[Reader-list] Withering away of disciplines: Is 'interdisciplinary' a solution?

[Sunandan K.N.]

Hello readers (and writers)
As the third part of my posting I want t share some thoughts on
disciplines and interdisciplinary tendencies in human sciences. The
great confidence of the 19th century positivism had been loosing its
omnipotence by the early 20th century. In the first half of the 20th
century this was reflected as self reconstitutions within disciplines.
For e.g. many philosophers argued that medicine or biology in general
could not be considered as 'Science' (Karl Popper). By the 1970s
withering away of disciplines become more prominent once the modernity
itself became a problematic. The solution offered (by the self claimed
modernists) was interdisciplinary programs. In universities and
outside this became fashionable word.
Just look in to the example of Economics. Starting from Adam Smith
economics was and is not just a form of understanding human exchanges
but a conscious and different way of organizing people and natural
world (Foucault). In India from the colonialist started to make,
understand re-constitute all human activities within the realm of
economics. Of course there were fissures within colonial practices but
this was the dominant discourse. Nationalist and Marxists historians
followed the same episteme and started to explain all events based on
economic rationality. Even communal riots, festivals, myths, caste,
and say what not, were explained on the basis of economic rationality.
No need to say how history and sociology of industry was constructed.
If this was just a misunderstanding of 'actual' situations' then we
could have solved it by more accurate knowledge, but it is not.  This
is a way of governing, disseminating power and controlling human
beings. But human world is too complex and interwoven with multiples
inseparable streams of thoughts, ideas, objects and relations among
all these.  So the human activities always wriggled away from the
control and knowledge
When I start to analyze the activities of boys working in various
workshops at Coimbatore, I am not supposing an over-determination any
factor: economy, caste or technology. Moreover, it is also not an
interdisciplinary approach. My interest is the overlapping areas of
all these which is 'more than inter-disciplinary' which might be
explainable only through new categories. So the major task is in this
project is that of developing a new 'language' to express these
activities. Finally there is no claim that this language will be more
perfect but there will be an attempt to make it more democratic.
Sunandan