You Tube Theology

Follow the Footnotes; Connect the Dots; See the Gestalt: Reflections on the Scholarship of Robert E. Innis

Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin, King’s College London

Starting with a look at Robert Innis’ (impressive) curriculum vitae as a source ‘text’, this paper will reflect (somewhat speculatively!) on Innis’ scholarly journey as an exemplification of scholarship in general. It will identify three stages: first, the intuitive, associative process of gathering data guided by specific interests or questions; second, the experimental process of connecting data in particular configurations around specific themes; third, the seemingly passive ‘waiting’ for a unified Gestalt to emerge – to reveal itself – that makes sense of the connections and bestows on them disclosive meaning. Drawing on Karl Bühler’s and Susanne Langer’s notions of Gestalt, the paper suggests that the process of scholarship is not in principle different or less ‘creative’ than the process of making art. Moreover, as in the making art, it is impossible in scholarship to predict in advance how much time each stage will take and, indeed, if the third stage will ever be reached. That being so, it concludes that the current academic climate with its pressure on production of results is not typically conducive for genuinely explorative and meaningful scholarship.

Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin Originally from the Netherlands, Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin studied philosophy, history of art and violin in Amsterdam. Currently a Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London and Research Associate at the Margaret Beaufort Institute in Cambridge, UK, she works on the interface of philosophical and theological aesthetics with a special interest in the work of Susanne K. Langer and the question of how art conveys meaning, as well as in socially engaged public art. Before moving to the UK, she taught at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto during which time she also served as the President of the Canadian Society for Aesthetics. She has published articles and book chapters on Kant, Langer, Merleau-Ponty, Calvin, art and embodiment, contemporary art and religion, Ai WeiWei, and is the author of The Philosophy of Susanne Langer: Embodied Meaning in Logic, Art and Feeling (Bloomsbury, 2020). She is the founding director and curator of the travelling exhibition ‘Art, Conflict and Remembering: the murals of the Bogside Artists’ about the Troubles in Northern Ireland, which has toured UK cathedrals and universities.