Discrimination and Disadvantage

Dialogues on Disability: Shelley Tremain Interviews Gen Eickers

 

Hello, I’m Shelley Tremain and I’d like to welcome you to the forty-fourth installment of Dialogues on Disability, the series of interviews that I am conducting with disabled philosophers and post here on the third Wednesday of each month. The series is designed to provide a public venue for discussion with disabled philosophers about a range of topics, including their philosophical work on disability; the place of philosophy of disability vis-à-vis the discipline and profession; their experiences of institutional discrimination and personal prejudice in philosophy, in particular, and in academia, more generally; resistance to ableism, racism, sexism, and other apparatuses of power; accessibility; and anti-oppressive pedagogy. 

I acknowledge that the land on which I sit to conduct these interviews is the traditional territory of the Haudensaunee and Anishnaabeg, covered by the Upper Canada Treaties and directly adjacent to Haldiman Treaty territory. I offer these interviews with respect and in the spirit of reconciliation.

My guest today is Gen Eickers. Gen is currently finishing their Ph.D. at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain and Freie Universitaet Berlin. Their research concentrates on social interaction and emotional display, developing an account of social interaction in their dissertation that focuses on contextual aspects of it. While Gen has been preoccupied with work on their dissertation in the last couple of months, with little time for anything else, they actually enjoy solitary activities like reading (they are currently catching up on LGBTQ history) and engaging in art in all kinds of ways. In the last three years, they have organized three art events.

 

Welcome to Dialogues on Disability, Gen! You grew up in a small town in southern Germany and initially studied to become a high school teacher. Please tell us about your background and how you found your way to a Ph.D. program in philosophy.

Thank you for having me, Shelley!

Yes, I grew up in a small village in southern Germany, which has a population of 2,500. Southern Germany is quite Catholic and ninety-nine percent white. The area in which I grew up is very conservative. In addition to this already conservative environment, in the few last years, right-wing attitudes have come to the surface again, perhaps even increased. In the 2017 election, fifteen percent of voters in the area in which I grew up voted for the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), the right-wing political party in Germany. Around thirty-eight percent voted for the Christian party, whose values are far from trans-friendly, queer-friendly, immigrant-friendly, or disability-friendly.

These election results put this region above the national averages with respect to the votes that right-wing parties received. What is important to add here, of course, is that in Berlin, my chosen home, around twelve percent of voters voted for the AfD. The difference between fifteen percent and twelve percent may not seem that big when we look at the number in isolation. But it’s significant when we consider that far fewer people in Berlin voted for the Christian party, and far more people voted for the left party. Most importantly, the queer community, the queer scene in Berlin is big, supportive, and good at resistance. No such thing existed in the area in which I grew up. None of this means that twelve percent of voters is not already bad enough though.

My grandparents used to have a farm, and I spent some of my childhood sitting on a tractor with my grandfather. I value these memories. At the same time, though, due to the conservative environment of southern Germany, life felt repressed and depressing there. Feelings, social issues, gender, disability were just not topics to be discussed. Everything that seemed to be remotely odd or that departed from accepted norms was ignored or simply not talked about—but, in an effortless kind of way; I think people just had no language for, nor idea of how to deal with, anything other than what is taken as normal.

When my parents got divorced, people talked badly about them and they lost friends. In high school, I knew only one other person who had divorced parents. When I was in high school, there were rumors that two of our male teachers were gay and that one of my male classmates was gay. Nothing was overt, but the things said about the teachers and the classmate were awful and, now that I have come to realize my own trans gay identity, are painful for me to think back on.

Gender was simply not a thing—it still isn’t there, I think. It was so not on the table ever that I am not sure how to express the non-existence of thoughts or conversations about gender. I think Germans, in general, are not the best when it comes to emotion work or communicating their problems, feelings, and needs, which even manifests in how language is used: where Americans would say “amazing!!!”, my relatives would say “not too bad.”

For historical and cultural reasons, rural areas in Germany, in my experience, revolve a lot around survival, work, everyday lives. That is to say that there has not been any room in these regions to openly talk about or even allow oneself to think about aspects of identity, such as gender, sexuality, disability, and race. Everything that goes beyond work and survival appears to be a luxury. But we need to learn that living one’s identity is not a luxury, but rather a necessity.

The conflict between the idea that thinking about identity is a luxury and the idea that thinking about identity is a necessity manifested, for me, in conflicting feelings and values which, I think, have made it difficult, if not impossible, for me to look for support, to ask for help, to come out as trans, to talk about my mental health. Until recently, I despised my background—perhaps for these very reasons and especially due to social pressure—but I have learned to embrace parts of it. I think my background has also equipped me with tools that people from more privileged backgrounds—such as people from academic families—do not have. For example, I can absolutely imagine myself working low-paying jobs and can imagine life not as a fancy university professor.

When I graduated from high school at eighteen, my plan was to study art in order to become an art teacher. I applied to art school, but I was rejected. That was a bummer, but it hasn’t prevented me from continuing to make art and be engaged in art projects. I have curated three exhibitions so far, and I am currently working on a fourth. Two of the exhibitions were art and science collaborations: Embodiments, which took place in 2016 at the Whiteconcepts Gallery in Berlin, and an exhibition for the Visual Science of Art Conference (VSAC) in 2017. Both collaborations have led to interesting conversations between artists and scientists/researchers.

 

[Description of image below:  A group of spectators sits on the floor of the Whiteconcepts Gallery. They are looking up at something out of the view of the shot. Artwork is displayed on the walls of the room, including a large fabric installation on the wall behind the viewers.]

 

[Description of image below: A shirtless person stands in the Whiteconcepts Gallery holding a phone to their chest, their hands cradling and framing the screen of the phone on which a video of a beating heart during an open-heart surgery is displayed. The displayed heart is the estimated size of the heart of the person holding the phone. Other pieces of art can be seen in the background of the shot.]

 

CFP: Decolonisation: Shaping and Re-shaping Reality, King's College London, Mar. 9-10, 2019 (deadline: Dec. 15, 2018*)

 

Call for Papers

Decolonisation: Shaping and Re-shaping Reality 

KCL Minorities and Philosophy Conference,
King's College London,

March 9-10, 2019
Deadline: December 15, 2018*

 

KCL Minorities and Philosophy welcomes submissions of abstracts for its conference in March 2019.

We invite undergraduate and postgraduate students from UK universities to submit abstracts on subjects related to the theme of  "Decolonisation – Shaping and Re-shaping Reality." Submissions from international students are also welcomed, however, we will not be
able to fund international travel.

This conference aims to open up questions and provide a platform for critical analysis concerning the underlying assumptions, ideologies,
narratives, social structures etc. that are rooted in white colonialism, which have shaped (and continue to shape) reality for a multitude of people. The aim is to re-tell stories where white heterosexual upper-class men are no longer the protagonists, and to think critically about ways to re-shape our present reality in efforts towards decolonisation.

Possible areas include (but are not limited to):
- Metaphysics
- Epistemology
- Philosophy of Race
- Political Philosophy
- History of Philosophy
- Continental Philosophy
- Philosophy of Language
- Philosophy of Science

We accept submissions from students in a wide-range of disciplines, such as history, geography, anthropology, languages, as well as medicine and the nature sciences.

Abstracts should be no longer than 500 words.
Please submit abstracts in PDF format by 15th December 2018 to: 
[email protected]

Please include a separate document in your email with your name and institutional affiliation. We invite you to include any information you would like us to know about yourself, e.g. age, gender, ethnicity, disability, etc.

Conference website:
https://www.facebook.com/kclmap/

*Note: the official conference poster on the Facebook page for the conference indicates that December 20, 2018 is the deadline for submission. 

 

posted by Shelley

Is Eugenics Too Controversial for Mainstream Bioethics Journals?

 

In my previous post, I asserted that the impetus and rationale for the prospective Journal of Controversial Ideas are the production and publication of eugenic discourse. I also asserted that the biopolitics and governmentality of extant bioethics journals and the subfield of bioethics itself have paved the way for the unfettered production and publication of eugenic discourse in the future journal. 

I suspect that my claims in this regard met with considerable skepticism in some corners of philosophy. Thus, I want to suggest that skeptical readers and listeners consider the following. 

Recently, the Monash Bioethics Review published an article authored by Jonathan Anomaly entitled "Defending Eugenics." The claims that Anomaly makes in the article are as pernicious as the title of the article suggests, targetting disabled people, nondisabled people of colour, nondisabled poor people, nondisabled Indigenous people, and nondisabled Jewish people, among others, promoting the ideas of eugenic selection, procreative beneficence, and so on. 

Anomaly reportedly had a difficult time getting the article published. Nevertheless, the article found a home at the Monash Bioethics Review, on whose editorial board Peter Singer and Julian Savulescu serve, along with other bioethicists who espouse claims that have direct or indirect eugenicist implications. Singer has of course a long affiliation with bioethics at Monash University and Savulescu works at the Uheiro Centre at Oxford University that I mentioned in yesterday's post. I implore skeptics of yesterday's post to put together the pieces of this situation.

The claims that Anomaly makes in the article have not gone unnoticed. I have copied below the text of a letter that The Australian Critical Race & Whiteness Studies Association has initiated in response to the publication of the article. The letter is posted to google docs here where you can add your signature: 

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSejAtoxqUzYPpzofNoabxPIW_bit78cV7FiYPeHmlpLhy8HdQ/viewform?fbclid=IwAR1sL3A-D_g69gLRDiZf9lo2jCBPXk4ch34IQEvX_L9UkHFamd4bAUe-bUc

_______________________________________________________________

 

The Australian Critical Race & Whiteness Studies is asking our members and supporters to sign the letter below to the editors of the Monash Bioethics Review on the publication of an article entitled 'Defending Eugenics'. Signatures may be added at the bottom of the letter.

Jonathan Oakley and Michael Selgelid
Editors in Chief, Monash Bioethics Review
Monash Bioethics Centre
Menzies Building
20 Chancellors Walk
Clayton Campus
Monash University
VIC 3800

Sydney, 14 November 2018

Dear Professors Oakley and Selgelid,

We are writing to you as the Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association to express concern about the publication in the Monash Bioethics Review of an article entitled ‘Defending Eugenics’ by Jonathan Anomaly.

In our view, this article normalizes a practice that has been, and continues to be, associated with the discipline and punishment of racialised people since the 19th century when it was first suggested by Francis Galton, a ‘race scientist’ whose ‘spirit’ the author wishes to ‘reclaim’ in the interests of reducing the ‘consequences of people reproducing at random.’

The author attempts to avoid the charge of racism by arguing that the virtues of eugenics should not be tempered by the ends to which these ideas were put by the Nazis during the Holocaust. There are a number of problems with this proposition which we would like to outline:

1. It is impossible to dissociate an idea from the context in which it emerged and the practices which it led to. The very idea of manipulating the population in order to attempt to facilitate a ‘eugenic utopia’ comes to fruition within the context of European colonialism, and the increased power of European states to quantify and manage populations. The main targets were the poor, the disabled and those considered racially ‘inferior’.

2. Anomaly’s discussion of the Holocaust attempts to avoid racism by making the argument that it was ‘dysgenic’ to eliminate the Jews as ‘arguably among the most intelligent and productive people of the twentieth century.’ Such an argument, while attempting to avoid racism, still operates with racially essentialist terms by generalizing about all Jews; it is notable too that Jews of colour are omitted from Anomaly’s claims.

3. Anomaly clearly believes in race differences, arguing that it was only the ‘the racist direction the eugenics movement took in the United States and Germany’ that led scientists to ‘deny that races exist.’ It is our contention that it is impossible to disentangle the belief that the human population can be divided into so-called races from the injustices that continue to be associated with that belief. And in the specific case of the article, it is impossible, to argue that races exist while claiming that one’s proposal to introduce eugenics into policy making is not racist.

4. Eugenic practices of the type discussed by Anomaly in the paper, are still in practice. The author believes that the language of eugenics was merely used to mask the ‘morally abhorrent policies and pseudo-scientific claims’ of the Nazis. However, eugenics principles were applied much more widely than that. In our context here in Australia, the Eugenics Society of Victoria was in operation until 1961 (https://theconversation.com/eugenics-in-australia-the-secre…). The practice of removal of Aboriginal children, which is still ongoing, reaching unprecedented levels today, has its roots in eugenics as its ultimate aim was the control of the Aboriginal population (https://www.theguardian.com/…/australia-fails-to-curb-child…). The practices of forced sterilisation are still in use against Indigenous women in Canada for example (https://www.cbc.ca/…/pol…/sterilization-indigenous-1.4902303). Dorothy Roberts has documented the extent to which the US welfare system has been restructured to inhibit the reproductive freedoms of poor Black women (https://penntoday.upenn.edu/…/revisiting-killing-the-black-…). Therefore, the policy proposals, presented by Anomaly, to improve what he calls the troubling ‘current demographics of Western countries’ are not mere hypotheticals.

5. In fact, Anomaly makes clear what troubles him when he remarks that pronatalist policies put in place by the Swedish state have resulted in higher births among those of Somali origin rather than ‘native-born Swedes.’ He also makes reference to ‘impulse control’ as hereditary, an argument also made by the conservative US publication, The National Review, which argued that Black children had less impulse control than white children, thus justifying their exclusion from school (https://www.nationalreview.com/…/more-distortion-ed-depart…/). Therefore he cannot claim that racism does not motivate his argument.

At a time when so-called ‘race realism’ is booming, despite being thoroughly debunked by the great majority of scientists (https://www.theguardian.com/…/the-unwelcome-revival-of-race…), the scholarly community must take responsibility for the ideas it endorses. There are serious questions to be answered about how an article that proposes that ‘future people would be better off if people with heritable traits that we value had a greater proportion of children’ passed peer review. It is our view that there is absolutely no way of separating the notion of there being ‘more valuable heritable traits’ from the fact that modern western societies have associated value with whiteness, abled-bodiedness and prosperity to the detriment of racialised people, the disabled and the poor.

We seem to have entered a phase in academia and public life where debate for its own sake has trumped any commitment to the principle of protecting those most vulnerable and creating the conditions for a more just society for all. As critical race scholars who are only too painfully aware of the practices to which ideas of race have been put, we suggest that it is never the time for an article that defends eugenics to be published in a reputable international scientific journal.

We hope that you will consider this letter and take the necessary steps to address the processes of peer review that led to this misguided decision.

Yours sincerely on behalf of the Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association

Alana Lentin
Associate Professor, Western Sydney University and ACRAWSA President (2017-19).

 

 

posted by Shelley

Burning Out: Resisting Resilience and Self-Care Narratives (guest post)

 

Burning Out: Resisting Resilience and Self-Care Narratives

 

Guest Post

 

by 

Suze Berkhout, M.D., Ph.D.*

 

As a psychiatry resident, the recent CBC and Toronto Star headlines proclaiming high rates of burnout, depression, and suicidal ideation in the Canadian medical profession came as no surprise to me. Even less surprising was the finding that these numbers were vastly higher amongst medical residents in Canada. Increasing demands and expectations, overloaded schedules, decreasing ability to make effective changes within the Canadian medical system, and conflicting values—humanistic approaches versus cost containment, for instance—are rampant. In addition, larger workplace cultures frequently value competitiveness, perfectionism, and certainty over admission and acknowledgement of flaws, limitations, and doubt. For residents and medical students, add in debt, a pervasive hierarchy, and even less control, and you’ve got a perfect storm.

Burnout—the combination of physical and emotional exhaustion, feelings of ineffectiveness or lack of accomplishment, and experiences of cynicism and detachment—are surely a logical conclusion to these structures and environments, not a personal tragedy.

This critical state of affairs is not just an issue for physicians, or even health professions more generally. Academia is rife with these same structures and their consequences. Not surprisingly, burnout is increasingly an issue discussed in higher education. And the impacts of structural inequities on women academics, academics who are members of racialized and other minority groups, and disabled academics are profound. We are the ones least likely to be on a tenure track and more frequently in precarious forms of employment; we are the ones most often tasked with unrecognized and unremunerated emotional labour; we are more likely to face biases in the practices of peer review, impacting publication opportunities, grant acquisition, and promotions. Yet our assertions around issues of equity and justice are more likely to be met with scepticism at best, hostility and retribution at worst.

The testimonial and hermeneutical injustices faced by individuals “othered” along various intersectional identities must also be understood as part of the burnout picture. Testimonial injustice occurs when a speaker is deemed to lack credibility due to prejudicial beliefs by the listener—typically these beliefs relate to some aspect of the speaker’s cognition, formed in a way that is resistant to counter-evidence; moreover, these prejudicial beliefs reference sociohistorically extended patterns of oppression beyond a given interaction (Wanderer 2017). Hermeneutical injustice is the systematic constraining or undermining of communicators’ intelligibility which leads certain groups to be at a disadvantage with respect to making sense of their social experience. Injustices of these types radically curtail one’s voice, one’s interpretive capacities, and one’s ability to participate in meaning-making (Medina 2017). The wrongs relating to these forms of injustice are numerous, not the least of which is the way in which they maintain asymmetric and problematic relations of power.

The exhaustion, ineffectiveness, and detachment that signify burnout are surely linked, at least for members of certain groups, to the processes of epistemic subordination and exclusion, as well as a diminished ability to make sense of the position in which one finds oneself. Yet, if one were to look at the popular literature around the subject of burnout (here and here, for instance), it would seem that a combination of time management, gratitude journals, and yoga are all that it takes to combat the pervasive sense of helplessness and ineffectiveness that comes with the burnout territory. Emphasis in the literature has also been placed on how individuals make choices related to their professional life, including whether these choices align with their skills, temperament, and values. Even if these recommendations and other information are (to some degree) helpful, they individualize and privatize what is clearly an issue with deep structural and historical roots. They do nothing to contend with either structural inequalities or the forms of epistemic injustice described above.

Will improving your vinyasa fundamentally shift the relations of power that limit the agency of certain groups, systemically suppress their epistemic standpoint, and discount their assertions? I like endorphins as much as the next person, but surely scheduling in more self-care isn’t the answer. Or, it is an answer, but one that leaves unchallenged larger forces that underpin burnout. Individualizing and privatizing solutions to burnout displaces the responsibility for its “cure” onto the very people who have limited access to the mechanisms and privileges that enable systemic change, while absolving the very people who benefit from current structures of accountability.

Happily, I’m not the first person to notice this. In a recent Doximity blog post, Dr. Pooja Lakshmin also raises ire with the resilience refrain that has become so popular in medical culture, pointedly articulating that resilience and (what she rightly terms) “faux self-care” puts the burden of change on the individual while exonerating the system. I only worry that Dr. Lakshmin’s discussion of setting work-related boundaries—knowing your own limits, tolerating others’ disappointment that you are not placing their needs first, and not internalizing these as moral failings—is a strategy primarily available to people whose labour is both well-remunerated and falls outside the scope of precarity. One needs to have attained a certain level of social capital in one’s work to be able to avoid the negative repercussions that often accompany not being seen as a “team” player. Sessional and contract workers in academia, as well as early-career individuals (particularly women and members of racialized groups) don’t often have the luxury of turning down tasks that are presented to them as “opportunities,” either because of financial need or because of the optics and biases that come with pushing back.

Dialogues on Disability: Shelley Tremain Interviews C Dalrymple-Fraser

 

Hello, I’m Shelley Tremain and I’d like to welcome you to the forty-third installment of Dialogues on Disability, the series of interviews that I’m conducting with disabled philosophers and post here on the third Wednesday of each month. The series is designed to provide a public venue for discussion with disabled philosophers about a range of topics, including their philosophical work on disability; the place of philosophy of disability vis-à-vis the discipline and profession; their experiences of institutional discrimination and personal prejudice in philosophy, in particular, and in academia, more generally; resistance to ableism, racism, sexism, and other apparatuses of power; accessibility; and anti-oppressive pedagogy.

I acknowledge that the land on which I sit to conduct these interviews is the traditional territory of the Haudensaunee and Anishnaabeg, covered by the Upper Canada Treaties and directly adjacent to Haldiman Treaty territory. I offer these interviews with respect and in the spirit of reconciliation.

My guest today is C Dalrymple-Fraser. C is currently a Ph.D. candidate and Vanier Scholar in the Department of Philosophy and Joint Centre for Bioethics at the University of Toronto. Their primary research interests include practical ethics (especially bioethics), social epistemology, and philosophy of disability, usually in combination, and not always in that order. C’s dissertation will explore the roles of different kinds of “silences” and exclusions in health practices, with a focus on disabled and queer communities. In their spare time, C can be found resting or resisting with friends, visiting other people’s pets, taking selfies with bees, and occasionally misplacing puzzle pieces and library books.  

 

Welcome to Dialogues on Disability, C! Many graduate students in philosophy are concerned that their projects are not socially relevant, not philosophically important, or do not have practical implications. At least once in your studies, you considered dropping out because you felt that your work would not have an impact. Please explain why you felt conflicted about your position in philosophy and why you decided to continue in the field. Other students who are grappling with these issues might recognize aspects of their own situations in your response.

Thank you for the invitation to participate in this series, Shelley! I’ve learned a lot from the past interviews published in the series and I’m grateful for a chance to join the conversation.

I suppose that I’m often questioning my position in philosophy, but it was toward the end of my first degree that I most strongly considered leaving the field and academia in general. I’ll just mention two reasons here.

First, I was addressing the consequences of my failure to accountably seek support and accommodation for my mental health and health more generally. I struggled to accomplish even mundane tasks, let alone academic work, and developed bad coping mechanisms. Meanwhile, most of the representations of disorder, disability, and illness that I encountered in course readings were medically uninformed at best, stigmatizing on average, and largely raised only as limit cases or thought experiments about the boundaries of personhood or autonomy. This state of affairs didn’t help matters for my health or sense of belonging.

Second, a sudden wave of tragedies in my social groups and close communities, including several preventable deaths, made it much harder to go to school and think about, say, the compatibility of externalism about mental content with privileged access, the unity of the proposition, or other questions in which I was interested. It’s definitely a privilege to have been insulated enough from other goings-on in the world that it both took that long for me to feel this way and that I’ve never had to fight to “belong” in philosophy; but, it became difficult for me to justify my own position in philosophy when I could have been working in other spaces that I perceived to have more demonstrable or direct impacts on communities and peoples. Since the world keeps spinning, this is a challenge that I regularly confront.

I don’t want to suggest that people can’t do that work separate from their research, nor do I want to necessarily value some kinds of research over other kinds. I also want to resist the idea that research must be “impactful” in any specified way, because many norms around how we understand “impact” have been used to discredit different kinds of work and research and leisure that don’t fit our disciplinary ideals. But I couldn’t divorce my research and studies from the rest of the world in the ways that I would need to continue doing them as I had been.

Just as several reasons made me question my position or ability to continue in philosophy, many things played roles in continuing. For one, I was invited to a few volunteer opportunities that disrupted the boundaries between the university and the community in which it is located. Engaging in this volunteer work showed me additional ways that philosophy can be relevant to, or enriched by, issues and perspectives outside the discipline and academia.

Around the same time, I learned more about my family history of Alzheimer’s and redirected my remaining studies toward bioethics. At bioethics conferences and events, I have been able to talk directly with patients and professionals in ways that are often unavailable to people who are not in academic or health professions. This has allowed me to raise or translate concerns from groups to which I belong or to which I have proximity, and which are not often addressed in academic or professional contexts. I have friends in other graduate programs who were encouraged to switch schools or programs because their work was turning “more practical than philosophical,” so I can’t understate my fortune to have had these opportunities and the ongoing support of my mentors, peers, and friends. In short, institutional philosophy and bioethics have been spaces in which I could ask the kinds of questions important to the people around me and take up a certain kind of advocacy in research and teaching.

 

[Description of image below: C, a white person with facial hair, is sitting in a brightly lit office, facing the camera and faintly smiling. They are wearing round glasses with a golden glasses-chain, a vertically striped, button-down shirt, and a jacket with a floral design. Books on bookshelves fill the background of the shot.]

Your motivations to stay in philosophy were informed by a philosophy discussion group that you facilitated at a youth shelter. Tell us how your thinking and research have been transformed by your experiences with that group.

Unfortunately, our group ran for only a few months because of some disruptions to the shelter’s funding and ability to organize volunteer programming. Still, it was an amazing experience while it lasted. It’s difficult to put a lot of it into words, in part because I’m still learning from and reflecting on those experiences and also because many of the stories and knowledge circulated aren’t mine to share. There are a few things I have permission to discuss.

The experience made me reflect more on teaching practices and wider interpretations of accessibility. For example, we agreed on discussion topics collectively and did not assign materials. We wanted to acknowledge differences in interests, abilities, access to language and jargon, etc. and, because we were a drop-in group with a constantly changing membership, we didn’t want to discourage turnout.

Reflecting on the successes and failures in these strategies has directed me to stories and scholarship on why and when texts are necessary, who they centre or exclude, what the academic emphasis on written texts and documents over, say, oral traditions means for access—both in terms of who can read them and who can produce them—the price of textbooks, and so on.

Our discussions on my role in these conversations and spaces as a multiply privileged white academic also challenged me to listen and learn more about anti-oppressive research and teaching, and about relational accounts of knowing. Research as Resistance, edited by Susan Strega and Leslie Brown, and works by Margaret Kovach, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, and Shawn Wilson have been great entry points here, though I came to them quite late.

After one discussion, a regular member of the group commented that they liked the group because they felt heard, that although the care workers in the shelter were helpful and had good intentions, these workers tended to listen, as part of their jobs, with an agenda of identifying if anything was wrong. When the speech of the members of the group was regularly monitored for problems, they had a harder time being heard on their own terms.

I was glad that they experienced the space in that way, but I don’t think that I was a good listener. I had an agenda while facilitating the discussion, and that agenda was informed by the academic norms that I accepted and internalized. While it may be difficult or impossible to listen without some agenda, we can often be more critically attentive and accountable to our agendas. So, the comment was an encouragement to think about my failures to listen to others, on their terms, and to learn about how we can create and reproduce different kinds of “silences” as listeners in how we choose to be an audience. bell hooks’s Talking Back and Adrienne Rich’s poem “Cartographies of Silence” were important for thinking about these issues, in addition to everything that Kristie Dotson has written.

Is Jason Stanley a Foucaultian?

 

Jason Stanley is well known in philosophy for his work in analytic philosophy of language and epistemology. In recent years, Stanley has migrated to more politicized practice of philosophy, producing books on propaganda and fascism, books that have gained popularity and readership across the academy, in the popular press, in leftist and mainstream media, on the progressive conference circuit, and so on.

I have not read Stanley’s (2018) book, How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. (I requested a review copy from Random House Press in order to write a review of the book for the blog; however, Random House ignored my request.) Nevertheless, I have read a number of Stanley’s recent op-eds and articles that draw on the content of the book, in addition to watching various online interviews with Stanley in which he discusses the motivation for the book, outlines the main arguments of the book, including what he calls the “ten pillars of fascism,” explains how claims in the book relate to the present situation across the world, the Trump phenomenon, and so on. Thus, I thought that I had a good general picture of the book, even if I lacked a more certain familiarity with the particular brushstrokes that it comprises.

Then I watched Stanley’s recent interview on Democracy Now in which he talked about the normalization of fascism. The NORMALIZATION of fascism. That had to be a first. I’m certain that I had neither read nor heard Stanley refer to the encroachment of fascism in that decidedly FOUCAULTIAN way. Yet I have noticed that in all the op-eds, reviews, or videos that I have read or seen since the Democracy Now interview, Stanley refers to “normalizing fascism” or “the normalization of fascism.”

Has Jason Stanley become a Foucaultian? I needed to find out.

So, I went to the Amazon.ca website and typed “How Fascism Works” into the search window. When I reached the book’s page, I clicked on the Search Inside option and typed in “normalization.” Sure enough, I was taken to p. 188 of the book where Stanley, in response to possible objections to his arguments, introduces the idea that the threat of the normalization of fascist myths is real, not far-fetched, as some might claim. He then cites a 2017 article by Adam Bear and Joshua Knobe to support his claim that “normal” is not always a benign designation. As Stanley puts it, “both history and psychology show that our judgments about normality can’t always be trusted” (emphasis in Stanley).

Although I want to note that Stanley’s remarks in this context suggest that he thinks there exists some prediscursive domain of normality (in the mythic past?) that could be instantiated and accurately represented, I am more concerned to underscore the significant influence of Foucault in Stanley and in this general discussion of the normalization of fascism.

Knobe has of course been inspired by Foucault, as well as by Ian Hacking (see Knobe 2017), who himself acknowledges how Foucault shaped his thinking. Indeed, in the course of an argument about the relation between the constitutive effects of language and human action that I advance in the second chapter of Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability, I (2017, 121) briefly discuss Knobe’s work on the relation between ideas about normality and human conduct, that is, on how understandings of what counts as normal can constrain the possibilities of action that people believe are open to them. The second chapter of my book is in fact entitled “Power and Normalization”.

Philosophy and Decolonization in South Africa

 

In an earlier post, I drew attention to conflicts within the Philosophy Society of South Africa (PSSA) that have arisen due to efforts on the part of philosophy students and faculty in South Africa to decolonize philosophy curricula and increase the number of black faculty and students in philosophy departments, as well as to improve leadership representation within the PSSA itself.

In the Discrimination and Disadvantage Facebook group today, Daniel Brunson posted an article from Quartz that provides updated, more comprehensive, information about the struggles within philosophy in South Africa. Entitled "Philosophy is the New Battleground in South Africa's Fight Against Colonialism," the article by Olivia Goldhill focuses in particular on Tony Shabangu, a black lecturer and Ph.D. student in the philosophy department at the University of Johannesburg, and David Benatar, a white professor and the chair of philosophy at the University of Cape Town, the latter of which has, in many respects, been at the centre of these uprisings.

Here is an excerpt from the Quartz article: 

 

Why We Can’t Promise That a Feminist Space Will Be a Safe Space (guest post)

 

 

Why We Can’t Promise That a Feminist Space Will Be a Safe Space

 

Guest Post

 

by

Tracy Isaacs*

 

 

This post is a modified version of a blog-post that I recently wrote for Fit Is a Feminist Issue (a blog that I co-founded in 2012 with my colleague and friend Samantha Brennan) in the aftermath of a nasty discussion that broke out among feminists on the blog’s Facebook page. Without going into too many details, a meme was posted that upset people who felt it was “unfeminist.” They got angry and raged at the post and the blogger who posted it and subsequently deleted it, with an admission that it was a mistake for her to have posted it, an apology for posting it, and a request that if, in the future, people have concerns about the content of her posts, they kindly be nice about how they raise these concerns. In short, this blogger asked that, in the future, she be given the benefit of the doubt.

The unpleasantness of the comment thread surrounding both the original post and the apology post, to which I, in attempts to defend my co-blogger/friend, contributed in regrettable ways, led me and regular contributors to our blog to reflect upon the extent to which we can cultivate a community that feels comfortable and supportive to all who enter it. One of the sticking points was the request in the apology for people to try to “be nice” when they’re upset about our blog's content.

A common refrain to which the authors at Fit Is a Feminist Issue like to return is that we embrace "big tent feminism,” a feminism that tries to make space for everyone. That's a lofty goal, I know. It sounds wonderful. But can it be done? One of my favourite (and one of the most difficult) questions in feminism is this: "Is an inclusive feminism possible?" I use the question as a thematic frame for most of my teaching in feminist philosophy and women's studies, as a way to push students in my classes to think about inclusivity and intersectionality, not just as theoretical ideas, but in their actual material practices.

It's hard. We struggle. People get defensive. Misunderstandings develop. Hurt feelings. Anger. Difficult conversations. People are called on their privilege and need to look at that. People are afraid to speak for fear of offending, excluding, of saying the wrong thing on a multitude of other levels, of sounding closed when in fact they are open, hurting others' feelings, and having people be upset with them. Sometimes we find ourselves at an impasse. We have to agree to disagree or be stuck. These difficult conversations all occur in the context of feminism, where the majority of students are already there with respect to the broad strokes of it.

Although I do my best to manage the discussion in my classroom, to push it forward or in a different direction if any of the above takes place, to take the emotional temperature in the room and keep an eye on who might be falling silent, I can't promise a totally "safe space" where no one will ever feel shitty, be offended, get hurt, or say the wrong thing.

Because, guess what? Feminists disagree amongst themselves sometimes. We see things differently.

CFP: 6th Conference of the European Association for Critical Animal Studies, Barcelona, May 22-24, 2019 (deadline: Dec. 15, 2018)

 

6th Conference of the European Association

for Critical Animal Studies (EACAS)

Rethinking revolution: Nonhuman animals, antispeciesism and power

Barcelona, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Campus Poblenou,

22-24 May 2019

  

Conference theme

Although human exploitation of nonhuman animals is by no means a modern development, it has grown exponentially in the last century. It is under capitalism that human abuse of their power over nonhuman animals has reached a massive scale, with a corresponding massive worsening of its consequences. This includes the suffering of trillions of sentient beings exploited in miserable conditions and killed for trivial purposes in the majority of cases, but also the massive contribution to global warming of industries like agribusiness, as well as the negative impact these practices have on social justice, intra-human violence and human health. The animal liberation movement therefore not only calls for justice and compassion for nonhuman animals, but also confront the results of industrial capitalism and modernity with a radical consciousness-raising claim. This claim is radical because it provides the most accurate condemnation of privilege and the status quo by revealing how inequality does not exist only at the intra-species level, but also at the inter-species level, and that both levels are closely interlinked and thus ought to be addressed jointly.

In the spirit of the field of Critical Animal Studies, the aim of this conference is to encourage scholars, students and activists to rethink the revolution that animal liberation theory represents since its inception in the 1970s, a social movement bringing the fight against oppression to its logical conclusion.

The conference welcomes proposals from a variety of scholars and disciplines – including critical academics, independent researchers, students and activists – reflecting on the intersecting themes of the conference: power, total liberation and antispeciesism. 

Diversity in Philosophy? At Whose Expense?

 

As I have pointed out elsewhere in the past, a central criticism that I have of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Disability is that it is not diverse enough in demographic terms, in terms of standpoint and perspective, or in terms of style and methodology. In the volume’s early stages, I raised this objection with its editors on more than one occasion. Some adjustments were made; improvements can be seen in the final table of contents, though, in my view (and perhaps theirs) not enough was done to correct gaps in the collection. Disabled philosophers are a minority in the forthcoming book. Many of the issues to which disabled philosophers of disability increasingly attend are not addressed. Furthermore, many disabled philosophers whose inclusion in the volume would have increased the diversity of its contributions in terms of race, gender, sexuality, nationality, perspective, approach, topic, etc. are not included in it. Instead, disabled scholars who are not philosophers and philosophers who work on disability but are not disabled were given slots in the book.

The same problem can be identified with the special issue of The Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal (KIEJ) on so-called disability bioethics. Most of the contributors to that issue are not disabled philosophers. In my view, these disability scholars are like workers who cross a picket line when other more qualified workers have been locked out by management.

Indeed, I want Rosemarie Garland Thomson, David Wasserman, Erik Parens, Tom Shakespeare, Jackie Scully, and other disability scholars who are not disabled philosophers to STOP taking the limited number of slots in philosophy publications and at philosophy conferences that have allegedly been designed to increase the diversity of philosophy with respect to disability. These disability scholars are (repeatedly) benefiting from the years of work that I and others have done to improve our discipline. They have been able to develop “big names” for themselves because their own fields have enabled them to do so; it is precisely for this reason that they get these coveted invitations.

I was not asked to contribute to the KIEJ special issue on "disability bioethics," perhaps because I am so critical of bioethics or perhaps because some of these other disability scholars were invited. Nevertheless, unpaid labour was extracted from me to referee for the issue. I felt that I could not refuse to give it. Other disabled philosophers of disability who are critical of bioethics (or not) were also not invited to contribute to the issue. Perhaps unpaid labour was extracted from them too in order that the issue could be produced.

I may address the homogeneity and conservative character of the KIEJ editorial board in another post.

 

posted by Shelley