Discrimination and Disadvantage

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. 

Dialogues on Disability: Shelley Tremain Interviews Lori Gruen

 

Hello, I’m Shelley Tremain and I’d like to welcome you to the forty-second 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 Lori Gruen. Lori is the William Griffin Professor of Philosophy at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, where she also coordinates Wesleyan Animal Studies. These days, when she isn’t thinking about disabled animals, mass incarceration, and problems of captivity and possibilities of sanctuary, Lori hangs out with her companions, Taz and Zinnia, kayaks, cooks vegan food, worries about climate change, and wishes that she had better luck gardening.

 

Welcome to Dialogues on Disability, Lori! You are a leading feminist philosopher who has taken a somewhat circuitous and unconventional path in your career. Please tell us about your background and how it led to your current position in the discipline and profession.

Thanks so much for inviting me to be interviewed for your fantastic series, Shelley. I have found your interviews insightful and inspiring. I really appreciate the important interventions that you have urged to highlight what is overlooked in our profession. Occlusions and exclusions have been very motivating for me and my work, but they have also caused me to question my place in the profession. 

I went through both my undergraduate years and my first stint in graduate school without having the opportunity to take any courses taught by a woman. While I really like to argue (as my friends point out a bit too often) and that kept me going in philosophy for a period of time, I grew frustrated with the abstraction and distance from real problems in the world. I imagine that might have been different if I had at least one class in feminist philosophy. Fortunately, in one of my undergraduate classes, I was introduced to animal ethics and, in graduate school, I became involved in animal activism. 

I organized a protest against experiments on greyhounds at the Medical School at the University of Arizona, where I had a graduate fellowship, and a picture of me being carried away by police appeared on the front page of the campus paper. 

 

[Description of image below: A newspaper clipping about Lori's arrest and removal. In the photo of the clipping, two armed police officers are carrying Lori, one on each side of her, each with a hand under one of her knees and the other hand behind her back. Text under the photo describes the events.]

I got the sense that the faculty of the Philosophy Department weren’t happy about this. Keith Lehrer, who at the time was chair of the department, called me into his office and told me that I should really decide whether I wanted to study philosophy or try to change the world. Having read Marx, I had hoped that doing philosophy could change the world—and still believe it can—but left graduate school and moved to the Washington, D.C. area to try to make a difference.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) was just getting started, and I was invited to move into a house with the founders of the organization, Ingrid Newkirk and Alex Pacheco, to help mount campaigns to reveal the horrible conditions that billions of animals have to endure in laboratories and factory farms. Those early years in the animal rights movement were pretty exciting.

But, as that organization grew, my interests and their interests increasingly grew apart. I was working on a campaign that brought me in contact with members of the blind community, many of whom use seeing eye dogs, which raised really interesting and challenging questions for me about animal use. There were some uncomfortable discussions around that at PETA and eventually some decisions were made with which I didn’t agree. So, I left to start doing what we now would call more “intersectional” activism—still focused on our relationships with animals, but also on homelessness, racism, and sexism.

After several years, I began missing philosophy and decided to return to graduate school to study feminist philosophy. Alison Jaggar had just moved to University of Colorado at Boulder, so I moved to Colorado to work with her there. I also worked with Dale Jamieson, who originally introduced me to animal ethics. 

I feel very fortunate that I have been employed and able to teach and write about topics that I care about in practical ethics and political philosophy, topics that include animals, of course, but I have also been able to work on ecofeminist philosophy, some philosophy of science and technology, and also philosophy of race and racism. Over the last decade or so, I have helped to develop the field of Animal Studies, that, contrary to my early experience in graduate school, recognizes, even celebrates, the value of activism to scholarship and scholarship to activism. 

New Books Interview about Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability (note appended Sept. 13)

 

In a recent post, I indicated that Dave O'Brien of the New Books Network would soon interview me about Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability. The interview is now posted online. I haven't listened to it yet, but I hope you like it! Here is the link to the interview's page:

https://newbooksnetwork.com/shelley-tremain-foucault-and-feminist-philosophy-of-disability-u-michigan-press-2017/

As I indicated in my earlier post, no transcript has been made available for the interview. However, I would be happy to compose a transcript for individuals (not institutions with their own resources).

 

Note: The roster of the 2019 Pacific APA symposium on the book has changed: Melinda Hall will replace Jennifer Scuro as the chair of the symposium. The speakers in the symposium will be: Devonya Havis, Jesse Prinz, Chloë Taylor, and me. The APA symposium (with additional contributions) will be published in a forthcoming issue of Feminist Philosophy Quarterly. 

 

posted by Shelley

Troubling Diversity in Academia

 

An Inclusive Academy: Achieving Diversity and Excellence (MIT, 2018) is the title of a book by Abigail J. Stewart and Virginia Valian that I recently acquired. Readers and listeners of this blog may recall that over the past several years Valian has received considerable attention in philosophy due to her notable work on bias and gender and race discrimination in hiring practices in the university, in tenure and promotion, and so on.

I was intrigued when I read publicity for the book, especially since the use of the term diversity in the subtitle of the book and in press releases for it suggested to me that, for this book, Valian and co-author had expanded the scope of Valian’s earlier analyses of discrimination and underrepresentation in the university to incorporate new work that they had done on disability and ableism, work that would complicate and enrich Valian’s previous work on gender and race in the academy. Indeed, I had looked forward to receiving Stewart and Valian’s book, expecting to learn some new ways in which to deepen and extend the analyses that I have developed on the underrepresentation of disabled philosophers in philosophy and of disabled philosophers of disability, especially.

The book arrived. I began to read it. The more of the book that I read, the more frustrated and disappointed that I became. Although the book is 491 pages long, I would say that, cumulatively, less than half a page is devoted to the employment situation of disabled faculty within the university and to understanding the factors that contribute to our grievous underrepresentation. Indeed, one will learn nothing useful from this book about the exclusion of disabled academics from academia.

Throughout the book, the authors make almost no attempt to consider how or whether claims made about the ways that a given policy or practice contributes to the marginalization and exclusion of women faculty and other faculty of colour could be and should be extended to disabled faculty, notwithstanding the fact that some disabled faculty are women, some faculty of colour are disabled. In short, attempts to incorporate analysis of the apparatus of disability into the book’s analyses of sexism and racism in the university are almost entirely absent from it. Repeatedly, throughout the book, the authors make claims according to which “no relevant data is available” about how a given policy or practice affects the career opportunities and advancement of disabled academics (and nondisabled LGBTQ academics). More often than not, however, they don’t even bother to make this apologia, but rather proceed as if consideration of ableism and disabled academics (as well as nondisabled lesbian, gay, trans, and queer academics) are simply not pertinent to the given topic at issue.

ASA Trustees' Statement on Discrimination, Harassment, and Respectful Behavior

 

In response to public outcry from membership of the American Society for Aesthetics (ASA) (see here) about the appearance of an identified harasser on the program of its upcoming conference, the Trustees and Officers of the ASA have released the statement below:

 

Trustees' Statement on Discrimination, Harassment, and Respectful Behavior

Thursday, August 23, 2018 

 

The Officers and Trustees of the ASA are writing to acknowledge the recent call for us to do better and to do more to provide a supportive, safe, and respectful environment for all of our members.

In July, the ASA announced new policies on Discrimination, Harassment, and Respectful Behavior. Although we understand and appreciate the widespread desire for a more detailed public response from the ASA concerning a recent harassment complaint, the policy requires us to preserve confidentiality. This prevents us from commenting further on either the complaint or on remedies. We take such complaints very seriously and promise to do our very best to ensure a productive environment in which all ASA members can flourish.

We believe that our recently passed Discrimination, Harassment, and Respectful Behavior policies will allow the ASA to address complaints more effectively. We also acknowledge that we need to do more to actively foster an environment that both is and is seen to be supportive of all members. To that end, we invite ASA members to present their concerns to the Board of Trustees. If any members wish to make suggestions for how the policy might be modified or how we might improve the environment for the policy’s application, we encourage you to send comments to the DHRB ad hoc committee (John Gibson, Jonathan Neufeld and Anna Christina Ribeiro) at [email protected]. Members should also feel free to contact any member of the ASA leadership with questions, comments or suggestions. Please send any comments you wish to be discussed at the October 10 Trustees meeting in Toronto by October 3 to insure they can be addressed.

We wish to thank all of the members of the Society who have challenged the ASA to better express and promote what we all affirm to be our deepest values.

You can read/listen to the statement at the ASA site here.

 

posted by Shelley

Statement About Sexual Harassment at the 2017 American Society for Aesthetics Conference

 

The post below appeared on the Aesthetics for Birds (AFB) blog today. It is reprinted here with permission:

 

Last November, AFB reported on an accusation of sexual harassment at the American Society for Aesthetics (ASA) Annual Meeting. Five days ago, AFB reported that the accused harasser was on the program for the upcoming ASA Annual Meeting, along with the accuser. Since then, a number of differing accounts have emerged regarding how the original accusation was lodged, largely via discussions on social media. In particular, some members of ASA leadership have stated that no official complaint was ever made by the accuser. The accuser has asked us to publish the following statement.

 

It was reported that an incident of sexual harassment occurred at the annual American Society for Aesthetics conference last November by a senior member. I am the accuser. This year, the issue has resurfaced because various ASA members have noticed that the accused person is on this year’s annual conference program, despite others raising red flags on my behalf. I’m currently sitting here and reading comments posted on various threads on social media about this issue – some are supportive, constructive, and some are misinformed. That is why I am coming forward and writing this now.

I feel no need to go into details about the incident itself or to call anyone out. What I am currently troubled by is the misinformed and false statements that are reported. For example, it’s said that my allegations are hearsay, that no official or direct complaint was filed, that ‘the accuser’ has not posted on various social media platforms about the issue, and that I never directly reached out to the officers. What is more, others have no memory or documentation of my complaint. I have had a recent apology from an ASA leader about some of the misunderstandings, for which I am grateful, but, I am still seeing misrepresentations and false characterizations about certain actions that took place.  I personally want to set the record straight. I did, in fact, write a timeline of events, I did confront the accused (with other members), I did make an official complaint to an ASA Trustee, a trusted and respected member of the Society, who then submitted my complaints to ASA leaders on my behalf. Appropriate actions were taken at the time of my reporting this incident and direct communication was made with me. Now, in light of the accused appearing on this year’s conference program and as more concerns are raised, it seems some are telling a different story. This is disappointing because it sends a message that the organization is more important than its members. I am no longer curious why people don’t come forward with such grievances. It’s exhausting. It’s embarrassing. It seems pointless. We must work together and change our mentality of what is acceptable and that we simply should no longer stand for behavior that has long been seen as the status quo. As such, I will work with the leadership to make sure my complaint is official and on the record.

In the midst of all of this, I’ve had countless support and so I end on a positive note to say that I am grateful. I am also hopeful that we can work towards creating a healthy environment within the ASA.

Sincerely,

Shelby Moser

 

The original post at AFB is here.

 

posted by Shelley

CFP: 2nd Annual Critical Social Ontology Workshop (Oct. 13-14, 2018; deadline: Aug. 1, 2018)

 

2nd Annual Critical Social Ontology Workshop
St. Louis, MO, October 13-14, 2018

Call for Papers

 

The Critical Social Ontology Workshop (CSOW) is an interdisciplinary venue for radical thinking about the metaphysics of irreducibly social phenomena. Core members of the CSOW are Ruth Groff (Coordinator), Sally Haslanger, Tony Lawson, Doug Porpora, Vanessa Wills, and Charlotte Witt.

We invite paper proposals for the 2nd annual meeting of the Workshop, to be held at Saint Louis University. We will be interested in contributions the aim of which is to address fundamental issues of social ontology and/or foundational meta-theoretical issues that have implications for social ontology, and to do so in ways that shed light upon and/or offer alternatives to existing positivist; Humean; post-modern; or other orthodoxies in philosophy and social science.

The annual meetings of the Workshop are intended to be supportive, working conferences. Presenters will be asked to upload outlines of their papers in advance of the conference so as to maximize the opportunity for constructive conversation. We hope to eventually be able to publish some or all of the proceedings of the CSOW annual meetings in one way or another (we will keep you posted as we move forward with these plans). 

The Critical Social Ontology Workshop is unfunded. We will ask those participants who can afford to do so to contribute $30-$40 to help offset the basic costs of running the conference.

To submit a paper proposal, please send an e-mail to: [email protected].

Provide the following in the email: (1) a title; (2) a short abstract (200 words) that includes a clear statement of what the driving claim of the paper will be; (3) your contact information.

Please do be sure to include a clear statement of the thesis of the paper in your abstract (i.e., “I will argue that ... “).

Deadline: August 1, 2018.

 

posted by Shelley

How Diverse is Your Paper or Curriculum? Take the Test and Find Out! (guest post)

 

How Diverse is Your Paper or Curriculum? 

Take the Test and Find Out!

 

 

Guest Post

 

by 

Axel Arturo Barceló

Instructions:

Your diversity score should be calculated on the basis of only the texts you use that have been authored in the last century, including your own work (count authors of multiple works once for each referenced work). To calculate your diversity score, do the following:

1. Add 2 points for every author of color
1. Add an extra point if the text is not about the work of a white author
2. Add 2 points for every author who is not a cisgender man
1. Add an extra point if the text is not about the work of a cisgender man
3. Add 3 points for every text not originally written in English
1. Add an extra point if the text is not about a work written originally in English
2. Add an extra point if you are not quoting the English translation
3. Add an extra 20 points if you made the published translation yourself
4. Add 2 points for every disabled author
1. Add an extra point if the text is not about the work of a nondisabled author
5. Add 2 points for every author working at a third world department
1. Add an extra point if the text is not about work from a first-world department
6. Subtract 1 point for every author from your own department
7. Subtract 1 point for every author you have had a drink with—even if it was over a full meal, during a conference diner, etc
8. Substract 1 point for every author with seniority over you
9. Subtract 1 point for every author working at a better ranked department than your own
10. Substract 1 point for every author with a degree from a better ranked department than your own
11. Divide the total number of points from the total number of authors in your list of references, multiply this number by ten and this number is your final diversity score.

 

Assessment of your score:

CFP: Black Male Studies

 

Temple University Press seeks book proposals for

 

Black Male Studies

A Series Exploring the Paradoxes of Racially Subjugated Males

 

TOMMY J. CURRY, editor,
Professor of Philosophy and Africana Studies at Texas A&M

 

Black male studies is an interdisciplinary field dedicated to exploring the various developmental trajectories and the vulnerabilities (racial, sexual, economic) of Black men and boys in the United States and abroad. Building from established post-intersectional frameworks (e.g. social dominance theory, global South masculinities), this series looks to fill the gaps in the existing masculinities literatures that often assign the peculiar sexual violence and particular lethal oppression racially subjugated men have suffered throughout history to our more generic understanding of racism. Books published in this series would strive to create empirically informed theories of Black men and boys that can motivate our understanding of Black males beyond problem and pathology. Black Male Studies also welcomes innovative comparative and international projects drawing parallels between Black males and the experiences of other racialized males affected by deportation, genocide, poverty, and regional conflict and war.

Submissions to the series are welcome.

Contact: Tommy Curry, Series Editor ([email protected])

or Temple University Press ([email protected])

 

posted by Shelley

Ableist Exceptionism Exemplified

 

In the presentation that I recently gave in Berlin (posted here), I asserted that most political philosophers and social critics don’t consider disability to be pertinent subject matter for their philosophical analyses of power and domination, but rather believe that disability is a politically neutral human characteristic or trait, a “natural” disadvantage and personal misfortune that is adequately and appropriately addressed in the domains of medicine, science, and bioethics, not the fields of social and political theory and cultural criticism.

I noted however that in my own philosophical work, I aim to undermine this individualized and medicalized understanding of disability by arguing that disability is a historically and culturally specific matrix of power relations—an “apparatus” (dispositif), in Foucault's sense—not a personal characteristic, property, or trait that certain individuals possess, an apparatus of power in which everyone is implicated and entangled and in which everyone occupies a position. I explained, furthermore, that to understand disability as an apparatus is to conceive of it as a broad matrix of power that contributes to, is inseparable from, and reinforces other apparatuses of force relations, such as apparatuses of settler colonialism, gender, class, and white supremacy. I contend that if philosophers were to understand disability in this way, they could more effectively address the current underrepresentation of disabled philosophers (especially disabled philosophers of disability) in the profession of philosophy and the marginalization of philosophy of disability in the discipline of philosophy, as well as more readily identify the hostility directed toward disabled philosophers within both the discipline and profession.

Due to the prevalence in philosophy of an individualized and medicalized conception of disability, disability and ableism are seldom incorporated into efforts to increase the heterogeneity of philosophy, or at least, not addressed in substantial ways, that is, not in ways that would motivate the institutional and structural changes that a genuine commitment to grappling with disability and ableism demand. Rather, “progressive” philosophers, including many (nondisabled) feminist philosophers, seem wedded to the idea that the political domain is shaped primarily by the triads of gender, race, and class or gender, race, and sexuality alone, as the rubric of the PhilPapers Foundation exemplifies.

Indeed, a number of recently published feminist philosophy books, some of which have received much fanfare, attest to this fact insofar as they contain few remarks about disability and disabled women or ignore disability entirely, as if in some possible world feminist philosophers could gain a complete understanding of the production of (the apparatus of) gender and sexism apart from analysis of (the apparatus of) disability; as if in some possible world disabled people don’t exist; as if in this actual world regimes of normality and normalization don’t condition social interactions, the distribution of resources, intellectual research agendas, popular culture, government policies and administrative decisions, the shape of communities, and so on. As if.

In Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability, I introduce the term ableist exceptionism to refer to this phenomenon, that is, refer to the phenomenon whereby disability, because it is assumed to be a natural and politically neutral human characteristic (difference, attribute, or property)—in short, because it is naturalized and depoliticized—is uniquely excluded from the production and application of values, idea(l)s, practices, and so on that circulate in political consciousness. Examples of ableist exceptionism abound in academic philosophy, even in, or maybe especially in, its most public enunciations.

To take one example, consider the relatively recent attention paid in philosophy to the production in everyday discourse of oppressive language, including slurs, epithets, and so on. Although most philosophers have readily accepted the idea that language is implicated in and a product of the apparatuses of gender and race (among others) and endorse the idea that gendered and racialized language has detrimental effects, many philosophers continue to think that criticisms about the use of ableist language—that certain linguistic practices have deleterious effects for disabled people and reproduce the apparatus of disability—are uninformed with respect to how language operates, are fanciful and exaggerated, ridiculous exercises in censorship, and even outrageous instances of political correctness. Calling a woman a “bitch” is wrong, having consequences that go beyond the articulation of the utterance itself. Calling the woman an “idiot” or “moron” (both of which terms have played indisputable roles historically in the expansion of eugenic discourses) is, apparently, no big deal and can often be humorous.

To take another example, consider The Stone column that many philosophers read and in which many of them publish, including many nondisabled feminist philosophers. In the several years that The Stone has run in The New York Times, not a single article about disability, authored by a disabled philosopher, has appeared in the column, despite the fact that this blatant disregard has repeatedly been drawn to the attention of the column’s editor and members of the philosophical community at large. Not a single article. Not one. I find it hard to imagine that the philosophical community would abide this flagrant exclusion were it to be visited upon any other segment of subordinated philosophers. I want to point out, therefore, that this exclusion is a stark example of precisely the sort of ableist exceptionism that the naturalization and depoliticization of disability within philosophy generate and sustain.

 

posted by Shelley