Editorial – António Pedro Pita

As part of the celebration of the 25th anniversary of CEIS20 and the CEIS20 Colloquium – 25 years: history, perspectives and practices in interdisciplinarity, António Pedro Pita, former CEIS20 Scientific Coordinator, signs the January Editorial. This testimony continues a cycle of editorials on the theme of interdisciplinarity at the Centre signed by its former scientific coordinators.

A brief account* of a scientific coordination practice

This testimonial is a very schematic review of the importance I attached to the definition of an interdisciplinary strategy during my time as Scientific Coordinator of CEIS20. It is therefore neither a history of that period nor a reflection on the Centre’s place in humanities and social sciences research.

1. I was the scientific coordinator of CEIS20 between 2011 and 2016. During this period, as usual, I was also director of the journal “Estudos do Século XX” and coordinator of the PhD programme in Contemporary Studies.

However, I have been an integral member of the Centre since its foundation in 1998, with regular activities in the group to which I belong (in its longest standing name: “Artistic Currents and Intellectual Movements”).

Among these activities, I highlight the organisation in 2004 of the colloquium “Structural Transformations of the Portuguese Intellectual Field, 1900-1950”, in collaboration with Trindade, and the preparation in 2009 of Volume 9 of the journal “Estudos do Século XX” in the theme “Hipóteses de Século”. It is worth noting that, in both cases, the aim was to find a theme (rather than a “subject”), the study of which required the contribution of different types of knowledge (rather than “disciplines”). The sensitivity to the issue that concerns us today was alive and well. It just needed to be translated into operational awareness.

This active presence at the Centre has also allowed me to be present at various moments of evaluation and to make an observation which has become a permanent feature and which appears in the reports of the various panels. The observation is: the interdisciplinary organisation and practice of a centre that wanted to call itself a centre for interdisciplinary studies is limited and therefore unsatisfactory; in terms of organisation: the centre is not structured strictly in “disciplines” but in “specialised thematic areas”; in terms of practice: the relationships between these thematic areas are not visible and it is therefore not clear what the contribution of these thematic areas is supposed to be.

2. When I took over the scientific coordination, this awareness became clearer and the need to operationalise an interdisciplinary strategy became even more urgent.

The principles were as follows:

1 – It was essential to promote scientific relations between fields of knowledge (assuming that these disciplinary fields could be reshaped and new ones created);

2 – This incentive would be facilitated if there was a theme/problem/object whose in-depth understanding would require the contribution of several fields of knowledge;

3 – The so-called “interdisciplinarity”, despite its apparent clarity, was not and is not an unambiguous concept or immediate practice; it was therefore necessary to clarify a certain understanding of the term that was appropriate to the organisation and objectives of CEIS20;

4 – The work inherent in each of these concepts should, as far as possible, be carried out simultaneously.

3. In 2011, as in 1998, the extensive bibliography on the subject was already clear on two fundamental points: first, a strict distinction must be made between “interdisciplinarity”, “multidisciplinarity” and “transdisciplinarity”; second, “interdisciplinarity” is the name given to various perspectives on relations between disciplines, some of which are almost incompatible.

The urgency of this debate led CEIS20 to take on the responsibility of organising the 2nd Cycle of Interdisciplinary Conferences and Debates. Sponsored by the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research, it took place on 28 April 2014. In 2016, the University Press published the papers presented under the title “Interdisciplinarity and the University”. Unfortunately, it was not possible to include the paper by Olga Pombo in the volume.

4. The fact that “disciplines” and hence the disciplinary map on which researchers work, have a history (cf. Fernando Gil, “Disciplinas: invenção, transmissão, habitus” in Manuel Maria Carrilho (org.), “História e Prática das Ciências”. Lisboa: A Regra do Jogo Edições, 1979, p. 239-321. This reworked reflection was integrated and expanded by Fernando Gil in “Mimesis e Negação”. Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional, 1984, p. 389-437) and allows us to better clarify both the rise in disciplinary weaknesses, i.e. the idea that a certain “point of view” does not solve a specific problem, and the need to use other “points of view” (but which ones?) in order to do so.

I understood the importance of the “problem”. Or, at least, that it was a specific “object” that should trigger work from different disciplines (F. Gil, “Mimesis e Negação”, p. 435). I borrowed two observations from Fernando Gil: first, that “every object is essentially over-determined, and that everything, in order to be what it is, represents and expresses a network of conditions and determinations coming from a multitude of disciplinary fields”; second, that knowledge of this object cannot result from a priori disciplinary unifications, but rather from “inter-disciplinary” crossroads in the fields where they are produced, the circulation of concepts, the network of de facto connections: the articulation of loans, homologies, resonances, deformations” (Cf. Fernando Gil, “Disciplinas: invenção, transmissão, habitus”, p. 314).

This led to the launch of two research programmes in 2013: “Two centuries of liberalism, 1820-2020: forms of state, social movements, instruments of subjectivation” and “Mobilities: individuals and ideas between places”.

I assumed that the chronological span of two centuries (symbolically counted from the 1820 Revolution) and the process of circulation of individuals, peoples and ideas would be sufficiently suggestive to trigger, in different groups, itineraries of knowledge that intersected with the itineraries of other groups.

Despite all the doubts, difficulties, hesitations and uncertainties, I was and am convinced that working on these two projects, both in their specific depths and in their convergences, would make a “theoretical object” comprehensible: the 20th century – a “theoretical object”, not an empirical reality or a simple chronological reference, in direct respect of the name of the Centre itself. Subsequent reflection led me to conclude that the lack of effective leadership of the programmes contributed to their practical failure.

Two brief remarks on this subject: first, after much reflection, CEIS20 has broadened its universe of reference and the privileged relationship with the 20th century has disappeared; for me, this issue has been resolved and I am only mentioning it now in order to respond precisely to what was asked of me (“How did I, as scientific coordinator, go about defining interdisciplinary strategies?”); secondly, I see that the research projects remain on the CEIS20 website in exactly the same form as they were defined in 2013. Given the irrelevance, not to say the failure, of their proposal, and in a period of deep reflection such as the one we are going through, perhaps it would be good to assess whether they should still remain there.

5. A final paragraph to outline three brief conclusions: 1 – we cannot oppose the deepening of disciplinary research to interdisciplinary practice; 2 – interdisciplinary practice does not necessarily involve all scientific fields at any given time; 3 – the interdisciplinary practice that seems most appropriate for a centre such as CEIS20 is that which results from “interdisciplinary intersections” where they occur, according to the needs of knowledge of the object under analysis, i.e.: giving primacy to the theoretical construction of the object of knowledge and weighing up the disciplinary areas that are relevant to its comprehensibility.

* This testimonial was the basis for my speech at the CEIS20 Colloquium – 25 years: history, perspectives and practices in interdisciplinarity, held on 22 November at the CEIS20 premises.

CEIS20, 22 November 2023
António Pedro Pita
(Full Professor at the University of Coimbra. Integrated researcher of CEIS20)