ABSTRACT
Studies of the question of disciplinarity have tended to assume that the identity of a discipline is established and sustained principally in its designation and preservation of a particular field of objects-the literary text, the past, the artistic image, the physical space of the earth, the realm of speculative ideas along with a set of protocols of argument and exposition. One of the most important, but rarely discussed, mediators between these two dimensions is exemplification. All intellectual disciplines requiring forms of public exposition (which is perhaps to say all intellectual disciplines whatsoever) must work by selective demonstration, illustration, case study, synecdoche: in short, by the strategic deployment of examples. The character, and claim to legitimacy, of a discipline is largely defined by the way it regulates the passage from example to generality.
