Assignment #8, Jared S. 1
âThere must be a new way of teaching, one that âdoes not just reflect itself, but turns back on itself so as to subvert itself and truly teaches only insofar as it subverts it selfâ (Felman 39)â
 Stanley Fish, âBeing Interdisciplinary is so Very Hard to Do,â p104
Throughout the discussion on the various ways academia might achieve interdisciplinary, Stanley Fish, through the above statement, addresses the difficulties posed by pedagogy. Situated in his second section, which is preceded by a historical and critical look at left and right views of interdisciplinarity and politics within academia, Fish addresses one strategy to release the boundaries of constructed disciplines by âpoking holes in the discursive fabric those agendas weave, replacing⌠with the disruptive disease of relentless critiqueâ (105) He then offers in counterpoint to the above solution that âblurring of existing authoritative disciplinary lines and boundariesââthrough questioning bringing about âanti-knowledgeâââwill only create new lines and new authoritiesâ reinstating political boundaries that the ânew way of teachingâ sought to dispel (106). Subversion, Fish agues through the primary quote under discussion, offers one pedagogical technique to prepare students to question their discipline in the hopes of interdisciplinary boundaries, which he then posits is an impossibility. Fish the continues in his third section addressing the problem with the previous solution due to the inability to gain autonomy from the primary discipline in order to conduct an authentic critique. He does not abandon the âanti-knowledgeâ however. Fish concludes that fashioning new disciplinesâthrough blurred boundaries encouraged through ânew teachingââpaired with imperial ambitions can regain the original intent of education âwhose goal is âthe cultural formation of the self so that it might teach the fullness of its potentialitiesâ(14)â(101).