ABSTRACT
Should the farmer and the cowhand be friends? The question is asked in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical Oklahoma! and proves relevant to a number of dubious professional alliances. As an academic metaphor, the antagonism between farmer and cowhand conjures the conflict between energies of cultivation and preservation on the one side; energies of disruption and subversion on the other. In current American debates about trends in the study of culture, this dichotomy is manifest in the rivalry between traditional disciplines and post-disciplinary formations. The farmer-disciplinarians want to cultivate their gardens, and they often worry that the disruptive cowhands will first trample their flowers and then move their markets to far-away, greener pastures. The cowhands disrupt out of necessity, conviction, and justice, but find themselves vulnerable to the accusation that the undermining of cultivation may portend withering harvests for everyone. 1
