1. The fragmentation in education has led to its growth and influence. It has also reinforced and reproduced divisions in spite of calls for reform. For more on what causes fragmentation in education, see Kant, Immanuel. The Conflict of the Faculties. Trans. Mary Gregor. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1973; Graff, Gerald. Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind. New Haven, Yale UP, 2003; Arun, Richard, and Josipa Roksa. Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2011; Bloom, Allan. The Closing of the American Mind. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987; Ravitch, Diane. Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000; Taylor, Mark C. Crisis on Campus: A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities. New York: Knopf, 2010; Nasaw, David. Schooled to Order: A Social History of Public Schooling in the United States. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1979; Bowles, Samuel, and Herbert Gintis. Schooling in Capitalist America. New York: Basic, 1976; Saltman, Kenneth J., and David Gabbard, eds. Education as Enforcement: The Militarization and Corporatization of Schools. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2003; Marks, Russell. “Legitimating Industrial Capitalism: Philanthropy and Individual Differences.” Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism: The Foundations at Home and Abroad. Ed. Robert F. Arnove. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1980. 87-122; Roediger, David R., and Elizabeth D. Esch. The Production of Difference: Race and the Management of Labor in U.S. History. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2014; Woodson, Carter G. The Mis-Education of the Negro. New Jersey: Africa World Press, 1998; Willis, Paul. Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. New York: Columbia UP, 1977; Du Bois, W.E.B. The Education of Black People. New York: Monthly Review, 2001. 

 

For more, see Douglass, John Aubrey. The California Idea and American Higher Education: 1850 to the 1960 Master Plan. California: Stanford UP, 2000; Watkins, William H. The White Architects of Black Education: Ideology and Power in America, 1865-1954. New York: Teacher’s College, 2001; Cohen, Ronald D., and Raymond A. Mohl. The Paradox of Progressive Education: The Gary Plan and Urban Schooling. New York: Associated Faculty Press, Inc., 1979; Oakes, Jeannie. Keeping Track: How Schools Structure Inequality. 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale UP, 1985; Lemann, Nicholas. The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2000; Karabel, Jerome, and A. H. Halsey. Power and Ideology in Education. New York: Oxford UP, 1977; Boyer, Ernest. College: The Undergraduate Experience in America. New York: Harper Collins, 1988; Swartz, David. Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. Chicago: U of Chicago P,1997; Aronowitz, Stanley. The Knowledge Factory: Dismantling the Corporate University and Creating True Higher Education. Boston: Beacon, 2000; Giroux, Henry A. Border Crossings: Cultural Workers and the Politics of Education. New York: Routledge, 1993; Katz, Michael. Class, Bureaucracy, and Schools: The Illusion of Educational Change in America. New York: Praeger, 1975; Cuban, Larry. “Reforming again, again, and again.” Educational Researcher 19.1 (1990): 3-13.

 

2. An example of how reform reinforces reductive thinking and fragmentation can be found in the work of E.D. Hirsch, Jr. His body of work has had a powerful and lasting influence inside and outside the academy. I find Hirsch at the intersection of many key debates about the meaning of texts and education. His work becomes a way for me to frame much of my thinking about reductionism in these areas. More specifically, I want to point out that Hirsch’s legendary list of 5,000 words for core knowledge is criticized by those who go on to produce their own lists. Some of the terms change for the sake of inclusiveness. Ironically, the same fragmentation and decontextualization remain in these texts. See United States. Dept. of Education. A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Education Reform. Washington, D.C., 1983; Hirsch, E.D. Jr., Cultural Literacy: What Every American Should Know. New York: Vintage, 1988; Hirsch, E.D. Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil. The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993; Provenzo, Eugene F. Critical Literacy: What Every American Ought to Know. Boulder: Paradigm, 2005; Simson, Rick, and Scott Walker. Multicultural Literacy: Opening the American Mind. St. Paul: Graywolf, 1988; This later work was supposed to be the multiculturalist response to Hirsch’s Cultural Literacy: Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., and Kwame Appiah. The Dictionary of Global Culture: What Every American Needs to Know as We Enter the Next Century—from Diderot to Bo Diddley. New York: Vintage, 1996; In 2015, there was a call for the public to participate in the creation of a new list. In some ways, ME: 101 is a response. See whateveryamericanshouldknow.org and Liu, Eric. “What Every American Should Know: Defining Common Cultural Literacy for an Increasingly Diverse Nation.” The Atlantic.com 3 July 2015. Web. 29 Jan. 2016.

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I want to point out that some of the strongest arguments against Hirsch’s list and reform efforts come from those who are proponents of critical pedagogy, which is inspired by The Frankfort School and, more specifically, the ideas and pedagogical practices of Paulo Freire. I turn to authors associated with this discourse because of the strong arguments they make against Hirsch specifically and reductionism in general. Also, most of their writings support dialogism, intertextuality and interdisciplinarity. See a call to replace Hirsch’s core knowledge reform efforts with critical pedagogy in Coles, Tait. “Critical Pedagogy: Schools must equip students to challenge status quo.” The Guardian.com  25 Feb. 2014. Web. 1 Jan. 2016; Freire, Paulo. Education for Critical Consciousness. New York: Continuum, 1990; Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 1990; Shor, Ira, and Paulo Freire. “What is the ‘Dialogical Method’ of Teaching?” Journal of Education 169.3 (1987): 11-31. See the various applications of Freire’s ideas in Apple, Michael. Foreword. Critical Literacy: What Every American Ought to Know. Eugene F. Provenzo. Boulder: Paradigm, 2005. ix-xii; Giroux, Henry A. On Critical Pedagogy. New York: Bloomsbury, 2011; Aronowitz, Stanley, and Henry A. Giroux. “The Punishment of the Disciplines: Cultural Studies and the Transformation of Legitimate Knowledge.” Postmodern Education: Politics, Culture, and Social Criticism. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1991; 136-156; Macedo, Donaldo. Literacies of Power: What Americans Are Not Allowed to Know. Colorado: Westview, 2006; Freire, Paulo, and Donaldo Macedo. Literacy: Reading the Word and the World. Connecticut: Bergin & Garvey, 1987; Shor, Ira. Critical Teaching and Everyday Life. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987; McLaren, Peter. Life in Schools: An Introduction to Critical Pedagogy in the Foundations of Education. 3rd ed. New York: Longman, 1998; Kincheloe, Joe. Critical Pedagogy Primer. New York: Peter Lang, 2008.

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There are a number of scholars who criticize critical pedagogy and, ironically, some even argue that its application mirrors the conservatism and reductionism it claims to reverse. Many feel critical pedagogues are too utopian and try to turn the classroom into a political arena in an attempt to promote democratic transformations of society and the classroom that have yet to be fully realized. Gerald Graff thinks critical pedagogy causes the opposite effect and teaching the conflicts is a better option. For Graff, teaching the conflicts that exist between the disciplines can introduce students to politics and the academic disciplines in a way that is interdisciplinary, coherent and holistic. This approach seems to put the emphasis more on discourse and textual analysis, allowing individuals to learn these skills to create meanings for themselves. For more criticisms, see Ellsworth, Elizabeth. “Why Doesn’t This Feel Empowering? Working Through the Repressive Myths of Critical Pedagogy.” Harvard Educational Review 59.3 (1989): 297-324; Villaneuva, Victor, Jr., “Considerations for American Freireistas.” Cross-Talk in Comp Theory: A Reader. Ed. Victory Villanueva, Jr. Illinois: NCTE, 1997: 621-637; Jay, Gregory, and Gerald Graff. “A Critique of Critical Pedagogy.” Higher Education Under Fire: Politics, Economics, and the Crisis of the Humanities. Ed. Michael Berube and Cary Nelson. New York: Routledge, 1995: 201-213; Hairston, Maxine. “Diversity, Ideology, and Teaching Writing.” CCC 43 (1992): 179-93; Shor, Ira. Freire for the Classroom: A Sourcebook for Liberatory Teaching. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1987; Portfilio, Brad J., and Derek R. Ford, eds. Leaders in Critical Pedagogy: Narratives for Understanding and Solidarity. Boston: Sense, 2015; Knight, Tony, and Pearl, Art. “Democratic Education and Critical Pedagogy.” Urban Review 32.3 (2000): 197-224; Gore, Jennifer M. “On the Limits of Empowerment through Critical and Feminist Pedagogies.” Power/Knowledge/Pedagogy: The Meaning of Democratic Education in Unsettling Times. Eds. Dennis Carlson and Michael W. Apple. Colorado: Westview, 1998: 271-288; hooks, bell. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge, 1994. 129-130; Breuing, Mary. “Problematizing Critical Pedagogy.” International Journal of Critical Pedagogy. 3.3 (2011): 2-23; Bizzell, Patricia. “Power, Authority, and Critical Pedagogy.” Journal of Basic Writing 10.2 (1991): 54-70; Katz, Leanna. “Teachers’ Reflections on Critical Pedagogy in the Classroom.” Interactions 10.2 (2014): 1-19; George, Ann. “Critical Pedagogy: Dreaming of Democracy.” A Guide to Composition Pedagogies. Eds. Gary Tate, Amy Rupiper, and Kurt Schick. New York: Oxford UP, 2001. 92-112; Buffington, Nancy, and Clyde Moneyhun. “A Conversation with Gerald Graff and Ira Shor.” JAC 17.1 (1997): 1-21.

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3. Reductionism and its kin (Empiricism, Positivism, Foundationalism, Structuralism and Logocentrism) make claims about knowledge, meaning and reality that reduce complexity. Thinkers in many fields, especially postmodern theory and critical pedagogy, have addressed this problem and proposed new ways of seeing and thinking. The ideas I am most interested in are found in Bakhtin, Mikhail. “Discourse in the Novel.” The Dialogic Imagination. Eds. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: U of Texas P, 1998: 259-422 (see more below). John H. Miller, a leading expert in complex adaptive systems, writes about the failure of reductionism, and my definition is influenced by his work because of his emphasis on the idea of construction and the importance of understanding parts in terms of the whole. Miller writes, “Reduction gives us little insight into construction. And it is in construction that complexity abounds … Without a science [or philosophy] of complex systems, we have little chance to understand, let alone shape, the world around us” (5). He goes on to make this important point: “Take any of the major issues confronting humanity ... and you will see that they have a grounding in complex systems. Ideas from complex systems are starting to reshape the way we think about and act on our world” (239). For more, see Miller, John H. A Crude Look at the Whole: The Science of Complex Systems in Business, Life, and Society. New York: Basic, 2015. The problems with reductionism are addressed by scholars in a number of areas: See Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3rd ed. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996; Wallerstein, Immanuel. The Uncertainties of Knowledge. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2004; Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Brian Massumi. Minnesota: U of Minnesota P, 1984; Emig, Janet. The Web of Meaning: Essays on Writing, Teaching, Learning, and Thinking. Eds. Dixie Goswami and Maureen Butler. New Jersey: Boynton/Cook, 1983; Barabási, Albert Laszlo. Linked: The New Science of Networks. Cambridge: Perseus, 2002; Siemens, George. “Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age.” International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, 2.1 (2005): n. pages. Web. 15 Jan. 2016; Downes, Stephen. Connectivism and Connective Knowledge: Essays on Meaning and Learning Networks. Canada: National Research Council Canada, 2012.

 

To learn, more specifically, how reductionism has impacted writing studies, see Berlin, James A. Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1900-1985. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1987; Elliot, Norbert. On a Scale: A Social History of Writing Assessment in America. New York: Peter Lang, 2008; Connors, Robert J. “The Rise and Fall of the Modes of Discourse.” CCC 32.4 (1981): 444-455; Horner, Winifred Bryan, ed. Composition and Literature: Bridging the Gap. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1983; For more on the Literature and Composition debate, see “Four Comments on ‘Two Views of the Use of Literature in Composition.” College English 55.6 (1993): 673-679; Gamer, Michael. “Fictionalizing the Disciplines: Literature and the Boundaries of Knowledge.” College English 57.3 (1995): 281-286; Graff, Gerald. Professing Literature: An Institutional History. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987; Miller, Thomas P. The Formation of College English: Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in the British Cultural Provinces. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1997; Russell, David R. Writing in the Academic Disciplines, 1870-1990: A Curricular History. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1991. Hirsch, E.D., Jr. The Philosophy of Composition. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1997, and The Aims of Interpretation. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1976; Dillon, George L. Constructing Texts. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1981. For discussions on abolishing first-year writing programs, see Petraglia, Joseph, ed. Reconceiving Writing, Rethinking Writing Instruction. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1995. For calls for a more postmodern classroom and a need to redesign English Studies along the lines of social-epistemic rhetoric, allowing for participatory citizenship (cultural studies) and a more interdisciplinary approach to texts, reading and writing, see Faigley, Lester. Fragments of Rationality: Postmodernity and the Subject of Composition. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1992; Berlin, James A. Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures: Refiguring College English Studies. Urbana: Illinois: NCTE, 1996, and Farmer, Frank. “Dialogue and Critique: Bakhtin and the Cultural Studies Writing Classroom.” CCC 49 (1998): 187-207.

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4. There are competing definitions of interdisciplinarity, the problems it creates and solves and the range of approaches and methods that some applaud and others criticize. My definition is informed by the leading authority on the topic, Julie Thompson Klein, and Joe Moran, who writes,“... I take interdisciplinarity to mean any form of dialogue or interaction between two or more disciplines” (14). Moti Nissani clarifies definitions of interdisciplinarity and all of its relatives. For Nissani, interdisciplinary education integrates two or more disciplines in a program of instruction. On the other hand, the writings of Mark C. Taylor and Jerry Jacobs really crystallize the polarities in the debates on interdisciplinarity and its future in higher education. Taylor famously calls for sweeping reform in graduate education, tenure and the abolishment of departments in favor of problem-focused programs. In contrast, Jacobs and Fish believe a reorganization of academic disciplines would be problematic, and they seem to think interdisciplinarity would eventually morph into independent disciplines.

 

However, the views that I find most productive are those of Alan Liu, as cited by Jacobs. Liu’s views support an intertextual view of interdisciplinarity. Liu claims interdisciplinary knowledge is rhetoric: a striving to configure, refigure and (re)envision. For Liu, interdisciplinarity is not an endpoint but a continuous process of revision and reordering. See more in Jacobs, Jerry A. In Defense of Disciplines: Interdisciplinarity and Specialization in the Research University. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2013; Fish, Stanley. “Being Interdisciplinary is So Very Hard to Do.” There’s no Such Thing as Free Speech, And It’s a Good Thing, Too. Profession. New York: MLA, 1989: 15-22; Taylor, Mark C. “End the University as We Know It.” The New York Times. 29 April, 2009: A23; Klein, Julie Thompson. Crossing Boundaries: Knowledge, Disciplinarities, and Interdisciplinarities. Virginia: U of Virginia P, 1996; Nissani, Moti. “Ten Cheers for Interdisciplinarity: The Case for Interdisciplinary Knowledge and Research.” Social Science Journal 34.2 (1997): 201-216; Moran, Joe. Interdisciplinarity. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2010. 13-15; Bastedo, Michael N. “Curriculum in Higher Education: The Historical Roots of Contemporary Issues.” American Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century: Social, Political, and Economic Challenges. Eds. Philip G. Altbach, Robert O. Berhahl, and Patricia J. Gumport. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 2005. 464-485; Rudolph, Frederick. Curriculum: A History of the American Undergraduate Course of Study since 1636. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1977; Hirst, Paul. Knowledge and the Curriculum. London: Routledge, 1974; Leitch, Vincent B. “Deconstruction and Pedagogy.” Theory in the Classroom. Ed. Cary Nelson. Chicago: U of Illinois P, 1986: 45-56; See an assessment of the relationship between interdisciplinarity and intertextuality (including digitalized intertextuality or hypertext) and how they "...both operate by means of comparison, contrast and accumulation to produce new permutations and alignments" in Orr, Mary. Intertextuality: Debates and Contexts. Cambridge: Polity, 2003; 44-50.

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5. The student loan debt crisis continues to be a problem, and many scholars have pointed out how it creates serious economic inequality and social fragmentation. There are growing calls for reform and alternative solutions. See Mettler, Suzanne. Degrees of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream. New York: Basic, 2014; Cappelli, Peter. Will College Pay Off? A Guide to the Most Important Financial Decision You’ll Ever Make. New York: Public Affairs, 2015; Huelsman, Mark. “The Debt Divide: The Racial and Class Bias Behind the ‘New Normal’ of Student Borrowing.” Demos.org 2015. Web. 2 Feb. 2016; Kamenetz, Anya. DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education. Vermont: Chelsea Green, 2010; Craig, Ryan. College Disruption: The Great Unbundling of Higher Education. New York: St. Martin’s, 2015; Carey, Kevin. The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere. New York: Riverhead, 2015; Malcolm, Hadley. “Millennials Struggle with Financial Literacy.” USAToday.com 24 April 2010. Web. 1 Feb. 2016; Durband, Dorothy B., and Sonya L. Britt, eds. Student Financial Literacy: Campus-Based Program Development. New York: Springer, 2012; Hacker, Andrew, and Claudia Dreifus. Higher Education? How Colleges are Wasting our Money and Failing our Kids—and What We Can Do About It. New York: Times/Henry Holt, 2010; For alternative views on the college crisis, see Bowen, William G., and Michael S. McPherson. Lesson Plan: An Agenda for Change in American Higher Education. New Jersey: Princeton UP, 2016; Rifkin, Jeremy. The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam Books, 1996; McChesney, Robert, and John Nichols. People Get Ready: The Fight Against a Jobless Economy and a Citizenless Democracy. New York: Nations Books, 2016.

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6. I consolidated the points of the following critics: “At present, there is no existing science whose special interest is the combining of pieces of information” in Bateson, Gregory. Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1979. 20-21; “There has been virtually no effort to rethink the basic departmental structure or to explore other alternatives that might be better suited to today’s interconnected world” in Taylor, Mark C. Crisis on Campus: A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities. New York: Knopf, 2010. 115; See a call to put courses into conversation in Graff, Gerald. Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind. New Haven, Yale UP, 2003; See a call for a set of principles to help us understand the mix of language and experiences in Rose, Mike. Lives on the Boundary. New York: Penguin, 1989. 238; See a discussion on the gap between critical pedagogy and instructional practices in Gore, Jennifer M. “On the Limits of Empowerment through Critical and Feminist Pedagogies.” Power/Knowledge/Pedagogy: The Meaning of Democratic Education in Unsettling Times. Eds. Dennis Carlson and Michael W. Apple. Colorado: Westview, 1998: 271-288; See a discussion on the lack of examples for sharing ideas, “mapping out terrains of commonality, connection, and shared concern with teaching practices” in hooks, bell. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge, 1994. 129-130.   

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7. Peirce’s academic legacy helps us to see how interdisciplinarity sparks creative activity and innovations. His work in philosophy (architectonics), mathematics and semiotics provides a foundation for Matrix Thinking because he anticipates intertextuality. See his description of the translation of signs in Peirce, Charles S. Philosophical Writings of Peirce. Ed. Justus Buchler. New York: Dover, 1950. 98-110. For an explanation of the history of semiotics and the models of its founders, Peirce and Saussure, see Chandler, Daniel. Semiotics: The Basics. New York: Routledge, 2002; Sylvester, James Joseph. The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester: Vol 1, 1837-1853. New York: Cambridge UP, 1904. 247; For some insight into the interesting life of Sylvester and his friendship with Arthur Cayley, the mathematician who worked closely with Sylvester on matrix theory and introduced many algebraic concepts, including the transpose of a matrix, see Parshall, Karen Hunger. James Joseph Sylvester: Life and Work in Letters. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998. See more on the organizational and metaphorical role of a matrix in interdisciplinary studies in Klein, Julie Thompson. Crossing Boundaries: Knowledge, Disciplinarities, and Interdisciplinarities. Virginia: U of Virginia P, 1996. 23.

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8. The matrix trope and various explanations of intertextuality can be mapped by aligning key theoretical perspectives. Matrices are used in many fields, but I focus on the matrix as used in selected texts in postmodern theory (including critical pedagogy) and General System Theory. Because his dialogic theory of language is at the heart of intertextuality, I begin with Mikhail Bakhtin, Peirce’s heir. Dialogism is Matrix Thinking. It is both a critique of academic divisions and a more accessible metaphor for the process of connecting and integrating information for meaning-making and interdisciplinary teaching and learning. For Bakhtin, one word connects to another: “The word in language is half someone else’s” (293). See more on the interactivity of dialogue in Bakhtin, Mikhail. “Discourse in the Novel.” The Dialogic Imagination. Eds. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: U of Texas P, 1998. 259-422; Kristeva interprets Bakhtin’s dialogism as intertextuality (or transposition). Kristeva is known for using mathematics to explain her theoretical positions. She claims that a text (narrative) “... is always constituted as a dialogical matrix.” I focus on her use of intertextuality as an extension of Bakhtin. Though her view is controversial, she writes, “each word (text) is an intersection of word (text) where at least one other word (text) can be read” in Kristeva, Julia. The Kristeva Reader. Ed. Toril Moi. New York: Columbia UP, 1986. 37-39, 46; See why the scholar Leon S. Roudiez insists that texts do not signify without total context; therefore, the textual scholar must become an interdisciplinarian in Kristeva, Julia. Revolution in Poetic Language. Trans. Margaret Waller. New York: Columbia UP, 1984. 8-9; Mary Orr examines the similarities and differences between intertextuality and interdisciplinarity: “both operate by means of comparison, contrast and accumulation to produce new permutations and alignments … The card that intertextuality holds to trump interdisciplinarity is comprehensiveness and inclusivity of constituent texts” (44-45). Also, Orr assesses Kristeva’s intertextuality in relation to other definitions, including Jacques Derrida’s. She notes how Derrida’s concept(s) is often viewed as being synonymous with Kristeva’s definition of intertextuality. For more, see Orr, Mary. Intertextuality: Debates and Contexts. Cambridge: Polity, 2003; See the cautious explanation of Derrida’s grammatology as intertextuality in Norris, Christopher. Derrida. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1987. 25-26; See an explanation of how Kristeva’s ideas of intertextuality are consistent with Derrida’s view of writing in Payne, Michael. Reading Theory: An Introduction to Lacan, Derrida, and Kristeva. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993. 177; See more on the complex theories of intertextuality and the view that “texts are trapped in a network of relations” in Alfaro, Maria Jesus Martinez. “Intertextuality: Origins and Development of the Concept” Atlantis 18.1/2 (1996): 268-285. 

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Derrida uses the matrix for its metaphorical value in describing writing and exterority (167). He describes writing as supplement: “The supplement is always the supplement of a supplement. One wishes to go back from the supplement to the source: one must recognize that there is a supplement at the source. Thus, it is always already algebraic” (304). See more on the idea of (arche) writing and supplement as algebraic and a (re)assessment of speech/writing, Peirce and Saussure in Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U, 1997; See a further confirmation of Derrida’s use of algebra as a metaphor for writing and the description of algebra as the ultimate trope in Plotnitsky, Arkady. “Algebras, Geometries and Topologies of the Fold: Deleuze, Derrida and Quasi-Mathematical Thinking (with Leibniz and Mallarme).” Between Deleuze and Derrida. Eds. Paul Patton and John Protevi. New York: Continuum, 2003. 98-119; See how power (repression) influences knowledge and the idea of discourses as discontinuous practices that cross in Foucault, Michel. “The Order of Discourse.” Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader. Ed. Robert Young. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981: 48-77; Roland Barthes was Kristeva’s mentor. See his claim that (cultural) texts model and promote interdisciplinarity in Barthes, Roland. The Rustle of Language. Trans. Stephen Heath. London: Fontana, 1986. 72; See the use of matrices with words in Barthes, Roland. The Fashion System. Trans. Matthew Ward and Richard Howard. California: U of California P, 1990. 63-64; See the matrix and intertextuality synthesized and explained as dialogic and anti-dialogic matrices in Freire, Paulo. Education for Critical Consciousness. New York: Continuum, 1990. 41-58, and Freire, Paulo, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 1990. 119-186; See the many other connections in Rule, Peter. “Bakhtin and Freire: Dialogue, Dialectic and Boundary Learning.” Educational Philosophy and Theory. 43.9 (2009): 924-942; See the use of a matrix to intersect learning theory and technology in Bernauer, James, and Lawrence Tomei. Integrating Pedagogy and Technology: Improving Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. New York: Rowan & Littlefield, 2015; See the discussion on General System Theory and hybridity replacing reductionist thinking and the role of the matrix as structure and metaphor in Klein, Julie Thompson. Crossing Boundaries: Knowledge, Disciplinarities, and Interdisciplinarities. Virginia: U of Virginia P, 1996. 20-23. 

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9. It should also be noted that language and mathematics both play important roles in General System Theory, according to von Bertalanffy. He considers them symbolic, and they are both needed for conceptualization and communication in a system, which he defines as “a complex of interacting elements” (51). Also, they are sometimes seen as functional equivalents because of their capacity to serve as tools of analysis (252). It is not unusual for mathematical logic to be applied to languages (below, I extend this view and suggest words and numbers/money are forms of rhetoric). For more on open systems, see von Bertalanffy, Ludwig. General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications. New York: George Braziller, 1968; To learn more about a systems approach to multidisciplinary discourse and its general neglect in academia, see Kline, Stephen Jay. Conceptual Foundations for Multidisciplinary Thinking. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford UP, 1995; See more on the claim that a mathematical theory of General System Theory can provide a language for interdisciplinary communication and a framework for any systems concept in Mesarovic, M.D., and Yasuhiko Takahara. General Systems Theory: Mathematical Foundations. New York: Academic Press, 1975. 1-5; For a discussion on how systems thinking can integrate disciplines, “fusing them into a coherent body of theory and practice,” see Senge, Peter M. The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of Learning Organization. New York: Doubleday, 1990.

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I want to note the scholars who address the relationship between money and language studies because money, propaganda and power are characterized as interconnected and permeating forms of rhetoric on the Matrix Maps Diagram. I want to provide support and key definitions for this view for those who might want to explore further. One of the founders of semiotics, Ferdinand de Saussure, views money as a form of language, and this relationship influenced his studies in linguistics. See Saussure, Ferdinand de. Course in General Linguistics. Trans. Roy Harris. London: Duckworth, 1916/1983; For more on money and language as semiotic and socially constructed, see Leonard, Robert E. “Money and Language.” Money: Lure, Lore, and Literature. California: Praeger. 3-13; Money is described in several ways (as a fiction, a promise to pay that can always be renegotiated, the measure of value, a medium of circulation, a store of value and as debt/credit) in Dodd, Nigel. The Social Life of Money. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2014; For more insights into the history of debt and how debt and violence turn human relationships into the mathematics and hierarchies so vital to corporate and state power, see Graeber, David. Debt: The First 5000 Years. New York: Melville House, 2012; For a list and explanation of key financial terms, almost the economic equivalent of Hirsch’s texts on cultural literacy, see Lanchester, John. How to Speak Money: What the Money People Say and What it Really Means. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2014; For more on how money reflects social life, see Simmel, Georg. The Philosophy of Money. Trans. Tom Bottomore and David Frisby. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978. 

 

For more on the relationship between money, power and propaganda, see Wolin, Sheldon. Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. New Jersey: Princeton UP, 2010; For a description of how money acts as simulacrum (representation), allowing it to serve as an economic tool while hiding its function as an instrument of power, see Foucault, Michel. Lectures on The Will to Know. Ed. Daniel Defert. Trans. Graham Burchell. New York: Picador, 2011; Power is defined as that which represses (“a war continued by other means”), and Foucault believes that power circulates through knowledge, discourse and the economy; For a more detailed examination of power and its tendency to police and influence knowledge and language, see Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. Ed. Colin Gordon. Trans. Colin Gordon, Leo Marshall, John Mepham, and Kate Soper. New York: Pantheon, 1980; For more on the persuasive effects of language as propaganda, see Bizzell, Patricia, and Bruce Herzerg. The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present. Boston: Bedford, 1990; For a detailed analysis on how propaganda works in society to shape events to influence the public, see Bernays, Edward. Propaganda. New York: IG Publishing, 1955, and Tye, Larry. The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations. New York: Holt, 1998; For more on how the consent of the public must be manipulated and manufactured, see Lippmann, Walter. Public Opinion. Charleston: Bibliobazaar Reproduction Series [original publication in 1922]; Boorstin, Daniel J. The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. New York: Vintage, 1992.

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10. See discussion on General System Theory as a description of interdisciplinary activity, why reductionist thinking must be replaced and why the matrix (as structure and metaphor) helps explain systems thinking for interdisciplinary learning in Klein, Julie Thompson. Crossing Boundaries: Knowledge, Disciplinarities, and Interdisciplinarities. Virginia: U of Virginia P, 1996. 20-23; See discussion on how General System Theory promotes a “more unitary consciousness … learning for life, and exposure to the universal storehouse of accumulated knowledge and wisdom” in Laszlo, Alexander, and Stanley Krippner. “Systems Theories: Their Origins, Foundations, and Development.” Systems Theories and A Priori Aspects of Perception. Ed. J.S. Jordon. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science, 1998: 47-74. Gregory Bateson argues, “What has to be investigated and described is a vast network or matrix of interlocking message material and abstract tautologies, premises, and exemplifications … At present, there is no existing science whose special interest is the combining of pieces of information” (20-21). See more on the need for learning and life to fit the same regularities in Bateson, Gregory. Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1979. The matrix (and Matrix Thinking) is my attempt to show that dialogism and the various notions of intertextuality dialogize postmodern theory and systems thinking, providing us with an accessible theoretical framework to address the issues Bateson and other scholars raise about the fragmentation of knowledge and disciplines. However, Bakhtin’s work is dense and widely appropriated, and his views of dialogue and alternatives to systems (architectonics/genres) are paradoxical and confusing, but still applicable. See more on dialogism as a complementary model of language compatible with complexity and chaos theory in Alford, Barry. “Bakhtin and Language Theory: Beyond a Unified Field Theory.” The Centennial Review 39. 3 (1995): 445-454. 

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Using Alford’s assessment, I reinterpret dialogism/intertextuality/systems theory and their complementary natures as Matrix Thinking to make these ideas more accessible for teaching and learning. See more on Bakhtin and his claim that all understanding is dialogical and there are no impenetrable boundaries in Todorov, Tzvetan. Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle. Trans. Wlad Godzich. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1984, and see Schuster, Charles I. “Mikhail Bakhtin as Rhetorical Theorist.” College English 47.6 (1985): 594-607; See more on Bakhtin's (mis)application in Education in Matusov, Eugene. “Applying Bakhtin Scholarship on Discourse in Education: A Critical Review Essay.” Education Theory 57.2 (2007): 215-237.

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Bakhtin scholars Katerina Clark and Michael Holquist reveal why Bakhtin is important and so very influential: “Bakhtin’s distinctiveness consists in his invention of a philosophy of language that has immediate application not only to linguistics and stylistics but also to the most urgent concerns of everyday life. It is, in effect, an Existentialist philology.” They go on to say, “His emphasis on language as both a cognitive and social practice sets him apart” (9). Major critical assessments of Bakhtin as a philosopher of creation can be found in Clark, Katerina, and Michael Holquist. Mikhail Bakhtin. Cambridge: Belknap/Harvard UP, 1984, and Morson, Gary Saul, and Caryl Emerson. Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1990. For an overview of the competing interpretations of Bakhtin’s work among Western and Eastern Bakhtin specialists, see Steinglass, Matt. “International Man of Mystery: The Battle over Mikhail Bakhtin.” Lingua Franca: The Review of Academic Life 8.3 (1998): 33-41. For an assessment of the intellectual politics surrounding the reception of Bakhtin among scholars, see Cohen, Tom. “The Ideology of Dialogue: The Bakhtin/De Man (Dis)Connection.” Cultural Critique 3 (1996): 41-86; Gregory Clark claims Bakhtin’s social theory of discourse offers us insight into the ways reading and writing are democratic practices; See Clark, Gregory. Dialogue, Dialectic, and Conversation: A Social Perspective on the Function of Writing. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1990; Ken Hirschkop explores the idea of Bakhtinian democracy even more. He argues that Bakhtin helps us to understand democracy as culture and not as a “set of observed political procedures.” This might be the result of Bakhtin’s experiences living and writing during a time of great oppression and repression in Russia. Bakhtin was arrested and exiled by Russian authorities. Hirschkop helps us to see another important aspect of Bakhtin’s dialogism (as distinct from dialogue). He claims we also have to interpret dialogism “as a response to the historical problem of democratic culture” (x). Bakhtin’s work shows us how “language could be the perfect medium for the reintegration of worlds split apart by modern life” (205). See more on the Bakhtin texts Hirschkop explores to support his unorthodox interpretation of dialogism and democracy in Hirschkop, Ken. Mikhail Bakhtin: An Aesthetic for Democracy. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999.

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More importantly, dialogism’s open unity is a strong response to reductionism. It is performative (eventness) and it shows us how simultaneity and connections are created out of differences without sacrificing individuality or distinctions. Dialogism is architectonic (the building/authoring of texts and the self through words) in the sense that it helps describe how language orders parts into unfinalized wholes, and this is just the kind of philosophy, if not science, John H. Miller, Gregory Bateson, Mark C. Taylor, Mike Rose, Gerald Graff, Jennifer Gore and bell hooks suggest we need (see Endnote 6 above). See more on Bakhtin’s early writings on author/text, self/other and relational thinking in Bakhtin, M. M. Art and Answerability: Early Philosophical Essays by M. M. Bakhtin. Eds. Vadim Liapunov and Michael Holquist. Trans. Vadim Liapunov and Kenneth R. Brostrom. Austin: U of Texas P, 1990. In the glossary in The Dialogic Imagination, the editors write this about the nature of Bakhtin’s dialogism: “everything means, is understood, as part of a greater whole—there is a constant interaction between meanings, all of which have the potential of conditioning others” (426). These ideas are central to my development of Matrix Thinking, Matrix Maps and the Biographies. Also, Bakhtin later adapts his thoughts on architectonics and heteroglossia (the diversity of voices found in a text, particularly the novel, where he grounds much of his philosophy) to include genres and fields, and this relationship supports a theoretical kinship between intertextuality, interdisciplinarity and (open) systems thinking. For more, see Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Ed. Michael Holquist. Austin: U of Texas P, 1998. In his later writings on genres, Bakhtin says, “Each separate utterance is individual, of course, but each sphere in which language is used develops its own relatively stable types of these utterances. These are called speech genres … All the various fields of human activity are connected with the use of language. It is completely understandable that the character and forms of this usage should be as various as the fields of human activity, which, of course, in no sense contradicts the national unity of language.” For more on speech genres and the idea of open unity, see Bakhtin, M. M. “The Problem of Speech Genres.” Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Trans. Vern W. McGee. Eds. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: U of Texas P, 1986. 60-102. For a discussion on how Bakhtin’s work has been used in a wide range of disciplines, see Mandelker, Amy, ed. Bakhtin in Contexts: Across the Disciplines. Illinois: Northwestern UP, 1995.

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As stated earlier, Bakhtin’s work on dialogism is echoed in Paulo Freire’s work on dialogic matrices and education. Robert Scholes captures the spirit and importance of their dialogic perspectives in his claim that “... reading and writing are important because we read and write our world as well as our texts, and are read and written by them in turn. Texts are places where power and weakness become visible and discussable, where learning and ignorance manifest themselves, where the structures that enable and constrain our thoughts and actions become palpable” (xi). See a call for a curriculum based on textual studies in Scholes, Robert. Textual Power: Literary Theory and the Teaching of English. New Haven: Yale UP, 1985. Freire sees intertextuality as a form of dialogic pedagogy. The anti-dialogic or banking concept of education tends to disempower. Freire says, “In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing” (58). Dialogic pedagogy uses prior learning for the re-invention of knowledge and the development of consciousness. For more, see Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 1990. Bakhtin’s dialogic imagination and Freire’s conscientization seem to cross in C. Wright Mills’s work. Mills’s social imagination is the cultivation of consciousness, the prerequisite for intellectual craftsmanship and greater understanding. Mills describes his idea of the social imagination as that quality of the mind that allows one to combine ideas and knowledge in ways that lend meaning to all kinds of relationships and their greater significance for humans and the world. See more in Mills, C. Wright. The Sociological Imagination. 40th ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000; These studies of the imagination are described as connectivism in Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Brian Massumi. Minnesota: U of Minnesota P, 1984. 51-52; See a call to reclaim the imagination and to use philosophy to understand the central role writing plays in all disciplines in Berthoff, Ann E. The Making of Meaning: Metaphors, Models, and Maxims for Writing Teachers. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook, 1981. In the Lyotardian sense of postmodernism, ME: 101 models Matrix Thinking (dialogic pedagogy) as a virtual platform (digital pedagogy). See definition of a virtual classroom as “a teaching and learning environment located within a computer-mediated communication system”(3) in Hiltz, Star Roxanne. The Virtual Classroom: Learning without Limits via Computer Network. United Kingdom: Intellect, 1994; See criteria used to develop and evaluate online platforms and scholarship in Schnapp, Jeffrey T., Anne Burdick, Johanna Drucker, Peter Lunenfeld, and Todd Presner. Digital_Humanities. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2012. 122-131; Picciano, Anthony. Online Education: Foundations, Planning, and Pedagogy. New York: Routledge, 2019; Boyer, Ernest. Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. New York: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1990.

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11. See discussion on how Bakhtin’s work can help us understand how students mediate the creation of portfolios in the prior learning process in Pokorny, Helen. “Portfolios and Meaning-Making in the Assessment of Prior Learning.” International Journal of Lifelong Education 32.4 (2013): 518-534; For more on the portfolio in prior learning assessment, see Mandell, Alan, and Elana Michelson. Portfolio Development and the Assessment of Prior Learning: Perspectives, Models and Practices. 2nd ed. Virginia: Stylus, 2004; See discussion on the challenges of portfolio assessment and how communal assessment is one way to address variations in judgements in Belanoff, Pat. “The Myth of Assessment.” Journal of Basic Writing 10 (1991): 54-66, and Belanoff, Pat, and Marcia Dickson. Portfolios: Process and Product. Portsmouth: Heinemann-Boynton/Cook, 1991; For more on the concept of the portfolio and its role as a design and pedagogical tool, see Habib, Laurence, and Line Wittek. “The Portfolio as Artifact and Actor.” Mind, Culture, and Activity. 14.4 (2007): 266-282.

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All sources are interpreted in MLA Style (7th edition) for brevity.