All entries for Tuesday 19 January 2010

January 19, 2010

Tony Becher's epistemography of academia

It seems natural enough to think of knowledge and its properties and relationships in terms of landscapes, and to saturate epistemological discussion with spatial metaphors: fields and frontiers; pioneering, exploration, false trails; charts and landmarks. (Becher, 1989:36)

However, the process of locating a discipline in relation to its neighbours is in itself of limited interest, and should be seen as no more than a preliminary to other more fundamental issues. Boundaries, after all, do not exist merely as lines on a map: they denote territorial possessions that can be encroached upon, colonized and reallocated. Some are so strongly defended as to be virtually impenetrable; others are weakly guarded and open to incoming and outgoing traffic. (Bencher, 1989:36)

Becher, Tony, Academic Tribes and Territories: intellectual enquiry and the cultures of disciplines, Open University Press, 1989.


Robert O'Toole : 19 Jan 2010 12:27 |  Tags:   |  Comments (2) |  Report a problem

Subjectivity, multiplicity, creativity and freedom in classical Athens

The life, identity and education of the Athenian (male) citizen was constituted as a complex multiplicity of intersecting lines. But as Oswyn Murray argues, these were lines of flight as much as lines of control, enabling a kind of transversal freedom and creativity:

This freedom derives precisely from the fact that the same man belongs to a deme, a phatry, a family, a group of relatives, a religious association; and living in a complex world of conflicting groups and social duties, he possesses the freedom to choose between their demands, and so to escape any particular dominant form of social patterning. (Murray, 1986: 210)

Now contrast that to the lot of women in Athens, being governed by a single relationship with their alloted governing male.

Murray, Oswyn "Life and Society in Classical Greece" in The Oxford History of the Classical World, OUP, 1986.


Robert O'Toole : 19 Jan 2010 07:43 |  Tags:  |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem