methods completely divorced from one another is difficult to credit. The tools of

one discipline are hardly utilised solely by those of different disciplines. It cannot be argued that


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there is no conversation and exchange between different disciplines. A more accurate way of

imagining the relationship between disciplines, then, is shown in Diagram 2.1.

Diagram 2.1: Disciplinary overlap

In which case WGS would be situated as in Diagram 2.2.

Diagram 2.2: Disciplinary overlap, with WGS

If this is an accurate way of portraying the relationships between disciplines, then all disciplines

overlap with other disciplines in terms of their methodologies. I am not suggesting that the area


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of overlap is necessarily in common among all disciplines; merely that different disciplines

overlap with other disciplines at various points. This picture is likely a more familiar one to most

scholars in the humanities and social sciences, particularly for those who work in the spaces that

overlap. Philosophers profitably read sociologists, and sociologists read philosophers, for

example. There are a huge range of texts shared between political science, philosophy and

sociology – Foucault is an obvious example that stands out immediately.We ought to reject an

idea of disciplines that sees them as self-contained and exclusive. If so, then we can hardly

distinguish WGS in this regard. If WGS cuts across traditional disciplines, so do traditional

disciplines cut across each other. In which caseWGS‟ supposed interdisciplinarity is constituted

the same as philosophy‟s non-interdisciplinarity.

Is WGS interdisciplinary, then, in the sense that it has none of its own content, that everything

about it can be situated solely within other disciplines? I think most WGS scholars would reject

this idea: WGS has made many theoretical contributions of its own that stand alone. It has its

own journals in which we can find WGS-specific content, such as Signs, Gender & Society

andFeminist Studies. Rather than its existence being solely determined in terms of its

participation in other disciplines, WGS has a lively existence all of its own, with its own

methods, theory, and interests. While “particular feminist theories, pedagogies, methods and

visions might be inter-, cross- and even anti-disciplinary,” WGS is undoubtedly“a distinct area of

study with a separate name and concomitant disciplining function” (Rosenberg 2004, p.

208).Hence, WGS‟ relationship to the traditional disciplines should probably look more like

Diagram 2.3 below.

Diagram 2.3: Disciplinary overlap, with WGS making a unique contribution


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WGS is “a new, intellectually coherent entity built upon a common vocabulary” (Allen & Kitsch

1998, p. 277), and, aside from its newness, is not really different from the traditional disciplines

in this regard.

Core/Peripheral Methods

Perhaps, then, WGS‟ interdisciplinarity consists in it having no core; that is, we could imagine

that traditional disciplines have a central set of methodologies that are unique to themselves, and

that they only overlap with other disciplines at the edges of their discipline. Diagram 3.1 below

illustrates this.

Diagram 3.1: Disciplines with a core and periphery

In contrast, WGS does not fit this core/periphery model; instead, WGS is diffuse, and has a wide

range of methodologies that are equally valid.

However, while I think this is closer to the truth of the matter, once again this description of

interdisciplinarity may not be an entirely accurate description of the differences between WGS

and traditional disciplines. That is, is it truly the case that WGS has no “core” and no

“periphery”? I argue that, to the extent that traditional disciplines have such things, so does

WGS, and to the extent that WGS cannot be captured by this description, so too does it miss out

on describing the configuration of traditional disciplines.

As mentioned before, surely it is not the case that WGS is entirely non-exclusionary – the fact

that it includes some approaches and excludes others in the context of choosing courses for WGS

programmes is evidence of that. Furthermore, every field of enquiry requires that scholars be


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able to communicate with each other in a meaningful way; even if it is not the case that every

WGS scholar is able to participate profitably in every discussion that comes under what is

considered to be WGS, it is nevertheless the case that they can participate in some discussions,

and those discussions, in order for the participants to be able to speak meaningfully with one

another, must cluster around a limited number of methods. As such, certain methods will be held

in common between all or most participants of the discussion – the core – and certain methods

will be included, but less central – the periphery. Hence, the core/periphery model comes quite

naturally out of the need for participants in a conversation to have certain things in common in

order for the conversation to be intelligible and profitable; as WGS has conversations, so does it

have cores and peripheries.

We might say, then, that though it is not diffuse in terms of methodology as we first suggested,

what distinguishes interdisciplinary fields like WGS from non-interdisciplinary fields such as

philosophy, psychology, sociology or political science is that traditional disciplines are “specific,

unique and recognizable” (Side 2012, p. 52), in the sense that they have singular core

methodologies, whereas WGS has many overlapping cores and peripheries. This is illustrated in

the range of journals found within what can be considered WGS scholarship: for example,

Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural

Studies, the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion and the Journal of Women’s History.

Once again, though, this is a mischaracterisation of traditional disciplines – there is, in fact, little

difference between WGS and traditional disciplines in this regard. Take psychology, for

example: psychology has a number of areas that utilise a variety of methods; social psychology

differs from cross-cultural psychology, which differs in turn from industrial-organisational

psychology. Like the various areas of WGS, these fields all have their own journals: the Journal

of Social Psychology, the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, and the European Journal of

Work and Organizational Psychology, for instance. To characterise one of these areas, or any

other area of psychology, asthe core of psychology, and others as peripheral, is to do a disservice

to the diversity of thediscipline. Hence, the argument that WGS has a range of “core”

methodologies, as opposed to the singular core methodology of other disciplines, is just not

accurate. Both disciplines and interdisciplinary fields are diverse in this regard.

Perhaps, then, WGS distinguishes itself as interdisciplinary in the sense that its various sites of

enquiry – its “cores” – are spread across the various traditional disciplines. Non-interdisciplinary

fields, on the other hand, all have their various centres within the single discipline: cross-cultural

psychology and social psychology are both psychology after all; comparative philosophy and the

history of philosophy are, too, both philosophy. Conversely, one of WGS‟ sites of interest may

be within philosophy, another within political science, and another within sociology.


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However, I argue that the particular cluster of methodologies that make up any given traditional

discipline are historically constituted. As Wendy Brown puts it, “when peered at closely, the

definitions of all disciplines wobble, their identities mutate, their rules and regulations appear

contingent and contestable” (Brown 2008, p. 23).We can easily imagine a world in which we

divide up the academic conceptual space according to different criteria, due to a different history,

leading to a very different categorisation of the disciplines.And in fact over time the appropriate

disciplinary home for certain topics and approaches has shifted. There is very little that is natural

about the way the disciplines ended up being partitioned, as evidenced by a) the way in which

the boundaries between disciplines are messy, with considerable overlap, and b) the difficulty we

have in defining what particular disciplines actually are, when truly pushed.

For example, the question“What is philosophy?”does not have a clear answer. Any principled

answer to this question ends up being somewhat vague – for example, that it is the discipline that

takes us “right to the heart of truth” (de Beauvoir 2005, p. 158)– and so includes things that we

would not ordinarily describe as within the purview of the discipline of philosophy.Or it ends up

being too strict – for example, that it is about “studying fundamentals” – and hence excludes

things that we would properly consider to be philosophy, such as applied ethics, which does not

take necessarily take a position on „fundamentals,‟ yet is philosophy nonetheless. Typically, the

best we can do is to make a list of the things that are considered as philosophy and the things that

are not; such a list is not principled in any way, it is just describing a particular historically

constituted cluster of topics and methods that ended up being lumped together as philosophy for

at least partially contingent reasons; a set of topics that changes over time, with new topics

entering and old ones exiting.

If the traditional disciplines are partly arbitrary groupings, then surely WGS‟ interdisciplinarity

cannot consist in the fact that it has strong interests that have been spread across, rather than

within, these arbitrary boundaries. The fact that WGS has methodologies situated within a range

of traditional disciplines is not particularly meaningful if the fact that those methodologies

happento be in those disciplines in the first place is, to some extent, a historical accident. WGS

came into existence after the disciplines that it utilises, and so it happens to be crossing

boundariesas it composes its own set of methodologies and interests. But if we are talking about

interdisciplinary as consisting in the way that the field is constituted in terms of its interests and

methodologies, then the only difference between WGS and traditional disciplines in this regard is

that WGS is new;surely interdisciplinarity consists of more than mere newness.

A Composite of Interdisciplinary Individuals

It might be said, however, that this is sufficient for the kind of interdisciplinarity that WGS

scholars desire. After all, even if disciplines as they are now are historically contingent, this does


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not take away from the fact that they are as they are now, and that WGS, as an interdisciplinary

field, is breaking boundaries, historically contingent or otherwise. This seems to be enough to

distinguish WGS from traditional disciplines: regardless of the genesis of the boundaries

between disciplines, they are nevertheless still real, and WGS scholars are breaking them.

However, this seems to be a slightly different matter than that the field, as a whole, is constituted

across boundaries. After all, WGS is more than simply individuals being placed into a university

department, with no ability to engage with one another. Rather, it is the individuals in WGS who

themselves cross these boundaries. WGS is composed of a conglomeration of individual scholars,

who are themselves interdisciplinary. That is, interdisciplinarity happens first on the level of the

individual scholar, and we describe WGS as interdisciplinary by virtue of the fact that it is

composed of scholars who utilise methods from various traditional disciplines. WGS as a field is

not interdisciplinary in and of itself, i.e., in the way its interests and methods are constituted in

comparison to traditional disciplines; it is interdisciplinary by virtue of the nature of the scholars

who take part in it, and their own interdisciplinary activities.

Under this view different scholars have different foci: they know a lot about some things in their

own discipline, know somewhat less about various things that are connected to this central

interest, and only a little about things that are distantly connected to this concern.Those

individuals whose central interests lay at the intersection between two disciplines, as in Scholar 1

in Diagram 4.1 below, are interdisciplinary. Scholar 1, for instance, knows a fair amount about

things that are properly considered as part of Philosophy and Psychology and is, therefore, an

interdisciplinary academic. Scholar 2, by contrast, is a disciplinary researcher, as her knowledge

fits only within Psychology.

Diagram 4.1: Scholars’ fields of methodological expertise


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In this account, WGS is composed of people whose research interests are situated in the space

where disciplines intersect, such as Scholar 1. Non-interdisciplinary fields like psychologyare

such because the members (orthe majority of members) of the discipline are not situated in

thisintersectionary space.

However, is the fact that one scholar happens to be situated within the disciplinary conceptual

space in a way that puts them firmly within one discipline, while another is situated in space that

is shared between two disciplines, enough to declare the first scholar disciplinary, and the second

interdisciplinary? Perhaps so; but, if the disciplines themselves are contingent, then the fact that a

scholar is sited in a space that is interdisciplinary is also contingent. With a different history, it

could easily have been the case that a certain position that is, under the current distribution of

disciplines, disciplinary is, under an alternate genealogy, interdisciplinary, and vice versa.

The same problem exists if we imagine interdisciplinary scholars as having multiple areas of

strong interest across disciplines, as in Diagram 4.2 below.

Diagram 4.2: Scholar with multiple areas of expertise

If we acknowledge that the traditional disciplines themselves are diverse, and that their

composition and limits are contingent, then merely the fact that someone has multiple areas of

expertise is not enough to make someone interdisciplinary in a non-contingent sense. Like the

single-specialisation scholar, it could be that, if the division of disciplines had happened

otherwise, the multiple interests Scholar 3 has across disciplines were considered part of the

same discipline. Similarly, someone with multiple areas of expertise considered as part of the


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same discipline as things stand now could easily have been thought of as an interdisciplinary

scholar in another possible world.

However, once again it should be pointed out that history was not otherwise, and that the

interdisciplinary scholar is therefore crossing boundaries that really do exist. It could be enough

for interdisciplinarity to consist in being situated between disciplines as they are; how things

could have been is irrelevant. Certainly I am sympathetic to this claim, as one of the most

attractive features of WGS‟ claim to interdisciplinarity is that it is situated in regard to the

traditional disciplines in such a way that it has been able to“[interrogate] and [reconfigure] many

forms of knowledge in academe,” as well as“[transform] much of the „business as usual‟ of the

institution” (Orr, et al. 2012b, p.3).In this way WGS has been able to challenge the“ubiquitous

misogyny, masculinism and sexism establishing norms and exclusions in academic research,

curricula, canons, and pedagogies” (Brown 2001, p. 34).Something important is being captured

by this understanding of interdisciplinarity. However, putting things merely in terms of where

scholars happen to lie in the conceptual space of disciplines is not enough to distinguish WGS, as

an interdisciplinary field, from traditional disciplines. After all, there are plenty of scholars in

WGS who are not particularly interdisciplinary, preferring instead to work primarily with the

methods of the traditional discipline that they are most comfortable with. Similarly, there are

plenty of scholars within traditional disciplines whose work draws on tools from outside their

supposed field. Perhaps there are higher proportions in interdisciplinary fields such as WGS,

Peace Studies, and so on, but I argue that neither the configuration of fields internally and in

relation to other fields, nor the interdisciplinary nature of the scholars involved, are enough, on

their own, to make a field as a whole interdisciplinary.

A Capacity for Critique

What could be importantly interdisciplinary about interdisciplinary fields is their ability to self-

critique: WGS is interdisciplinary to the extent that it is able to engage in self-criticism.It

engages in a constant process of rethinking its core presuppositions, its disciplinary boundaries,

its epistemological methods, and so on. However, to distinguish itself from the traditional

disciplines in this regard, it must be the case that non-interdisciplinary fields, “despite diverse

ontological and epistemological bases, are assumed to share continuously employed, and even

static, methods and methodological flaws” (Side 2012, p. 55). This description of traditional

disciplines is not one, though, that I think most scholars of traditional disciplines would

recognise.

To take philosophy as an example, it can hardly be said that we utilise static methodologies. Like

WGS, there is constant discussion about the most appropriate ways to do research within

philosophy. Aside from the impact feminist thought has had in the rethinking of philosophical


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methods, which should not be underestimated (Martin 2008, p. 170), there is an ongoing

conversation about the place of the new field of experimental philosophy. Philosophers also

continue to debate what, exactly, the differences are between analytic and continental styles of

philosophy, and what role each should have in the discipline. It certainly cannot be claimed that

philosophy is a static discipline, a discipline that fails to self-critique. As such, we cannot

distinguish WGS from other non-interdisciplinary fields in this way.Nevertheless, this idea of

critique is an important one to WGS and its interdisciplinarity. It is simply that self-critique, like

composition, isnot inandofitselfsufficient to distinguish it as an interdisciplinary field. Rather, it

is the kind of critique, or more precisely why a certain kind of critique is possible in WGS, that

makes it interdisciplinary.

Cosmopolitan Academic Identification

What is important to distinguish between disciplines is not their content or their methods –there

is a great deal of overlap between disciplines in this regard. Furthermore, disciplines are

constituted not by being elaborated from some essential concept of „philosophy-ness‟ or

„sociology-ness,‟ but due to particular, contingent histories. This is, in many ways, the same as

nations; no nation is entirely distinct from any other: beliefs, customs, institutions, and so on,

overlap between nations. Every American is not, in every respect, distinct from every Italian.

Some Americans will be closer, in character, beliefs, attitudes, and so on, to some Italians

people, than they will be to some Americans. But to one extent or another members of such

communities police the boundaries of these always-porous categories as if they are distinct and

essential. In the same way, disciplines police their boundaries to one extent or another, and we

operate under the mistaken idea that philosophy, or psychology, or sociology, are in some sense

distinct and essentially constituted.

Nevertheless, we have a concept of what it is to be Canadian, or Japanese, or a New Zealander–

there are certain core ideas about what it means to belong to a certain nation: New Zealanders

like rugby, for example. The fact that many do not in fact enjoy rugby is neither here nor there;

there is still pressure to conform, and even resistance against such pressure has to acknowledge

that the norm exists (otherwise, how could we resist it). We make the statement „New Zealanders

like rugby,‟ papering over the diversity of views that actually exist in New Zealand society, as if

the category were essential rather than contingent, and liking rugby were part of that essence.

Similarly, despite the diversity in a field such as psychology, norms exist as to what „real‟

psychology consists in, and even those who do things otherwise nevertheless exist within a social

context in which such norms have some authority.

As Robyn Wiegmanpoints out, “knowledge production as we know it today is also an identarian

project” (2008, p. 58). We do not“simply study literature, politics, or social organization” (p. 61);


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rather, as we identify ourselves by our nationality, so do members of disciplines, WGS included,

identify themselves asbeing a philosopher, a WGS scholar, a political scientist, or a

sociologist.In the same way, then, that a cosmopolitan point of view (i.e., beingrooted in multiple

identities) can help us to see the contingencies of our national identities, our customs, our beliefs

and institutions, in a way that is difficult for those who have no ability to step outside their own

national identity, or at least who are not exposed to those of other identities, so can being a

psychologist and a WGS scholar, a WGS scholar and a political scientist, give us the critical

distance that lets us re-examine the methods, boundaries and interests of both disciplines.

This is not to say that disciplines, as they are, are not self-critical. However, a different kind of

critique is both made possible and encouraged by the existence of those who hold multiple

identities: insiders are constrained in some ways by what they are allowed to criticise and by

what problems they are able to perceive; and the criticism of outsiders can easily be dismissed

due to its source. As Trinh Minh-ha puts it:

The moment the insider steps from the inside she’s no longer a mere insider. She

necessarily looks in from the outside while also looking out from the inside. Not quite

the same, not quite the other, she stands in that underdetermined threshold place

where she constantly drifts in and out. Undercutting the inside/outside opposition,

her intervention is necessarily that of both not quite an insider and not quite an

outsider. (Minh-ha 1990, pp. 374-5)

This position helps us to “[bring] to light the limits and inconsistencies that have been studiously

avoided, to open up new possibilities, new ways of thinking about what might be done to make

things better.” It“disturbs our settled expectations and incites us to explore, indeed to invent,

alternate routes” (Scott 2008b, p. 7).As Julie Thomson Klein puts it, WGS “illustrates the „both-

and‟ strategy of interdisciplinary fields. Feminists work simultaneously in disciplines and in

opposition to them, wielding their forms of power and authority for feminist purposes” (2005, p.

192).Being both an insider and an outsider allows one to critique practices sympathetically, as an

insider, while at the same time being able to put ourselves at a critical distance from practices, so

that we can view them afresh.

It is not simply the case that WGS scholars can use this threshold position to critique the

traditional disciplines; it also positions WGS scholars so that they can engage in an “intellectual

project that has turned its gaze back on the field itself… asking challenging, and provocative,

questions about how WGS has produced its own knowledges” (Orr 2012, p. 2). Single-

disciplinary scholars feel the normative force of the discipline more strongly: when your identity

is tied to a certain discipline – when you consider yourself a philosopher, for example – then the


17

threat of being rejected by the community of philosophers is one that cannot be brushed aside. It

operates at the very least unconsciously.

It does not matter that the disciplines are contingent, and that the norms are also contingent, in

the same way that our national or local identities are similarly contingent. If I were living

elsewhere, the norms that bound me would differ. But I am living where I am, and to the extent

that I identify with that place, its historically contingent norms have force for me. Some norms

have more force than others, and are seen as more essential. But no norms are followed

universally; in reality, there is nothing that is essentially what makes someone a New Zealander,

at least in terms of character, belief, and so on. Rather, what makes someone a New Zealander is

that a certain set of norms, of greater or lesser force, exist for them. Similarly, there is nothing

that is universally in common between all political scientists, except for the fact that they

consider themselves political scientists, and therefore move in a world in which the norms of that

community are real to them, whether they end up following them or not. Cosmopolitans, on the

other hand, feel these pressures less strongly. If one considers oneself a member of the

philosophy community as well as a member of the WGS community, an implicit threat of

expulsion carries less bite. When we disagree with the norms of one community, we can retreat

into the other, and we are more likely to see the faults of both disciplines, as well as be less likely

to jump to defend such faults when others point them out.

Of course, it is not always the case that, as much as we might identify with a certain discipline,

we are accepted within it, and such acceptance by others is also a prerequisite to be a

philosopher, psychologist, and so on. Considering the way in which historically “powerful

authoritative voices, largely male… two centuries or so ago began to corral all kinds of

knowledge into the disciplinary forms that came over the last century to structure academies of

higher learning, and that often continue today to define our intellectual and institutional lives”

(Boxer 2005, p. 121), fields such as WGS are essential for scholars who do work that does not sit

easily with the norms underlying traditional disciplines. In the context of WGS, the existence of

interdisciplinary WGS departments, and the ability of the scholars who join them to use them as

an intellectual community of refuge to retreat to when they find themselves marginalised within

their “home” disciplines, has helped over time to legitimate gender as a category of analysis

(Klein 2005, p. 192).

Conclusion

In summary, interdisciplinarity, for WGS and other fields, is not related to their distinct interests,

methodologies, core and peripheries, or the positions of individual scholars.If we are to consider

WGS‟ interdisciplinarity as consisting in such things it is not able to distinguish itself from

traditional disciplines. Nor do I think it should distinguish itself in this way. If this is not


18

interdisciplinarity, but the idea of interdisciplinarity is something that we want to hold on, then

we should recognise thatinterdisciplinarityconsists in a cosmopolitan academic identity in which

scholars inhabit and identify with two or more disciplines. Such researchers are in a unique

position, as both insiders and outsiders, and are able to undertake a certain kind of critique.

Identifying with more than one community of scholars reduces the force of the disciplinary

norms, both consciously and unconsciously, and allows us to both see and freely criticise

problems. This is the nature of interdisciplinarity, and its value.

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