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This week we were asked to dedicate approximate thirty minutes of uninterrupted time to engage in a writing exercise reflecting on one of the readings that has been covered in the course so far. This exercise was designed to help us explore our own thoughts and feelings about the reading, engage with our “inner” dialogue, and perhaps, come to new ideas or ways of thinking. I have chosen to keep my reflective analysis submission private and instead, provide this short description of the exercise and the subjects of my reflections.

I selected “Theorizing Interdisciplinarity” (Dalke et al., n.d.) as the subject of this (my first) reflective analysis. In this reading, the authors describe a process of “interdisciplinary play” where participants use metaphor, metonymy, and synecdoche to communicate theories and ideas across disciplines. The interaction is dynamic, not just exchanging metaphors, but also changing each discipline’s framework of understanding through that exchange, in what can be an ongoing or iterative process that flows both ways.

This reading was challenging for me, both in its use of language and in being able to imagine participating in the process of “interdisciplinary play” described by the authors. This is in contrast to what I experienced with my group’s assigned reading for last week, “Ten Reflective Steps for Rendering Research Societally Relevant” (Pohl et al., 2017). The language and examples from that reading were much more concrete and accessible to me and I could more easily envision myself participating in the process described.

In last week’s group discussions, our instructor, Dr. Angela Specht mentioned that this reading always reminds her of the “Darmok” episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (Kolbe, 1991), so I also took this opportunity to re-watch this iconic episode, which as Dr. Specht suggested, has a related premise. The episode provides a starting point to consider how metaphor might be used to communicate ideas between disciplines – or in this case, cultures. Here, with the added challenge of metaphor being the sole form of communication without both parties having knowledge of the mythology or even the context upon which the metaphor is based.

References

Dalke, A., Grobstein, P., & McCormack, E. (n.d.). Theorizing Interdisciplinarity: Metaphor and Metonymy, Synecdoche and Surprise. Retrieved January 23, 2022, from https://serendipstudio.org/local/scisoc/DalkeGrobsteinMcCormack.html

Kolbe, W. (Director). (1991, September 30). Darmok (Season 5, Episode 2). In Star Trek: The Next Generation. CBS.

Pohl, C., Krutli, P., & Stauffacher, M. (2017). Ten reflective steps for rendering research societally relevant. GAIA – Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society, 26(1), 43–51.

Notes

This post is an abbreviated version of the Reflective Analysis assignment I submitted in Week 3 of MAIS 601 Making Sense of Theory in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Athabasca University (Dr. Angela Specht, January 2022).

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