DISCIPLINE

A category of human knowledge constituted through the sedimentation of objects, methods, bibliographies, traditions, conversations, and debates—usually in an institutional space (see DEPARTMENT). It is not without reason that disciplines are commonly attributed to the intellectual-historical transformations of the later nineteenth century, which introduced the “modern research university”—and, moreover, many of the disciplines considered self-evident (and the disciplinary arrangements taken for granted) today. The coincidence of modern disciplinarity with early specialization and professionalization is not, in fact, coincidental. Disciplines, couched within universities, enabled the accreditation of scholars destined neither for the habit of the priesthood nor for the habitude of “men of letters” (nor, for that matter, for remunerative careers in law or medicine—as appealing then as now). The result was the “professional academic,” an individual committed to KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION within a given FIELD.