Interdisciplinarity as a Rhetorical and Epistemological Practice: Erasing Boundaries Between Humanities and Social Sciences or the Need for Unity of Knowledge?

Abstract

The paper discusses the concept of interdisciplinarity from the perspective of humanities and social sciences. As both an idea and practice, interdisciplinarity is understood within the context of the complex dynamics of creating and reshaping institutional arrangements that regulate the processes of knowledge production, distribution, and instrumentalization in Western society, with universities, research centers, and departments at its core, organized according to separate academic disciplines. The paper questions the understanding of disciplines as closed, homogeneous, and static structures of knowledge organization. Instead, it reflects on the complex, multiple, and topological relationships of mutual interpenetration and constitution of disciplines, emphasizing their inherent hybridity, especially within the context of the synoptic identity of humanities disciplines. Furthermore, the paper highlights the moral assumptions underlying interdisciplinary research initiatives. The productivity of the conceptual framework concerning the centralistic, pluralistic, and integralistic models of interdisciplinarity is highlighted in analyzing the possibilities and outcomes of interdisciplinary approaches in social and humanities studies.