Center Theme for 2007-09:
Past Knowing

Reflecting on its own past as its 40th anniversary approaches, the Center seeks to consider the relationship of knowledge to its limits. Fellow projects and public events may address any of the following senses of “past knowing”:

1) Past in the sense of beyond: phenomena and ways of apprehending them that are or have been considered to be outside the realm of classifiable or rational knowledge, such as mysticism, faith, intuition, or creativity.
2) Past in the temporal sense: forms of knowledge, artistic movements, or historical narratives that construct themselves as coming after some other discourse, theory, or practice, such as “post-” or “neo-.”
3) Disciplinary pasts: practices of knowledge gathering, organization, and dissemination that contemporary disciplines and institutions view as parts of their own past, and the narratives through which they construct their relationship to them; “antiquarianism” and its traces in various fields is an obvious example.

Projects and speakers might explore such questions as: how and to what extent do the common practices and protocols of scholarly fields attempt to account for phenomena commonly conceived not only as beyond their borders, but beyond their ken? How important are the conditions of “coming after” or “going beyond” to theoretical or other formations that embrace, assume, or resist the designation “post-” or “neo-”? What mechanisms do knowledge formations use to locate and understand the obsolescence or pertinence of their pasts, and with what effects? In what circumstances do disciplines or institutions seek inspiration, rejuvenation, or transformation from the recovery of past practices? Does the character of disciplines’ relationship to past knowledge help to determine something fundamental about and thus to distinguish between or among them? How have technological changes in access to information affected understandings of the pasts, presents, and futures of knowledge? What kinds of assumptions about past knowings undergird discussions of the contours of knowledge in the future?

Center for 21st Century Studies

Daniel J. Sherman, Director