Disciplines, Communities of Interpretation, and Differences of Scholarly Opinion

        Some scholars who specialize in interpretive theory study argue that any discipline may be divided into "interpretive communities"` (e.g., Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in this Class).  Though unified by basic agreements about what constitutes an acceptable disciplinary theory and method of practice, researchers in any discipline may cluster together in "interpretive communities" based upon the perspectives they share about why and how they are working in that discipline, what problems they attempt to solve, and what tools they have available to solve them.  The visual metaphor ("perspectives") accurately reflects way those shared "ways of seeing" the problems establish certain points of view in the discipline that can be supported and defended because they produce legal results.  Sometimes first-year students are surprised by the theoretical diversity within "unified disciplines," but this is before they realize the analytical strength of having several possible competing theories using acceptable methods to try to arrive at the best explanation of a debatable phenomenon.  Like many networked computers, all working on a different part of the same big problem, or like the painter's converging lines of vision on a distant focal point, a discipline's interpretive communities combine their methods' judgments to produce a collective vision of each disciplinary problem which explains the problem more completely than a judgment rendered by any single scholar, using a single interpretive method.

        In the process of refining methods and conclusions, scholars form alliances with those who share their view of the data, and they recognize (usually in a friendly way) their opponents in the community of scholars who see things differently.  Those "communities of interpretation" or "schools of thought" organize their ways of knowing.  Even in precise sciences, the differences of opinion about the greatest matters often can be enormous.   Evolutionary biology is divided between "Gradualists" who see evolution as a slow but steady process of genetic mutation and natural selection, and "Catastrophists" who see evolution as long periods of relatively little genetic change punctuated by catastrophic extinctions and bursts of genetic mutation that account for the majority of surviving genetic differences among species.  Until some universally accepted data supports one or another position, they agree that both perspectives on evolution satisfy the basic requirements for membership in the discipline, and each side talks to and supports the work of the other, though they may compete doggedly for scarce funding and other resources.  Literary theory recently was divided between Structuralists, who thought works of literature could be excavated like an archeological site to reveal deep structures of meaning that were the work's most important feature, and Post-Structuralists, who thought works of literature had no stable or coherent meaning and that literature's surface features (grammar, poetic uses of language like metaphor, etc.) produced an endless play of meaning in time.  These divisions produce interesting differences in the view of any one text, and scholars studying the text must take into account a reasonable range of opinion before forming a final expression of their insights.

        To organize your evidence of the grounds for your discipline's debate, try to figure out what differences in perspective account for why your sources disagree.  You can use the "grid" as a tool to clarify your thoughts.  Construct a grid organized horizontally by columns representing "scholar," "first difference," "second difference," etc.  Don't try to take on too much! Then, look for patterns in the disagreements that give you something to say.  Click here for a sample of an actual scholarly disagreement I have engaged.