Page 238 - Contribution To Phenomenology

ETHNIC STUDIES AS MULTI-DISCIPLINE 231

'Don't make trouble for them so they won't make trouble for us\ perhaps
that is how we are able to function as we do. By 'making it explicit' I
only meant explicit for and to intellectuals. Yes, we have to figure it out,
but for the society to try to overcome the contradictions in how the several
parts of the contract are to be defined, and how they are to be rationalized,
given how emotional the issues are, explicitneess might harm more than help
and might tax the people's abilities beyond their capacities.
The final thing I think we need from your side, is a general statement
of the issues in Ethnic Studies, By the way, I move from the adjective to
a noun, "multi-discipline," I treat Ethnic Studies as a multi-discipline. It is
not, strictly speaking a discipline; it is in fact a coalition of disciplines.
Correct, and, incidentally, I like that expression. Environmental Studies is
another multi-discipline and so is Women's Studies, as are Cognitive
Science, Science Studies, Technology Studies, and, perhaps. Religious Studies,
These are all multi-disciplines.
The very word "multi-discipline" describes the central issues: The issues
are the same in life as they are intellectually when one is working in a
multi-discipline, i.e., how do you bring together orientations, points of
view, and particular questions that have arisen out of various sour-
ces—^viz., what might have arisen out of older debates wherein the issues
were couched in terms of Political Science vs. Sociology vs. Anthropology
vs. History, etc. In non-academic life the same kind of issues arise out
of the various contacts and varying confrontations of different racial and
ethic groups and of the individuals who are willy-nilly designated by
ethnic or social signifiers. Happily, Ronald Takaki, a scholar in the
forefront of ethnic studies as a multi-discipline, has informed our
discussion with his latest book.^'
You are saying that we have acquired perspectives as trained intellec-
tuals that pertain to our disciplines, but, when we try to work together, its
the same thing as growing up Hispanic or growing up Polish and then
trying to work together on the City Council and , , , The problem of the
multi-disciplines is the problem of the plural society; it's a microcosmic
mirror image of the problem of the plural society. But, just as working
together on the City Council is possible, so also is multi-disciplinary work.
It might be that this contrasts with the idea of what might be called
an ''inter-discipline," which translates the assimilationist view and believes

^' Ronald Takaki, A Different Mirror: A History of Multi-Cultural America
(Boston: Little Brown and Co., 1993).