Sunday morning rumination:

It has been my impression that there has been, over the last 3-4 decades, a sort of diversifying and democratizing of what is sponsored or tolerated in university philosophy departments---an increase in the diversity of philosophical interests and areas of pursuit, among people on the grad-school-to-professor track in the context of philosophy departments in this country. And with this, an increase in the number of professional groups and societies holding conferences for focused conversations in these multiple and diverse areas of interest.  There has also, I think, been an increase, among these same folks, in interdisciplinary interests and connections, and this takes people off to conferences of groups in other disciplines and/or conferences of the many different interdisciplinary academic projects.  There seem to me to be lot more different sites of "cutting edge" work and "presently-most-exciting-and-influential" workers.  And across this field of variety, those in one sector often don't even recognize the names of the "big names" in another sector.  And all of this has an economic side, of course: how many conferences can any one of us afford to go to, given reduced institutional support, increased transportation costs (gas, airfares) and perhaps, not far down the road, increased weather disturbances?  I think we have been moving into an era of much less centralized "disciplines," for many reasons.  As I see it, the growing diversity of what's going on in "philosophy" has been creating a sort of expansion and shifting in the institutional/intellectual magnetic flied, and it's moving toward a point where the center will not hold.

I am wondering whether the APA might be moving toward obsolescence.  I don't mean this in a negatively critical or put-down way.  I'm just thinking: changing global contexts, changing institutions.

Marilyn

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