Interdisciplinarity and Institution

Abstract

This paper suggests that as higher education systems in Southeast Asia begins to embrace the

“interdisciplinary turn”, there is an urgent need to critically analyse the relation between

interdisciplinarity and academic institutions. Arguing that the situation is problematised as the

region struggles to compete within the increasingly globalised knowledge economy, this paper then

explains how the self-organising structures of artist-collectives from the region provide models for

expanding the creative potentials of an educational institution.

Keywords: Interdisciplinary, institution, knowledge-economy, self-organise.

1. The Knowledge Network

Now so more than ever, with the fuelled global interest in interdisciplinarity – as seen in the

many programmes offered by colleges and universities not only in the Euro-American region but

also in places previously considered to be at the periphery of the modern education system such

as Southeast Asia (1) – it has become urgent to critically reflect upon the relation between the

ʻinterdisciplinary turnʼ and the academic institutions that house it. By the ʻinterdisciplinary turnʼ,

what is implied is a pedagogical move away from the rigid compartmentalisation of academic

disciplines, towards an approach that relies on a fluid traversing across disciplinary boundaries to

create a network of methodologies and insights that are able to dissect the pressing problems of

contemporaneity. Compared to the structured knowledge generated by specialised disciplines –

with their established traditions and procedures – the interdisciplinary approach produces

knowledge that may instead be characterised as ʻschizophrenicʼ (2): scrambling disciplinary codes

in being process-oriented rather than outcome-based, yet intuitively tuned in to the interconnected

state of the objects under their study. Considering the realities of globalisation, it is hardly a

surprise that the significance of interdisciplinarity are becoming internalised in higher education

systems beyond the western world.

The debates surrounding Nicolas Bourriaudʼs concept of ʻrelational aestheticsʼ are instructive for

problematising interdisciplinarity: just as critics reprimand Bourriaudʼs insufficient politicisation of an

aesthetic framework that conceives social relations as a necessary part of an art practice, the

interdisciplinary approach to education must also maintain its criticality towards the types of

relations it creates. One could direct Claire Bishopʼs incisive questioning of relational aesthetics to

interdisciplinarityʼs emphasis on building connections and relations across existing academic

disciplines: “what types of relations are being produced, for whom, and why?” (Bishop, 2004, p. 65)

In this paper, it is the relation between interdisciplinary initiatives and academic institutions that is

put under scrutiny.

Observing the situation from Singapore, we must note how its major higher education

institutions in the arts – namely Lasalle College of the Arts, Nanyang Technological University

School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Academy of the Arts, as well as National University of

Singapore Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences – engage in various activities that show them to be

proponents of the interdisciplinary approach, as evident in the research clusters, funding schemes,

studentsʼ projects as well as exhibitions that are produced. However, while the move towards

interdisciplinarity seems to grow from a genuine desire to circumvent the intellectual restrictions

often found within specialised departments and to explore the possibilities of art education, it is

false to assume that developing and implementing the interdisciplinary model to academic

activities is an easy task. An easy argument would point to the relative “new-ness” of such

approach, especially to the Southeast Asian region, in contrast to the specialised disciplines that

have longer histories behind them. Yet, as explained below, the limitations encountered by the

interdisciplinary approach in education instead stem from a need to problematise interdisciplinarity

itself in terms of its relation to the institution in which such initiatives are located.

This is not a question of posing an “institutional critique”, but rather an inquiry into how the

overlooked possibilities of an academic institution may be elicited in order to facilitate an

interdisciplinary model of education. By doing so, interdisciplinarity will stand a chance for being an

epistemic methodology, rather than a jargon that merely celebrates the assumption of a pluralistic

perspective towards knowledge – a popular assumption that circulates widely today. This, as

explained below, is less to do with the culture or traditions of each institution but more with the

wider paradigm of a knowledge-based economy that academic institutions are currently facing.

2. Interdisciplinarity and Institution

Setting aside the difficulty faced by social scientists and economists alike in agreeing upon a

definition of the “knowledge economy”, for the purpose of this essay it is sufficient to refer to it as

the replacement of natural and labour resources as economic driving forces by knowledge. In

contrast to other Southeast Asian countries that struggle to keep up with the knowledge economy,

the 2012 World Bank Knowledge Economy Index (KEI) ranks Singapore within the top 25 positions

(World Bank 2012). Another report, writing of Singaporeʼs status as an “advanced economy”, puts

it as an example for other countries in the region alongside Finland and the Republic of Korea

(Asian Development Bank, 2014). While Singaporeʼs unique position in the knowledge economy is

heavily influenced by the development of its Information and Communication Technology (ICT)

sectors (Khuong, 2013), the rising popularity of interdisciplinarity may also be seen as a move to

compete within this economy.

According to the Marxist theory of capital accumulation, an asset only becomes valuable

when it generates profit through the production of a commodity. If knowledge is understood as an

asset, then outputs such as interdisciplinary studies may be considered as a unique commodifiable

product that integrates resources – tangible and intangible – from the various academic disciplines.

The extent to which interdisciplinary outputs are commodifiable is evident in the emergence of new

“industries” within the field of education, namely the various research initiatives, study programmes

and course modules that offer the interdisciplinary approach. Yet positioning interdisciplinarity as a

commodity is problematic, not least because in order to fulfill market demands, education solely

becomes a vocational undertaking, with the pressure to produce employable graduates and

predictable outcomes governing academic activities. Here, the nature of education as a site for

intellectual experimentation becomes undermined.

In terms of its impact on the role of academic institutions, the knowledge economy reveals its

functional and ideological shortcomings, where the role of the institution is reduced to being

authorised managers of valuable assets. A hierarchical mode of organisation is deployed, where

knowledge is treated in “concentrated specialised functional units” (Adler, 2001, p. 216) under the

watchful eye of a centralised power that makes its presence known only through endless

bureaucracy. As Paul S. Adler observes, within such a mode of organisation, knowledge is

exercised through routine partition tasks but not innovatively to generate new knowledge (ibid.). As

such, this mode of institutional organisation is ill fitting to the requirements of the interdisciplinary

model of knowledge production.

The “interdisciplinary turn” thus reveals a pressing question about academic institutions: how

could it expand its role beyond efficient administrative monitoring to housing complex processes of

learning that are not restricted to departmental competence, and more importantly, to become a

space that safeguards the non-formulaic engagement of ideas?

3. Productive Lack

In considering how the function of an academic institution may be expanded to accommodate the

needs of interdisciplinarity, observing art practices that have addressed this particular issue in the

wake of globalised neoliberalism is a worthy exercise. What must especially be observed is the

articulation of alternative models of institutions, and aspects of these propositions that are relevant

for an institutional model that will be suitable for interdisciplinary practices. Furthermore, given that

academic institutions must respond to cultural specificity, examples of such art practice from

Southeast Asia are mentioned here. Yet for the sake of brevity, the paper will only focus on the

Indonesian artist-collectives of ruangrupa and Jatiwangi art Factory (JaF).

In relation to financial pressures of securing grants and funding needed to implement

educational programmes, the first thing to note is how the alternative models of institution

construed by these artist-collectives are grounded on the notion of a “productive lack”. As Nicolas

Siepen and Äsa Sonjasdotter write, the distinction between state-run and corporate art institutions

and th self-organised structures of artist-run spaces lies in the way they relate to financial support

(Siepen and Sonjasdotter, 2010, p.1). In the case of the former, receiving funds often mean that

they must follow pre-determined management regulations and facing the risk of shutting down

operations in the absence of funds (ibid). The latter model, instead, naturally runs on a productive

lack in the sense that they treat the lack of government or corporate funds not as a limitation but as

an opening up of possibilities in terms of what they can do and how they do it, as the absence of

external control brings a flexibility to the kind of structure they may construct to organise their

institutions.

Just as academic institutions in Southeast Asia struggle with the commercialisation of education

in the increasingly dominant knowledge economy, art practices from the region also face extreme

pressures to negotiate the impacts of the global art market. Conceived in the early 2000s against

the backdrop of Indonesiaʼs Reform years as well as increasing international attention towards

contemporary Asian art, both ruangrupa and JaF also operate on this idea of a “productive lack”.

Being non-recipient of state or corporate funds means that they are unable to employ professional

experts, but must instead rely on the resources they have as a collective. This creates a dynamic

where the roles of the individuals change constantly: rather than forming a hierarchical structure of

organisation, the collectives form a fluid, horizontal arrangement for each memberʼs responsibilities

and rights. As power is distributed across the institution rather than centralised, problems about

over-governance and bureaucracy are also dissolved. Limited internal resources also necessitate

them to align their movements with other bodies and institutions, expanding their reach worldwide.

While the awareness of forming global alliances is part of their practice, the organic manner in

which working as a collective come to them also testifies to a regional sensibility – an important

point, given that institutions are shaped by specific cultural contexts. Considering the nature of

interdisciplinarity to move across existing boundaries and create unpredictable intersections while

attending to particular cultural contexts, then these aspects of institutional organisation are highly

suitable for an interdisciplinary model of knowledge production and dissemination.

In addition to this, the “productive lack” upon which this model of institution is based also

necessitates there to be constant “collective improvisation” (Siepen and Sonjasdotter, 2010, p. 5).

A similar view is found in the statement of Ade Darmawan, founder of ruangrupa: “…most

initiatives are first generated out of necessity, with subsequent experimentation to find the structure

or model that best suits. This is a process of survival…” (Darmawan in Berghuis, 2011, p. 406.

Emphasis Berghuis). If one considers improvisation and experimentation as a form of education,

as Siepen and Sonjasdotter do, then the production and dissemination of knowledge is already

embedded in the way these artist-collectives organise themselves. In other words, if an institution

is able to necessitate “collective improvisation” in the process of education, then it may succeed in

moving beyond disciplinary boundaries. Furthermore, considering Darmawanʼs view, one may say

that it is only in this way that education could “survive” in an era where knowledge is positioned –

problematically - as an economic engine.

By re-assessing how the function of the academic institution may be expanded, we come to re-

think the idea of education and especially what education should be with an approach that is

interdisciplinary. Derridaʼs commentaries on the future of the Humanities leave us with a helpful

image: rather than preoccupying itself with the task of learning and re-learning past truths, as an

“event”, education is responsible for “causing things to happen” (Derrida, 2005, p. 13). The

important question about an interdisciplinary approach to education, then, is not a matter of “what it

is” but rather of “what it does”, of its ability to traverse the walls of academic departments in

creating a perpetually expanding network of knowledge. In the above analysis of how academic

institutions may ensure that education fulfills this function, we find that much must be learnt from

the self-organising structures of artist-collectives in terms of how an institution may explore and

expand its creative potentials. This is especially urgent for Southeast Asian higher education

systems that are currently turning towards interdisciplinarity.

Endnotes 1. As a broad illustration, interdisciplinary studies centres and study programmes may be found in the

Philippines (Ateneo de Manila University, Far Eastern University), Malaysia (International Islamic University of Malaysia, The Universiti Technologi), Brunei (Sultan Sharif Ali Islamic University), Cambodia (Royal University of Phnom Penh), Indonesia (University of Indoesia) Thailand (Thammasat University), and Vietnam (The Vietnamese-German University and Vietnam National University).

2. Here, I am referring to Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattariʼs concept of “schizoanalysis”. See Deleuze, G & and Guattari, F 2004, Anti-Oedipus, Continuum, London and New York.

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