Breaking the Disciplines: Reconceptions in Culture, Knowledge and Art

What constitutes knowledge? How is it produced? Whose purposes does it serve? With the social uses of knowledge and increasing commodification of the education system matters of public debate, this is a timely and original book. Noted international scholars from philosophy, literature, art theory & practice and anthropology explore what it means to be a philosopher; how art and literature can inhabit the spaces between text and image; and how contemporary women artists are breaching the traditional body-mind split in their work. The book shows too how close studies of objects which confound traditional definitions - a mechanical cow invented by a farmer, and the curious case of a mechanical monk - can open up dynamic new reconceptions of traditional systems of knowledge.