Description
Book SynopsisBringing together an exciting group of knowledge workers, scholars and activists from across fields, this book revisits a foundational question of the Enlightenment: what is the last or furthest end of knowledge? It is a book about why we do what we do, and how we might know when we are done. In the reorganization of knowledge that characterized the Enlightenment, disciplines were conceived as having particular ends, both in terms of purposes and end-points. As we experience an ongoing shift to the knowledge economy of the Information Age, this collection asks whether we still conceptualize knowledge in this way. Does an individual discipline have both an inherent purpose and a natural endpoint? What do an experiment on a fruit fly, a reading of a poem, and the writing of a line of code have in common?Focusing on areas as diverse as AI; biology; Black studies; literary studies; physics; political activism; and the concept of disciplinarity itself, contributors uncover a life after di
Trade ReviewThis book is organized around a central pun like all great works of scholarship. It queries the ends of knowledge, but here the “end” might mean telos, completion or cessation. The editors have assembled a genuinely productive and heterogeneous collection, but they wisely acknowledge that their volume is open-ended, unfinished and generative in the spirit of the Enlightenment encyclopedia project which provides its inspiration and warrant. -- Al Coppola, Associate Professor of English , John Jay College, CUNY, USA
Table of ContentsPreface
Introduction Seth Rudy and Rachael Scarborough King Part I: Unification The Ends of Physics
B. R. Brown The Ends of Literary Studies
Aaron Hanlon The Ends of Computing
Geoffrey C. Bowker The Ends of Biology
B.N. Queenan The Ends of Digital Humanities
Mark Algee-Hewitt Part II: Access The Ends of Law
Yochai Benkler The Ends of Journalism
Jolene Almendarez The Ends of Pedagogy
Sean Michael Morris The Ends of the Liberal Arts
G. Gabrielle Starr Part III: Utopia The Ends of Artificial Intelligence
Hong Qu The Ends of Gender Studies
Ula Lukszo Klein The Ends of Activism
Ady Barkan The Ends of Environmental Studies
Myanna Lahsen Part IV: Concepts The Ends of Performance Studies
Jessica Nakamura The Ends of History
Marieke Hendriksen The Ends of Black Studies
Kenneth W. Warren The Ends of Cultural Studies
Mike Hill Afterword Clifford Siskin List of Contributors Index
