From the Lighthouse: Interdisciplinary Reflections on Light

ISBN-13: 9781472477354 / Angielski / Twarda / 2018 / 292 str.

Veronica Strang; Tim Edensor

Opis

What is a lighthouse? What does it do, and how? What does a lighthouse mean symbolically? And what happens when we examine such questions from different disciplinary perspectives? Can sharing these perspectives through an interdisciplinary conversation 'enlighten' our thinking? This volume demonstrates the capacity of interdisciplinarity to transform the way we think. It provides both a comprehensive vision of what diverse disciplinary approaches bring to the topic itself, as well as some insights into how such exchanges act upon each disciplinary perspective. Bringing together a wide range of scholars to provide inputs on the topic, and illustrated by numerous visual and poetic images, it also includes their comments on how their views have been informed by interdisciplinary exchanges. In both text and image, lighthouses appear in multiple forms: as signals of safety and surveillance; as homologous persons and eyes; as beacons of enlightenment; as phallic assertions of boundaries; as monuments of community identity; as memorials of historical relationships with the sea; as technological advancements. Preliminary conversations also opened up other avenues: human and non-human evolutionary adaptations in the use of light as signal and warning; the importance of regularity and synchronicity in pulses of light; the interpretation of pulsars as the 'lighthouses' of outer space; the many related material objects and technologies categorically and metaphorically linked to the lighthouse (ancient watchhouses and beacons; new digital technologies of signal and surveillance; airport control towers to track and guide airborne craft back 'to port'). Reflecting the free thinking and disciplinary equality that underpinned the initial experiment, the volume adopts an unconventional structural approach. Rather than offering distinct 'chapters', the contributors address cross-cutting themes in a more interwoven conversational mode, so that each sub-theme has i