Undisciplined?

An origin story

In her 2023 book Nonmonogamy and Happiness, Carrie Jenkins wrote:

The academy is divided into disciplines, both administratively and intellectually, and all too often, being “interdisciplinary”—having a foot in two disciplines—is enough for people to regard your work with suspicion, as though it signals that you aren’t sufficiently committed to or competent in either discipline. You surely can’t be a “real” sociologist if you’re also an economist, or (god forbid) a physicist. It all feels eerily similar to the social policing of compulsory monogamy, to be honest: you can’t “really” love one discipline if you also love another.

The physical landscape of a contemporary university represents the division into disciplines. “The sciences,” for example, are typically located far away from “the arts,” as though the practitioners of each should expect to have nothing to say to one another. The campus in this way makes physically manifest the values and assumptions of the institution, much as (as Kim Tallbear has pointed out) the division of land into nuclear-family-sized parcels manifests the values and assumptions of colonial patriarchy. This active division of knowledge distracts attention from the reality of interconnection. …

I prefer to think of my work these days as undisciplined, a term I prefer to “interdisciplinary,” since the latter suggests that one is still acknowledging the disciplinary structure despite straddling some of its divisions.

Austen Osworth gave an inspiring presentation in summer 2024 called What Is New Media? in which they appealed to this passage in developing their concept of Undisciplined Art. This sparked a conversation between Carrie and Austen about how they could pursue more Undisiplined work together. Carrie asked Robin Roberts, from whom she’d been learning (and unlearning) about how to do enquiry in a good way on stolen Indigenous land, if he would be willing to join the team for this project. When he agreed, this core group of three developed an application to SSHRC for Insight Grant Funding, which was granted for five years (2025-2030).

So, what does it mean?

The search for knowledge in the ‘Western’ academic tradition has organized itself into a system of divisions known as disciplines. These divisions are manifested in both abstract and tangible ways: the physical layout of a university campus, for example, is predicated on the assumption that ‘arts’ and ‘sciences’ are separate enterprises, located far from one another both symbolically and physically. Such deeply ingrained assumptions constitute an unexamined backdrop to scholarly life.

In addition to dividing up subject matter, disciplinary divisions determine acceptable methods for academic enquiry. They have ultimately even shaped what knowledge and enquiry themselves are understood to be. One large-scale example of this is that academic enquiry as a whole has allied itself to ‘science’ in opposition to ‘art,’ such that even within ‘arts’ disciplines, works of art are not normally legible as units of scholarly production. Except where specific provisions are made, artistic works are delegitimized as containers for knowledge, and artistic practices are not acceptable as methods of enquiry. By contrast, the word ‘science’ is often deployed (both within and beyond academia) as if it were a straightforward synonym for ‘knowledge’ or ‘enquiry.’

While disciplinary specialization has benefits, it comes with important costs, especially when it is understood as the only acceptable approach for all academics, rather than a possible route for some. Division hinders the advancement of forms of knowledge that demand attention to interconnection, interdependence, and holistic thinking. It can also lead to the reinvention of wheels and failures of legibility.

Existing concepts such as ‘interdisciplinarity’ and ‘transdisciplinarity’ suggest a straddling or reorganizing of disciplinary divisions without thereby invoking any critique of the very idea that enquiry should be organized by such divisions. The aims of The Undisciplined Project are considerably more radical.

Viewing knowledge through the lens of disciplinary division is not universal or inevitable. The disciplines familiar to us comprise a contingent structure, one that is localized to a small, relatively recent portion of history, and inherited from a Eurocentric colonial tradition. There are other ways of understanding knowledge, including what is typically classified as ‘scientific’ knowledge which conceptualize it holistically, and as neither separate nor separable from ‘art.’ Interconnectedness and interdependence are crucial and central elements of many Indigenous epistemologies, including those local to the Pacific Northwest coast where the project team will be undertaking this work. In Haida thought, for example, a core principle is gina 'waadluxan gud ad kwaagid (‘everything depends on everything else’ in Xaayda Kil). The Nuu-Chah-Nulth worldview is grounded in the principle heshook-ish tsawalk (‘everything is one’).

Neca?mat ct (‘we are all one’) is a teaching in the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ language of the Musqueam people, in whose unceded territory UBC’s Vancouver campus is located. Knowledge and enquiry here have always taken multiple forms, centrally including visual arts, dance, and story.

The goal of The Undisciplined Project is to call attention to, and open for critical discussion, the structure of disciplinary divisions inherited by the contemporary colonial University, as well as to imagine futures that point beyond it.