Whither knowledge that requires a "contract"? Is there in fact any other kind of knowledge, at least in academic life? What is the relation of this knowledge to paradigms or politics? How in fact is a paradigm different than a discipline; how is each to be distinguished from a profession; and what about politics amid these distinctions? At times in this sophisticated, strenuous new book The Knowledge Contract, David Downing goes right to the final question. Most times, though, we never get there (or else do but fail to stay) because there are further histories that must be traced, more distinctions that must be considered, new authorities who must be cited, additional restatements that must be made. An admirable book continually risks being top-heavy with its own knowledge. Downing states at the outset, "This book focuses on the question of disciplinarity, the contractural arrangements that sustain the production of disciplinary knowledge, and the problems of academic labor with respect to the larger structural changes of the university" (2). So seven subsequent chapters discuss such things as the Kuhnification of the Humanities, the Diversification of the University, and the Anthologization of Theory. Throughout, these subjects are continually bedeviled by what precisely a "discipline" is, or rather by all the many meanings of this inescapable, devious term. An institutional practice? A cultural rhetoric? An identifiable discourse? A form of literacy? And perhaps most important for Downing, what about the kinds of knowledge beyond or, better, beside disciplinary forms? Must these remain "epistemological" only, or can they somehow be negotiated into the very knowledge contract that appears to exclude them? Another question: what about adjuncts? Does their knowledge