Undisciplined studies and the (geo)politics of knowledge 1 Richard Miskolci 2 In this short and preliminary text, I will seek to discuss three historical inflections in the production of knowledge regarding the social and how each of these reconfigured relationships between knowledge and power. The first of them is set in Europe during the end of the 19 th century, with the emergence of a social science linked to the interests of intellectual, political and economic elites. The second happened in the United States between the wars, when social science was reconfigured through the expanding academic-professional formation of the middle classes, a process associated with state and market interests. Finally, the third inflection is set in the 1960s, when subjected knowledge linked to the demands of organized civil society, in the form of social movements, created an insurgency within the social sciences. This brought new subjects within its purview, not only as objects of study, but as creators of knowledge. Beginning with this brief and incomplete historical overview, I will focus upon the present challenges involved in comprehending dialogues and tensions between disciplines and knowledges, as well as those present in the continuing hegemony of the global North in the production and dissemination of social theory. In conclusion, I will present some internal critiques of the disciplines and the proposals for reforming their knowledge bases, contrasting these with other proposals that seek to supersede current forms of knowledge through the queering hegemonic paradigms of knowledge production. 1 This paper was presented in Queering Paradigms 4, Rio de Janeiro, August 2012 and will be published in the congress book. 2 Visiting Scholar – Department of Feminist Studies (UCSC) – FAPESP Fellow – Professor in the Department of Sociology - Federal University of São Carlos – Brazil – e-mail ufscar7@gmail.com