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Article ID: CBB182548642

State of the Unions Redux (2018)

Sudan, Rajani (Author)
Tattersdill, Will (Author)

Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science, and Technology
Volume: 26
Issue: 3
Pages: 255-258

DOI: 10.1353/con.2018.0019

URI: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/698839

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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, 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.

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