politics as criteria of evaluation. In contrast, economics is viewed as
being influenced very little by politics. Thus although both disci-
plines are fairly consensual, history is more divided internally than
economics. This can be explained in part by the fact that history
is more defined by national spatial borders than is economics, which
is more cognitively unified globally. Moreover, economists may be
more self-satisfied with their consensual state than are historians—a
clear indicator of disciplinary maturity according to some.^63 The al-
ternative view, perhaps more in line with that of historians, would be
to define the ability to tolerate ideological and methodological plu-
ralism as a signal that the field has matured.
Of the six fields considered, English faces the most acute disciplin-
ary crisis, both demographically and intellectually. Several panelists
hailing from this discipline question the very concept of academic
excellence. Panelists note the low consensus on what defines excel-
lence (notably on what defines originality and significance), as well
as the prevalence of disciplinary skepticism and relativism. There is a
proliferation of criteria for assessing excellence, including through
theories and authors that help bridge substantive topics. Panelists
express concern over deprofessionalization and the decline of real
disciplinary expertise at a time when close reading is losing its disci-
plinary centrality, when cultural studies is becoming more promi-
nent, and when English scholars are increasingly borrowing their
topics and methods from historians and culture experts. In this con-
text, excellence is often viewed as residing in the eye of the beholder
(or in interpretive communities, such as those described by Stanley
Fish), rather than being an intrinsic property of the object being
evaluated.^64 The increasingly interdisciplinary nature of English it-
self certainly may prepare literary scholars to accept the methods
used in proposals emanating from a subset of cognate fields. The
same holds for history.
Threatened by the popularity of cultural analysis in other fields,
104 / On Disciplinary Cultures