The Roads not/Separately Taken: The Dilemma of Segmented Disciplines and Epistemic Implications

The image of a man in the woods

Mailloux’s (2000) historical trace of disciplinary conflicts, rhetorical transitions, and epistemological aftermaths contains a wealth of information. Amidst all those arguments raised, the author’s conclusion most closely aligns with some of the ideas I have previously had because of my encounters with identity politics and labeling in academia both as a student and teacher. Academics continue to fall short in terms of epistemic depth in the ongoing struggle for discipline autonomy, with both students and professors suffering due to the ongoing, myopic acts of disassociation. 

During my time as a student in an English department, every student took the same classes up until their second year, at which point they moved to either the language or literature arm of their curriculum. Either way, every student loses out on certain knowledge that could have been useful to them if that division did not exist. As if that weren’t enough, the department began taking steps to establish a third division it intended to title “communication studies”. How much genuine “communication” would be achieved with the continuous cycle of epistemic severance and strandedness? (180) [TO-02]

[Mailloux, 2000]