Blackboard Exercises
Daniel Mahala and Jody Swilky (2003) “Constructing Disciplinary Space: The Borders, Boundaries, and Zones of English”
Description
In “Constructing Disciplinary Space: The Borders, Boundaries, and Zones of English,” Daniel Mahala and Jody Swilky critically examine the romanticized conceptions of contact zones, interdisciplinarity, globalism, and border crossing in definitions of academic space for English Studies, and the authors reveal the ways in which these metaphors of university and disciplinary spatiality are driven by global designs and local histories. Furthermore, in a Foucauldian manner, they tease out the implications of how these metaphors both empower and constrain faculty and English departments by providing an opportunity for movement yet also influencing, shaping, charting and delineating the very movement and content of the discipline. The argument that underlies this examination is that intradisciplinary discourse about English Studies does not exist in isolation but is ultimately steeped in and embedded in the university’s material reality--both part of an immediate local community with a distinct history and relationship to the university and part of a multinational capitalist economy. Thus, the facile, unquestioned, and uncritical use of these metaphors in the academy serves to hide the bi-polar alliegances of university administrations and the very real-world (both global and local) power dynamics that shape, restrict, and open avenues of growth and development for English as a discipline and the consequences of these for its faculty and students. It would behoove us, as practitioners, Mahala and Swilky propose, to take into account these ecologies of segmentation when we consider our own research, internal divisions within the discipline, and place within the university because this more realistic understanding of the discipline as a product of and a producer of local histories and global designs is essential if practitioners are going to actually shape the future ideological situation and content of the discipline.
Author
Marlene De La Cruz-Guzman
Date of Upload
11/03/09