Jonathan Sterne
This paper asks two related questions: is digital media studies a discipline,
and should scholars within the field desire to move toward disciplinarity? Drawing
on the writings of Michel Foucualt and Pierre Bourdieu, as well as several Anglo-American
cultural studies of disciplinarity, the essay argues that digital media studies
has not yet constituted a truly novel scholarly discourse. Because of that,
our reasons for disciplinizing – to the extent that it is possible to
choose to become a discipline – would be largely strategic. Given that
the field is already successfully reproducing itself, the symbolic benefits
of becoming a discipline are relatively limited, and such a move would also
have significant intellectual costs.