Working with concepts

Interdisciplinarity in the humanities should seek its heuristic and methodological basis in concepts rather than in methods. Concepts are the tools of intersubjectivity: They facilitate discussion on the basis of a common language. But concepts are not fixed. They travel - between disciplines, between individual scholars, between historical periods and between geographically dispersed academic communities. Between disciplines, their meaning, reach and operational value differ. These processes of differing need to be assessed before, during and after each 'trip'. All of these forms of travel render concepts flexible. It is this changeability that becomes part of their usefulness for a new methodology that is neither stultifying and rigid nor arbitrary or 'sloppy'. This paper aims to explore the value of such unsettled concepts for interdisciplinary work in the Humanities.