GGI faculty member Lise Weil (left) with Danielle Boutet

“The Knowledge of Knowledge: a Transdisciplinary Journey From Interdisciplinary Arts to the Construction of Knowledge,” Danielle Boutet’s talk at the spring 2015 Goddard Graduate Institute residency illuminated how essential what we know and how we know it is to the future we seek. As she says in the talk:

Indeed, if we agree that knowledge is constructed, if we agree that the bulk of Western thinking is pervaded by biases and by the views of the dominant groups, if we agree that there is no objective truth, then we have to agree that how we will look at things and how we will conceptualize them and how we will understand the world is a decision. A most important decision – with personal and collective consequences. I think we have to dream what kind of life we want for ourselves and for the world, to construct a vision of what humanity means, and then think deeply about how to go from here to there.

Danielle  has long explored what it means to seek, unearth, and most of all, construct knowledge. A former student, and long-time Goddard College faculty member, Danielle founded the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts program, served as Dean of Academic Affairs, and now serves on the college’s Board of Trustees. As a music composer, interdisciplinary artist, professor, and researcher at Université du Québec à Rimouski, she looks at “the phenomenology of the artistic experience, the creative process and art making as a way of knowing,” according to her bio.

She also talked extensively with students at a well-attended workshop at the residency. Read the whole transcript of “The Knowledge of Knowledge” at Danielle’s website here.