Abstract

What is the value of interdisciplinary theory? Are there any boundaries left which social theory must recognize? This book argues that the vital questions in theory are being posed and followed at the interdisciplinary level. Our awareness of this is curtailed by the institutional organization of social theory which still tends to assume a canon and clear boundaries. According to Gary Genosko, postmodernism has provided the main challenge to institutional myopia. Yet postmodernism is too often treated as an aberration or a blind alley. The challenge for social theorists today is to develop and practice `undisciplined theories' which constantly question the limits of the canon and expose the porous character of boundaries. The book contains rigorous and original analyses of the writings of Baudrillard, Deleuze, Guattari, McLuhan, Freud and St Augustine. The author uses these materials to point the way to credible forms of undisciplined theory. Three tasks emerge as urgent issues for social theory: the need to think and feel ambivalence; to track the circulation of anomalies in theoretical texts; and to learn from the fascination with interpretative boundlessness. Undisciplined Theory will be of interest to academics of social and cultural theory.