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ERIC Number: EJ1237319
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2018
Pages: 20
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1081-4760
EISSN: N/A
What Color Is the Interdisciplinary?
McCormack, Brian
Issues in Interdisciplinary Studies, v36 n1 p14-33 2018
Color has been considered as a special problem in several disciplines, notably art and music, but also philosophy and literature. Given that color is also a central feature of some scientific thought (think of Newton and the color spectrum, for example), the question "What color is the interdisciplinary?" seems to be a golden opportunity to investigate the interdisciplinarity of color. My question, which follows from Michael Taussig's similar anthropological question, "What color is the sacred?" points to important issues about the nature of interdisciplinary thinking. Rather than merely posit an answer such as, for example, "interdisciplinarity is red," we would do well to think through those issues. The question is novel not only because it invents the nominal adjectival form of "interdisciplinarity" as "the interdisciplinary" (as in "the sacred"), but also because it approaches interdisciplinarity with a hint of both reverence and irreverence. Giorgio Agamben's take on "the sacred" and Walter Benjamin's understanding of color figure into my response to the question. Agamben explains the importance of the "profanation" of the apparatuses of "the sacred." And Benjamin's ideas about the color of experience establish the basis of an answer to our question: the rainbow.
Association for Interdisciplinary Studies. Oakland University, Macomb County, 44575 Garfield Road Building UC2 Suite 103, Clinton Township, MI 48038. Tel: 586-263-6098; Fax: 586-263-6261; e-mail: aisorg@oakland.edu; Web site: https://interdisciplinarystudies.org/issues/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A