Arts & International Affairs: Vol. 3, No.3/Vol. 4, No. 1, Winter 2018/2019 | Page 16

INTRODUCTION: UNDERSTANDING MULTIMODALITIES
IN ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
The contributions to this double issue of Arts & International Affairs explore precisely
this trajectory from social life to multimodal presentation, and tackle some of the most
pressing questions about the future of academic publishing: what is the nature of authorship?
Who holds the privilege of knowledge? Have academics become middlemen? Are
academic journals obsolete? Multimodality, as a relatively new endeavor cannot provide
answers but constitutes a provocation. The analytical practices and methodologies underlying
multimodality are still uncertain and evolving ( Jewitt 2009). To use a visual
metaphor, shifting the frame from text to multimodality does not merely turn Descartes
on his head but challenges the very nature of knowledge. As such, this is uncharted territory
with all the strengths and pitfalls that such a self-reflective move involves. However,
this is also a call for further specifying a research agenda for the future. Multimodality
offers important ways for researchers to translate social lives in research.
References
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Bartie, Angela. (2013) Edinburgh Festivals: Culture and Society in Post-War Britain. Edinburgh,
UK: University of Edinburgh Press.
Chandler, Daniel. (2002) Semiotics: The Basics. New York, NY: Routledge.
Chrysagis, Evangelos. (2016) The Visible Evidence of DiY Ethics: Music, Publicity and
Technologies of (In)visibility in Glasgow. Visual Culture in Britain 17 (3): 290–310.
Chrysagis, Evangelos and Panas Karampampas. (2017) A Sense of Togetherness: Music
Promotion and Ethics in Glasgow. In Collaborative Intimacies in Music and Dance: Anthropologies
of Sound and Movement, eds. Evangelos Chrysagis and Panas Karampampas,
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Collins, S. G., M. Durington and H. Gill. (2017) Multimodality: An Invitation. American
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Foucault, Michel. (2012) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York:
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Freire, Paulo. (2000/1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum.
Glissant, Édouard. (1997) Poetics of Relation, trans. Betsy Wing. Ann Arbor: University
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Hodge, Robert Ian Vere and Gunther R. Kress. (1988) Social Semiotics. Cambridge:
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