Feminist Theory Theater on Monday brought about thirty of us to the Mandeville Suite, an apartment for visiting dignitaries in Muir College, with a roof terrace overlooking the ocean. In the living room, a large coffee table was covered in props and costumes. We were each given an envelope containing a copy of a 1993 memo from the SSP archive, composed a then-grad-student. The memo laid out two divergent visions of the program, (one positively anarchic, the other more structured). It seemed to have been written in response to some sort of crisis, and emanated a certain desperation about the challenges facing Science Studies, then an unsteady four-year-old with lots of disposal income courtesy of a huge grant from the NSF. Those were the days of mandatory team teaching, and pairs of academic megafauna from the three founding departments (phil, soc, hist) would hash out their metaphysical disagreements in class. Rumor has it that one core seminar featured three professors clashing antlers in the presence of a single hapless student.
FTT instructed us to split into groups and physically act out parts of the text before reconvening to perform our enactments in front of each other. This turned out to be pretty tough. I won’t go into our group’s psychodrama, but suffice to say that I regressed to a kid at a tense birthday party. The facilitators tried vainly to keep the mood upbeat and playful, intervening with the slightly forced gaiety of parents unable to figure out why their child’s guests were having a such a hard time of it.
At 5pm we all trooped back into the living room for the re-enactments. Memorable images include Theo Dryer in a green wig leading a train dance, Christine Payne in a shark’s head and magenta heels rocking the nude suit, and John Ruiz looking on with dogged sociological detachment as members of his group lay on the carpet under a large black fishnet, murmuring about rhizomatic connectivity and the space-time continuum.
Our group performed last, out on the back terrace. We walked stiffly towards one another repeating narrow formulas from our respective disciplines. When we got close enough to make hand-to-hand contact, we broke into ‘joyful’ interdisciplinary conversation, only to start quarreling and move apart again. At least, I think that’s what we did, but I couldn’t say for sure. God knows what it looked like. It felt completely insane. I was dressed as Jeremy Bentham’s corpse, by the way.
Pondering this exercise afterwards, one thing came across with stark clarity: the degree of pessimism and cynicism about interdisciplinarity. From the memo itself, to Christine’s reverse striptease (embodying the problem of too many different departments getting involved), to our group’s semi-choreographed quarrel, to the profound social weirdness of the whole occasion, I came away re-impressed by how difficult it is to communicate productively across disciplinary divides.
Anyway, I am greatly looking forward to the resumption of normal service on Monday, when STS rising star Martine Lappe will tell us about epigenetics…