State of the Unions Redux

We now turn to the second iteration of the "State of the Unions," a collaborative transatlantic effort by Configurations and the Journal of Literature and Science to address the conjunctions between science and literature, technology and the arts that underwrite the interdisciplinary field(s) of science studies. In keeping with the spirit of the question of historical precedent versus contemporary experience that Melissa Littlefield and Martin Willis addressed in their special issue of the Journal of Literature and Science 10:1, 2017), we wish to draw attention to the state of two geopolitical unions that provide a vexed backdrop to our academic discussion in this special issue of Configurations.

The notion of "union" is predicated upon fissure, and the history of fissures and unions resonates quite tellingly in this moment. Britain's second Act of Union in 1707, annexing Scotland to England and Wales, got revisited in September of 2014 in the Scottish Independence Referendum; speculation continues regarding the future of the "United Kingdom" as England and Wales attempt to extricate themselves (and Scotland and Northern Ireland) from an even larger project of international cooperation on the Continent. The Constitution of the United States, meanwhile, created "in order to form a more perfect union" (and to cement the dissolution of imperfect unity with Britain), persistently informs some of the most divisive political debates of our times. Racism, gender equality, and gun violence, articulated most dramatically by Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, and the multiple marches and protests that students have staged against mass shootings in schools, are now an everyday reality in our communities and in the news. Presumptuous though it may seem to relate these grand developments back to our corner of the humanities, their knock-on effects on higher education will be considerable. In any case, perhaps the central rift practiced upon by our community is not that between Literature and Science so much as that between lumpers and splitters. Working in universities on either side of the Atlantic at the moment, it is hard to escape the impression that the splitters are winning.

In this context, it's not surprising that the field of Literature and Science itself reflects newly formed fissions and fusions. Our aim in the double issue has been to enable scholars of all career stages to debate the nature of the interdisciplinary relations of our field. How has work in Literature and Science evolved—how should it evolve—in an intellectual era that increasingly instrumentalizes degree-level study, usually to the detriment of the humanities? Literature and Science now sits alongside many complimentary fields—animal studies, neuroscience, environmental studies, posthuman studies, the medical humanities, studies of the Anthropocene, and others—but does this very fact also presage the splintering of a union? Is the end result of our studies really an increase in sincere cross-disciplinary work, or does it reflect the (putative) solidification of fluid exchange into yet more disciplines with clear demarcations?

Historically, the field of Literature and Science has been a vehicle for both tradition and innovation. It is a form of research that designates the organization of elemental disciplines in relation to a larger totality. This definition, however, is dependent on the premise that one can reduce or abstract those parts, that they have an essential reality. The frame "Literature and Science" gives expression to cross-disciplinary exchange, and yet this definition assumes that form and content have a fixed relationship, as well as excluding from consideration fields like business studies which may have a greater impact on the state of our unions than we are currently able to consider. This special issue complicates cross-disciplinary study by addressing how new cultural inroads such as social media and digital culture, neoliberalism, and cultural crises like war, migration, and the status of the humanities, and environmental issues like climate change affect the evolution of Literature and Science. Does it continue to generate smaller and smaller derivations or, as Willis and Littlefield asked in the first volume, does it remain a "union," accruing more territories?

To that end, we have divided this special issue into three parts: institutions and...