Discrimination and Disadvantage

Emancipation and Debt (May 27, 2018)

 

 

Emancipation and Debt

 

by 

 

Isabell Lorey

 

Presented in the session "Power and Domination,"

Emancipation Conference,

Technical University Berlin, May 27, 2018  

 

1. In the modern age, emancipation means the liberation from relations of power and domination and hence from dependencies. The task is to become a free subject independent from others that is capable of governing itself. This bourgeois idea of emancipation is—not only Foucault made this clear with his theory of governmentality—the basis of a masculinist form of liberal-capitalistic and democratic governing since the 18^th century. The free subject governs itself in a way that simultaneously makes it governable in the frame of biopolitical governmentality. This free subject is male, owns property and is white. Emancipation means in this instance to become a subject within the scope of this norm.

Proceeding from movements and struggles of the 1960s and 70s, Foucault explicates in his text “The subject and power” that what we have to liberate ourselves from is exactly this form of emancipation. A current practice of liberation needs “a critical analysis of our world,”[i] a critical analysis of the present, according to Foucault. As is known, he is not concerned with emancipation from all power relations–—as if this were possible. A critical analysis of the present means to understand, in which relations of power and domination, who can become a subject, who may not, and how we are bound, in both cases, to an allegedly own original “identity,” which either ties us together in groups and discriminates us and/or individualizes and separates us, and makes us (self-)governable. An emancipation from such identity politics does not lie “at a future date,” not in the promise of “liberations, revolutions, end of class struggle”[ii]. Instead, we need “to refuse what we are” and what we are now forced to be, in the present. According to Foucault, we have “to liberate us both from the state and the type of individualization which is linked to the state,”[iii] and search for new forms of subjectivation.

2. In the etymology of the Latin word emancipatio, emancipation cannot be separated from patriarchal domination of ownership. Mancipatio means­­­—by the laying on of the hand (manus)—to take a thing in one’s possession. In Roman antiquity, those who did not have any, or no entire, law of a person were also treated as thing—first and foremost slaves. E-mancipatio then meant the liberation from the domination of ownership. In the strict sense of the law, emancipatio means various things: to release the son from patriarchal power into independence, to release the daughter into the hands of another man or to liberate a slave from the ownership of his master. The pater familias hands over his former property. The dominating subject is the one who releases and liberates.

3. In 1968, the mythical year of the student movement, and at the end of the decade of independence of most African states from colonial domination, in this year of 1968, Stokely Carmichael made clear at the likewise legendary London “Dialectic of Liberation Congress” that, even in the second half of the 20^th century, a white practice of domination is often hidden within emancipation. Carmichael, who later became a central figure of the Black Panthers, was chairman of one of the most important Civil Rights Movements in 1968, the SNCC, and author of the book “Black Power.”[iv] In London he said: „I’m amazed when I pick up the paper and read that ‘England today decided to give independence to the West Indies.’ Who the hell is England to give me my independence? All they can do is stop oppressing me, get off my back. [...] So that you cannot grant anybody independence, they just take it. And that is what white America is going to learn. They cannot give us anything. No white liberal can give me anything. The only thing a white liberal can do for me is to help civilize other whites, because they need to be civilized.“[v]

Independence is not a gift, not a mercy of the (white) West. Those who enslave cannot bestow independence. But they can stop to oppress, to dominate and to enslave, and can contribute to “civilizing” other white people. The ruling must emancipate themselves. They have to reject to become a superior subject and therewith becoming an autonomous and sovereign subject. 

4. Emancipation is a promise for a future liberation. Instead of being a practice in the here and now, a matter of breaches in the linear construction of time, it belongs to the time of the victors, the time of the ruling, the time of domination over ecology, over the “surround”[vi]. Progress and growth are grounded in increasing inequalities and economies of superiority and in the wealth of a few. “Progress for whom?”[vii], asks Carmichael in 1968. „We will have to tell you when progress is being made. You cannot tell us when progress is being made, because progress for us means getting you off our backs [...].“[viii]

5. Saidiya Hartman has reminded us that the freedom given from whites counted as a kind of present to the enslaved, as a gift for which they had to prove themselves thankful and worthy, and which put them in debt and made them guilty. This gift of debt binds the “freed persons” to the past with an inverse responsibility and lends duration to the debt up to the present day: for in the logic of debt only the indebted individual is responsible for the doings of the past.[ix] This displacement of responsibility onto the individualized debt of the freed erases history, the history of slavery. Enduring black debt serves the linear historiography of the white victors.[x] Even long after the end of slavery the debt relation inscribes itself onto an enduring, indebted servitude-at-work in the context of freedom, individualization, and self responsibility, through which, in the logic of debt, black emancipation remains bound in an asymmetric relation to the white “benefactors,” Hartman argues in the chapter “The Debt of Emancipation” in Scenes of Subjection.

What is Trans History?

 

An article in Perspectives on History, the newsmagazine of the American Historical Association poses that question and responds with a brief genealogy of scholarship on trans history and activism in "What Is Trans History? From Activist and Academic Roots, A Field Takes Shape." Here is an excerpt from the article by Kritika Agarwal:

 

Today, transgender studies and transgender history are legible fields of academic study: there are two volumes of The Transgender Studies Reader, a journal (TSQ: Trans Studies Quarterly), a number of new or forthcoming books from major university presses, and a spate of recent job ads seeking people with research and teaching interests in trans studies or trans history.

Unfortunately, the advances in academia paralleling the increased visibility of trans people in the public sphere have been accompanied by political efforts to regulate the lives of trans people. This includes the ability to access public spaces and basic necessities such as healthcare and economic security. More than a dozen states considered “bathroom bills” in 2017, and violence against trans people, especially trans women of color, continues to rise, according to the Human Rights Campaign and the Trans People of Color Coalition. With so much at stake and an audience that’s finally paying attention, trans history is a field filled with a sense of urgency and potential.

Prior to the emergence of trans history in the academy, much of the writing on the lived experiences of trans people was written either by medical professionals and psychologists, or by trans people themselves as autobiographies. Many trans people encountered themselves as historical subjects through such popular works as Leslie Feinberg’s Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman (1996)—“I couldn’t find myself in history,” Feinberg wrote. “No one like me seemed to have ever existed.”

In terms of scholarship, most academics cite Yale historian Joanne Meyerowitz’s How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States (2002) as foundational. “When that book came out, it went a long way toward creating a field,” says Elizabeth Reis (Macaulay Honors Coll., CUNY), author of Bodies in Doubt: An American History of Intersex (2009). It was important, says Reis, “to have a history written where then other historians could start looking up the footnotes and seeing where to even go to find material.” In another seminal moment, Stryker co-edited The Transgender Studies Reader (2006, with a second volume in 2013) and soon published Transgender History, an accessible book for the general reader on the history of transgender people in the United States.

 

Read or listen to Agarwal's article here.

 

posted by Shelley

Dialogues on Disability: Shelley Tremain with Devonya Havis and Audrey Yap

 

Hello, I’m Shelley Tremain and I’d like to welcome you to the third-anniversary 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; accessibility; and anti-oppressive pedagogy.

During the past year, for the third year in a row, I conducted landmark interviews with disabled philosophers who are variously situated with respect to disability, race, gender, institutional status, age, culture, nationality, and sexuality and whose philosophical work covers a wide range of specializations and research interests. This third-anniversary installment of the series highlights insights and lessons that these philosophers offered the philosophical community, reflecting upon the implications of the contributions to philosophy that their interviews have made.

I am delighted that Audrey Yap, whom I interviewed in July 2016, and Devonya Havis, whom I interviewed in June 2017, have returned to Dialogues on Disability to assist me with this celebratory anniversary installment of the series, bringing continuity to the series and expanding it in thought-provoking ways.

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. Audrey acknowledges that she lives and works on the traditional territory of the WSÁNEĆ, Lkwungen, and Esquimalt peoples. Audrey, Devonya, and I offer this anniversary installment of the Dialogues on Disability series with respect and in the spirit of reconciliation.

 

Welcome back to Dialogues on Disability, Audrey and Devonya! We are indebted to you for taking the time to produce this anniversary installment of Dialogues on Disability with me.

Devonya, in a moment, you and I will turn to reflect back on your interview from June of last year; first, however, I would like us to consider Quayshawn Spencer’s interview which led off the third year of the series.

Like many of my interviewees in the past three years, Quayshawn, although he was initially a student in the sciences, switched to a major in philosophy after a philosophy course made an indelible impression on him. Quayshawn has established himself as an authority in the philosophy and science of race. In his interview with me, I asked Quayshawn whether he was worried about how his work on race might be perceived. In one part of his answer to the question, Quayshawn said:

 

I don’t believe that the term race is anything like, say, tiger in American English. If you randomly grab a few hundred American English speakers, take them to China or India, and ask them to point out the tigers, there will be near unanimity on what they point out. You can also ask them what are the superficial properties that almost all tigers share, and you’ll get largely overlapping answers. However, there’s plenty of empirical work that’s been done that shows that American English speakers don’t share that sort of agreement about what “the races” are or what “the features” are that makes something a race …Of course, there are non-pluralist ways of dealing with these experimental results. …Sally Haslanger has argued, for instance, that we should ignore “the ordinary person’s ideas about race” because “the very social processes that create the divisions of privilege and advantage also obscure their workings.” However, I’m not convinced that experimental data about what ordinary people think about race is entirely worthless. Ordinary people should be reliable indicators of their own racial memberships. So, if racial self-reporting data are all over the place—which they are—then pluralism is a live option. Some other philosophers of race who have embraced racial pluralism, or something close to it, are Lionel McPherson and Michael Hardimon.

 

Given your own work on Black ancestral discourses, Devonya, what do you think about Quayshawn’s insights on the metaphysics of race?

[Description of image below: Coloured photo of Devonya, a Black woman, who stands at the front of a classroom, beside a media station on which an open Apple laptop sits. She is wearing glasses, a gold necklace, earrings, and ring, and a patterned, button-down shirt. Her left hand is in motion and she seems to be in full teaching or lecturing mode with people in the seats in front of her who are beyond the frame.]

 

Shelley, I very much like the idea of racial pluralism and agree that our seemingly “common sense” notions of race, at least in the North American context—especially in the United States—are not as fixed as one would think. Students often begin studying “race” with a sense that the boundaries are very clear. They soon discover that many of the traditional ways of ascribing race to persons and groups fray under closer scrutiny. Such fraying is not simply a matter of unsettling the biological essentialism that haunts us from the nineteenth century, but rather also involves understanding the inconsistencies associated with attempts to legally and socially fix racial categories.

Given this slippage, Shelley, it seems prudent to make room for the ways that racial identities and racial ascriptions are produced not only within larger systemic mechanisms but also through everyday encounters, that is, through the production, re-production, and performance of “race” in mundane situations. It also seems important to maintain some conception of racial pluralism to allow additional spaces for people to re-create racial meanings and to expand how one might conceive what have come to be described as particular races. So, I would agree that there are things to be learned from the racial claims made by “ordinary people”.

The deep work, however, concerns how we parse these claims in light of existing power relations. Despite the slippage across seeming racial categories, Shelley, it is critical to note that, historically, racial ascription and reporting have been externally conditioned for those who are marked as raced—complicating racial self-reporting. It, too, is the case that many also choose race as a form of empowerment that honors traditions of ancestral struggle and creation. The opening of these interviews, which evokes respect and the spirit of reconciliation, strikes me as an example of honoring such struggles and noting how creation happens even in the midst of challenge.

At one point in my interview, Shelley, I highlighted the ways that seemingly disempowered and powerless social groups have generated resources that disrupt injustices and how Foucault’s ideas can enable these interventions. I said:

 

When working through Foucault, I embrace his notion of subjugated knowledges to clear an academic space where I can lay claim to those traditions that fashioned me into the thinker I have become. ... I have deep concerns about social justice. Consequently, I have been increasingly convinced that the path to justice must be by way of theorizing injustice. It seems to me that such theorization is part of what is at stake when one undertakes genealogy. Interventions into injustice require strategies and tactics informed by history, context, and power dynamics. My reflections on parrhesia in “The Parrhesiastic Enterprise of Black Philosophy” were an effort to demonstrate some of the ways that Black people have generated resources for disrupting injustices despite occupying social/political positions that seemingly give them access to very little power. In this respect, the article blended Foucauldian insights about power with Black traditions that have exercised resistances in many creative ways.

 

Shelley, I am interested to know your thoughts on the use of Foucault’s ideas of subjugated knowledges and genealogy as forms of resistance to ableism and other injustices that disabled people confront.

As I indicate in my recent book, Devonya, I think that Foucault’s claims about subjugated knowledges and about genealogy as a method to uncover them have enormous subversive potential for disabled people and other social groups whose insights and perspectives are excluded from philosophical and other academic discourses, as your work on Black ancestral discourses vividly illustrates.

Unearthing subjugated knowledges about the apparatus of disability, especially with a genealogical method, can enable philosophers of disability and disability theorists to show the contingency and historically and culturally specific character of the medicalized conception of disability that prevails in both intellectual and everyday understandings of disability. In Melinda Hall’s interview with me, Devonya, Melinda talked about how she uses Foucault’s work to undermine prevailing arguments about disabled people that bioethicists in particular have advanced. As Melinda explained it:

Dialogues on Disability: Shelley Tremain Interviews Christine Wieseler

 

Hello, I’m Shelley Tremain and I’d like to welcome you to the thirty-sixth 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; 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 Christine Wieseler. Christine is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the McGovern Center for Humanities and Ethics in the McGovern Medical School at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and a lecturer in the Program for Writing and Communication at Rice University. Her research combines biomedical ethics, feminist philosophy, phenomenology, and philosophy of disability. Christine enjoys going to art museums, drawing, painting, and baking. For more information on Christine’s teaching and publications, visit Christine’s website at christinewieseler.com.

 

Welcome to Dialogues on Disability, Christine! When you started college, you had plans to be an art educator or art therapist. Tell us about your background and why you decided to do a Ph.D. in philosophy instead.

Thank you, Shelley! I am honored that you invited me to be a part of this interview series.

During grade school, I made the serendipitous discovery that I enjoy teaching. A classmate of mine phoned me every night for most of a school year, asking me to share my answers to the math problems that we had been assigned. I refused to give her the answers; instead, I ended up teaching her how to solve the problems. This situation offered my first experience of the exhilaration of helping someone to understand something that they could not comprehend on their own.

Making art was an important aspect of my life prior to and at the time that I began my studies at Alverno College. I thought that being an art educator or therapist would enable me to combine my goal of teaching with my love of art. I expected that facilitating the personal transformation of students or clients would be a fulfilling career. I enjoyed developing my abilities as an artist and having the opportunity to work with a variety of populations in art therapy field-placements and an internship. While I retained the goal of contributing to the self-transformation of students, I ended up choosing philosophy rather than art as the medium.

In grade school and high school, I often asked philosophical questions, though I did not know that was what I was doing at the time. Teachers typically treated my concerns as if they were trivial or scolded me for not accepting on faith the truths that they espoused. Above all, they tried to get me to stop asking questions about metaphysics and epistemology. It was not until my first philosophy course in college that I was encouraged to ask such questions.

I remember that at some point, prior to college, I learned a bit about ancient Greek philosophers and wished that I could be a philosopher, but I thought that I had been born much too late. I was not aware that one could be a philosopher in contemporary times! I was thrilled to begin to learn about both the rich history of philosophical inquiry and the ways that philosophy could be useful in everyday life. For the most part, I enjoyed the difficulty and challenge of thinking in new ways.

It was a slippery slope from that introduction to philosophy course to a Ph.D. in philosophy! The professors in the Department of Philosophy at Alverno are all truly exceptional teachers and human beings. I wanted to learn as much as possible from them. However, given that I was taking out student loans for my education, I did not want to take classes that would not count toward my major. I added philosophy as a second major, while still planning to pursue an M.A. in art therapy.

Two types of factors influenced my decision to apply to graduate programs in philosophy: practical concerns—related to finances and some of the complexities involved with becoming a licensed art therapist—and the desire to devote significant time and energy to studying philosophy. Ultimately, I decided to pursue a Ph.D. in philosophy so that I could combine my goal of teaching at the university level with continued engagement in philosophy.

 

You teach courses in biomedical ethics, medical communication, and other courses designed to help students grapple with ableism and other forms of discrimination in medicine. How do you talk about ableism and oppression in your courses, Christine, and what are your general goals and aims for anti-ableist teaching in biomedical ethics?

I have become increasingly concerned with how medical education addresses disability. While many professors at medical schools are beginning to assert that medical educators have an obligation to go beyond focusing on the biomedical conditions classified as “disabilities” or “impairments,” that is, by teaching students how to interact with disabled patients and understand their goals and experiences, I have found very few concrete recommendations for best practices on how to accomplish this task.

More than Ramps: A Guide to Improving Health Care Quality and Access for People with Disabilities by Lisa Iezzoni and Bonnie O’Day is an incredibly helpful resource. I have been working in collaboration with Dr. Anson Koshy, Medical Director of the Center for Autism and Related Conditions at the Children’s Learning Institute, as well as Dr. Margaret Nosek, Director of the Center for Research on Women with Disabilities at the Baylor College of Medicine, in order to formulate learning objectives, assessments, and learning activities geared toward raising medical students’ awareness of obstacles that disabled people face, not only in accessing healthcare in the first place, but also within healthcare facilities. Many of the problems that disabled people encounter in clinical settings stem from healthcare providers’ poor communication or lack thereof. Accordingly, education about disability for medical students is an important area for improvement in medical training and practice.

At McGovern Medical School, I have developed and taught a number of elective courses focused on medicine and marginalized embodiment. For example, I have taught courses entitled Ethical Issues in the Treatment of Intersex Patients; Patient Experiences: Illness, Disability, and Quality of Life; Phenomenology of Illness; and Anti-Fat Bias in the Age of the ‘Obesity Epidemic.’ I have taken the approach of teaching on topics that are not included in, or are only minimally addressed in, the required curriculum. I thoroughly enjoy having the opportunity to be a gadfly in a medical school. Even though much of what I teach challenges students to think in ways that are new and uncomfortable to them, they have been generally willing and even eager to take up the challenge. 

Medical research and practice have the potential to improve and save lives, but also to enact significant harm. I think it is important for students to understand the power of medicine to perpetuate the oppression of many social groups under the guise of applying objective scientific findings. Students tend to have an easier time recognizing how this has happened in the past than how it continues in the present. I often begin with historical examples before turning to present-day structural issues.

I have adopted Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure by Eli Clare as a text in a couple of my courses. Clare uses historical, as well as contemporary phenomena, to illustrate ways that medicine can be a force for social control. For example, he discusses ways that racism in psychiatry used the diagnosis of “protest psychosis” to—through its medicalization—stifle Black people’s opposition to white supremacy. Clare does a fantastic job of consistently engaging in intersectional analyses; he simultaneously thinks about how race, gender, class, disability, sexuality, environmental destruction, and capitalism function together in order to shape how we are oriented toward cure and how we experience our bodies. Rather than engage in an outright, blanket rejection of cure, Clare details his own struggle to reckon with his ambivalence toward medical interventions. In line with the book’s subtitle, he invites readers to truly grapple with cure.

Most medical students and pre-medical students cite a desire to help patients—including by curing them—as their primary motivation for becoming a physician. They, typically, have never encountered the idea that cure is not unquestionably good. Thus, I think it is important for medical students to consider how ableism undergirds the assumption that cure is always desirable.

With respect to helping students to grapple with ableism specifically, my primary goals are to prompt students to: question dominant narratives about disability, recognize the ways that medicine is shaped by social values, and engage with disabled peoples’ accounts of their own lives. In this regard, we read authors such as Ron Amundson, Havi Carel, Harriet McBryde Johnson, Nancy Mairs, Tom Shakespeare, and Susan Wendell.

Healthcare providers tend to assume that disabled people, on average, have a significantly lower quality of life than nondisabled people. On average, however, this is not the case: they don’t have a lower quality of life. This assumption, among others, can impact interactions between healthcare providers and disabled people and the types of medical intervention that physicians consider appropriate in all kinds of problematic ways. Therefore, when I work with medical students and nursing students, I have additional goals.

First, students need to develop the ability to recognize when—and how—a functional difference or chronic illness is relevant to a patient’s current medical concerns and when it is not. Second, students learn to develop ways to ensure that healthcare facilities are not only accessible to disabled people, but also welcoming to them. Too often, I notice people equating accessibility with “compliance” with the Americans with Disabilities Act. I think healthcare providers, among others, need to go beyond simply meeting legal requirements—which, in any case, do not guarantee that individuals’ needs are being met.

 

You have research interests in feminist philosophy of disability. What questions and problems in philosophy of disability in general and feminist philosophy of disability in particular do you work on at present and hope to work on in the future? 

My initial interest in feminist philosophy of disability was related to epistemic issues regarding disability within the bioethics literature. For example, Peter Singer makes very problematic claims in Practical Ethics about the value of disabled people’s lives while simultaneously maintaining that his claims do not entail prejudice. As I delved further into the bioethics literature, I realized that many bioethicists make certain types of unexamined and unwarranted assumptions about disability. Although I won’t develop this topic here, I discuss it in detail in chapters one and two of my dissertation, A Feminist Contestation of Ableist Norms: Implications for Biomedical Ethics, Disability Theory, and Phenomenology. That these assumptions remain unexamined is especially troubling given the centrality of disability for numerous issues within bioethics: genetic and prenatal testing, the right to refuse treatment, healthcare rationing, physician aid in dying, and organ transplantation policy, to name a few.

My dissertation and current work are both concerned with ways that biomedical ethics and phenomenology have tended to omit disabled people’s experiences or contrast them with the experiences of “normal” subjects.

I have just completed revisions to “Missing Phenomenological Accounts: Disability Theory, Body Integrity Identity Disorder, and Being an Amputee.” In this article, which is forthcoming in the Fall 2018 issue of IJFAB: The International Journal for Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, I argue that phenomenology provides a method for disability theorists to describe embodied subjectivity that is lacking within the social model of disability. Within the literature on body integrity identity disorder (BIID), dominant narratives of disability are influential, individual bodies are considered in isolation, and experiences of amputees are omitted. Research on BIID tends to incorporate an individualist ontology. I argue that Merleau-Ponty’s conceptualization of being-in-the-world, which recognizes subjectivity as embodied and intersubjective, provides a better starting-point for research that describes the experiences of people with BIID and amputees.

I am in the process of revising “Challenging Conceptions of the ‘Normal’ Subject in Phenomenology,” a chapter for the anthology entitled Race as Phenomena: Between Phenomenology and Philosophy of Race, edited by Emily Lee and forthcoming from Rowman and Littlefield. In this chapter, I consider the benefits and limitations of Merleau-Ponty’s approach to phenomenology for thinking about lived experiences through the axes of gender, race, and disability. Merleau-Ponty implicitly assumes that people who are privileged in these categories are “normal.”

Philosophers concerned with experiences of chronic illness and impairment, such as Havi Carel, Shaun Gallagher, and S. Kay Toombs, build on Merleau-Ponty’s framework. In doing so, they also make implicit assumptions about what types of bodies count as “normal” or “healthy.” By failing to thematize gender or race, these authors imply that the experiences of white women and people of color are pathological. It is essential for scholarship that highlights aspects of disabled people’s experiences to be intersectional in order to avoid this outcome. Instead, I contend that phenomenologists ought to increase the amount of attention devoted to the role of social structures in shaping the experiences of individuals.

I am interested in, and currently researching, the role of imagination in facilitating or hindering understanding of disabled people’s experiences. I have observed that many nondisabled people who have not spent time meaningfully engaging with a disabled person tend to think in terms of narratives that are dominant within movies, books, and news articles; namely, their perspectives tend to be informed either by the idea that disability is tragic and disabled people are to be pitied, or by the overcoming narrative which frames disabled people as inspiring due to what we’re able to accomplish “in spite of” being disabled. Disability theorists such as Eli Clare, Alison Kafer, and Tobin Siebers characterize imagination as an obstacle to understanding due to the influence of ableism, but they also intimate that there are ways in which imagination can serve as a means for alternate conceptions of disability.

I agree that imagination informed by ableism is often treated as a substitute for knowledge, but I do not think this is necessarily the case. Clare calls into question the ways that the ideology of cure obscures our collective ability to imagine disabled people’s lives as fulfilling. In Disability Theory, Siebers makes a distinction between “individual imagination” and “cultural imagination,” and suggests that we need the latter rather than the former. However, his discussion of this topic is quite brief. Kafer’s Feminist, Queer, Crip opens by focusing on the contrast between ways that medical professionals and professors versus friends, family members, and other disabled people imagine possible futures for the author. Whereas the latter group imagines Kafer’s future as “ripe with opportunities,” the former group seems to believe that Kafer, in order to cope with her newly acquired physical limitations, will require such a significant amount of time and effort that she will be unable to pursue graduate studies.

I am drawing on Amy Kind’s work on philosophy of imagination to explore the potential benefits that imagination can have when it is shaped in particular ways. For example, imagination may have utility for understanding when it is grounded in actual disabled people’s experiences and when it takes sociopolitical context into account.  

As my discussion above demonstrates, I draw freely from the traditions of analytic and continental philosophy. I chose pluralistic graduate programs—Miami University and the University of South Florida—so that I could learn and use the methods of both traditions. My work is also interdisciplinary in nature, which I think is especially important for feminist disability theory. I have learned a great deal from disability-rights activists, as well as theorists in cultural studies, disability studies, English, feminist studies, literature, nursing, religious studies, and sociology, for example. I greatly appreciate all of the ways that feminist philosophers of disability—and you in particular, Shelley—have made my trajectory within the discipline easier by advocating for disabled philosophers and by showing that disability is a philosophically interesting and important topic. 

Redefining “Borders”: Part 2 (guest post)

  

Guest Post

 

by

Tracy Isaacs*

 

The Sahitya’s International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Feminist and Gender Studies in a Global Perspective took place in Puducherry, a coastal city in South India, February 8-11, 2018. I was privileged to attend this wonderful conference as one of seven plenary speakers.

The Sahitya describes itself as “a hub of faculty, scholars and lovers of literature, language, and culture — an exciting and innovative platform of Namaste Educational Academy (NEA) to debate and discuss contemporary literary trends that rejuvenate, formulate and shape the academia.” The Satiya operates out of the Namaste Educational Academy, which “aims to foster and create a learning environment for international students, faculty, and scholars.” The International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Feminist and Gender Studies in a Global Perspective was the first major international conference that The Satiya has organized and was a major success on every measure.

 

[Description of image below (backslash indicates a line break): Group shot of 26 people, mostly women, in three rows, with a chandelier above them and a banner behind them that says “NAMASTE EDUCATIONAL ACADEMY / Puducherry” and “The Sahitya’s / Interdisciplinary and International Conference on / FEMINIST AND GENDER STUDIES IN A / GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE” and in smaller print “8-11 February 2018 / Venue: Hotel Bon Sejour, Puducherry 605 005]

 

The conference came together through the heroic persistent efforts and hard work of Dr. Kalapana Roa, a Professor at the University of Pondicherry, and Ms. Manimozhi, Director of the Namaste Educational Academy. They were assisted by a team of graduate students and colleagues, and the result was an occasion to remember.

Kalpana is a feminist literary scholar who did her PhD at the University of Alberta on the work of the brilliant Canadian author Alice Munroe. When Kalpana came to Western University for two weeks as a visiting scholar a couple of years ago, I was invited to attend a small dinner with her and three of my colleagues in English: Nandi Bhatia, Julia Emberley, and Teresa Hubel. Over North Indian food at Massey’s Restaurant in London, Ontario, we expressed an interest in visiting her at the University of Pondicherry. She said, “Leave it with me.”

In a short time, the wheels were in motion and we were invited to participate in The Sahitya’s first international and interdisciplinary conference on the theme of feminist and gender studies in a global perspective. Since that was about a year before the conference, we had plenty of time to get ourselves organized for what turned out to be an outstanding event and a remarkable experience, in an incredible part of the world, where there is a lively community engaging in feminist scholarship.

The conference was held at the Hotel Bon Sejour, Puducherry, which is also where we stayed, making it extra easy to get to sessions. We were offered the warmest welcome you can imagine, with a beautiful dinner party at Kalpana’s house the night before the event got underway. Kalpana, Mani, and their team of students and colleagues went out of their way to ensure that we were well looked after, even organizing a day trip after the final session on February 11.

Below I give an overview of the conference. Since the conference extended over four packed days, I can’t possibly go into every detail of the presentations. I end the overview with my overall impressions of the event and how it expanded my understanding of the type of feminist and gender studies scholarship that is happening in other parts of the world.

I’ve saved the full program as a PDF in google, and you can access it with this link.

____________________________________________________

 

Redefining “Borders” in “Feminism Across Borders”: Part 1 (guest post)

 

Guest Post

 

by

Tracy Isaacs*

 

I just got back from the “Feminist and Gender Studies in a Global Context: An International and Interdisciplinary Conference” that took place in Puducherry, India, hosted by the Namaste Educational Academy. What an amazing experience to connect with the strong community of feminist academics doing superb scholarship in South India.

Last term, I taught a third-year women’s studies course called “Feminism Across Borders.” My vision for and design of this course was the subject of the paper that I gave at the conference. In November, Shelley asked me to do a set of two posts for Discrimination and Disadvantage. In the first post, I would have discussed the course; and in the second post, I would have talked a bit about the conference. I dropped the ball on the first installment, which was scheduled for early January. So, I’m sending two installments now: this first installment provides an overview of the course, based on the paper I presented. Next week, I will post the second, shorter installment that will offer some observations about and reflections on the conference in Puducherry itself.

____________________________________________________

  

Feminism Across Borders: The Course

 

The main questions at the heart of the course were: “Is an inclusive feminism possible?” “Is a feminism that transcends borders and embraces a broader, more global spectrum of feminist voices than ever before feasible?” When I think of an inclusive feminism, I think of it as having space for all, representing the interests of all, not promoting the interests of some women on the backs of or to the exclusion of others. It is a real question whether this is truly possible, and if so, how to implement it.

I created the “Feminism Across Borders” course twelve years ago because I felt that the feminist and gender studies department in which I teach should include a course that focuses on “global feminism.” As those of us who teach in feminist and gender studies and related areas are aware, the intellectual landscape of our scholarly conversations is prone to rapid shifts, twists, and turns.

And so, as I was developing my syllabus last summer, after a ten-year hiatus from the course, I knew that although I had originally conceived the course literally in terms of transnational or global feminism, it now needed a more expansive and figurative understanding of “borders.” Even though the primary subject matter of the course remained feminism in a global context, I wanted to examine other kinds of borders that feminist theorists need to care about: race, disability, class and economic status, age, and sexuality can all present as borders that challenge inclusive feminisms when inadequately navigated or underappreciated within feminist scholarship.

This understanding might sound a lot like intersectionality, and in lots of ways that’s right. Almost every course that I teach has intersectionality as a major theme, mostly because it’s a concept that students could stand to scrutinize a bit more closely. Intersectionality, as coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in her game-changing paper, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color” (see here: Stanford Law Review, Vol. 43, No. 6, July 1991:1241-1299), is the idea that different forms of oppression intersect to create unique forms of oppression that are not simply additive.

For example, being an Indigenous woman in Canada is not just a compound of being Indigenous and being a woman. It is its own unique social location. By using a case study of African-American women and anti-discrimination law in the U.S., Crenshaw showed that although African-American women face exclusion as African-American women, they are not served by U.S. anti-discrimination law because “African-American women” is not a recognized category under that law. As the Combahee River Collective says, “All the Blacks are men, all the women are white.” In Canada, Indigenous women suffer a similar kind of exclusion (see here). In short, failure to recognize intersectionality generates all manner of exclusion and caricatures oppression by making it seem one-dimensional.

I may be a seasoned feminist scholar, but I still find intersectionality to be logistically and conceptually confusing: how do we do it well? How do we (even the idea of “we” creates exclusions immediately) have a truly inclusive discourse that does not exclude? Is intersectionality a concept, a method, a theory, an approach, an ideal, an identity? These questions swirl in the background throughout the course and I confess that I don’t have a clear answer to them. We read the Shuddhabrata Sengupta piece, “I/Me/Mine—Intersectional Identities and Negotiated Minefields,” (see here: Signs, Vol. 31, No. 3 [Spring 2006]:629-239), in which he highlights how identities of privilege and oppression are not absolute or constant, but shifting and relative:

Program for philoSOPHIA 2018: Biopower, Biologics, Biospheres (Richmond, VA, Mar. 22-24, 2018)

 

philoSOPHIA 2018 Program

March 22-24, 2018

University of Richmond

 

Thursday’s reception and Friday and Saturday sessions will be held at the UR Downtown campus of the University of Richmond, 626 East Broad Street, suite 100, Richmond, VA 23219 (one block east of the Marriott).

Room Designations:

            LL = Lower Level
            CL = Classroom
            CM = Community Room
            CF – Conference Room

 

Thursday, March 22  

Conference packets will be available at Thursday night’s events.

Thu. 6:15 – 7:00     CM: Mandatory Training for Moderators

Thu. 7:00 – 8:30     Gallery: Wine and Cheese Reception for all Attendees

 

Friday, March 23

Fri. 9:00 – 9:15      Coffee and Snacks – conference packets available.

 

Fri. 9:15 – 10:15

LL: Paper: “Foucault’s Vermin: From Extermination to Regulation of Pest Species,” Dayne B. Alexander, Emory University ***(projection equipment in use)***

CL: Paper: “A Critique of the Political Economy of Sex: Rubin, Butler and Marx,” Anne van Leeuwen, James Madison University 

CM: Paper: “Militarized Racism as an Ideological Formation,” Martin Armstrong, University of Chicago 

 

Fri 10:30-12:45

LL: Panel: Against Biopolitical Containment: Strategies of Trans World-Making 

“Turning the Tide: Trans Experience of Curiosity,” Perry Zurn, American University

“Erotic (Un)becomings: Phenomenologies of Transition and the Bioethics of Repair,” Tamsin Kimoto, Emory University

“Managing the Threat of Becoming: Trans Subjects, Medical Discourse and the Biopolitical Containment of Gender Possibilities,” James Zubka, University of Memphis

“Embodied Thresholds of Sanctuary: Abolitionism and Trans Worldmaking,” Andrea Pitts, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

 

CL: Panel: Affective Labor and Feminist Politics in a Biopolitical Economy. Moderated by Shiloh Whitney, Fordham University

“Affective Labor as Resistance in the Biopolitical Society,” Christopher R. Myers, Fordham University

“Returning to the Alienation Critique,” Gwen Daugs, Fordham University

"The Production of Death: Affective Labor, Affective Economy, and Capitalism,” Ela Tokay, Fordham University

 

CM: Book Panel: Jennifer Scuro’s Addressing Ableism: Philosophical Questions via Disability Studies (Lexington Books). Moderated by Joel Reynolds, The Hastings Center (see below for info)

Commentator: Maeve O’Donovan, Notre Dame of Maryland University

Commentator: Kelsey Borrowman, Villanova University

Commentator: Lydia X. Z. Brown, Northeastern University School of Law

Response: Jennifer Scuro, The College of New Rochelle

 

CF: Workshop (pre-registered participants only): Foucault and Wynter: A Philosophical Encounter with and Against the Human. Moderated by Lynne Huffer, Emory University, and Taryn Jordan, Emory University

 

Fri. 1:00 LUNCH

 

Fri. 2:15 – 4:30

LL: Panel: Genes, Parents, and Pregnant Women 

“Geontopower, Genomics, and the Dominion of Information,” Joel M. Reynolds, The Hastings Center ***(projection equipment in use)***

“’You’re Already Off the Clock’: Temporalizing the Pregnant Subject,” Jill Drouillard, Université Paris-Sorbonne IV ***(projection equipment in use)***

 

CL: Panel: Uses and Limits of Foucault’s ‘Biopower’ 

“Woman Becoming Man, Man Becoming Women: The Biopolitics of Friendship between the Sexes in ihn Arabi,” Ali Reza Pharaa, Stonybrook University

“Governance and the Formation of Objectivity: Expanding Our Understanding of the Biopolitical,” Theodra Bane, Villanova University

“Feminist Heterotopias,” Margaret McLaren, Rollins College

 

CM: Panel: Disrupting Colonizing Discourses 

“What Can a River Do? Spinoza, Immanent Ethics, and the Indigenous-Led Ecological Struggle Against DAPL,” Oli Stefano, Bard College

“Toward Planetary Taste,” Jana McAuliffe, University of Arkansas, Little Rock

“The Prison-House of Being: Fanon on Language and Colonial World-Collapse,” Katherine Ward, Georgetown University

 

Fri. 4:45 – 6:30     

LL: Keynote Plenary. Moderated by Ladelle McWhorter

"The Captive Maternal and Political Trauma: A Testimonial for Erica Garner (1990-2017)," Joy James, Francis Christopher Oakley Third Century Professor of Humanities and Political Science, Williams College

 

Fri. 6:30 DINNER

 

Saturday, March 24

Room Designations:

            LL = Lower Level
            CL = Classroom
            CM = Community Room
            CF – Conference Room

Sat. 8:45 – 9:00      Coffee and Snacks

 

Sat. 9:00 – 10:30

LL: Panel: Breath, Race, and the Human 

“The Racialization of Breath,” Jack R. Leff, University of North Carolina at Charlotte ***(projection equipment in use)***

“Whiteness as the Gatekeeper of Being: Wynter, Biopower, and the Imperfect Application of the Designation ‘Human,’” Samantha Wrisley, Emory University

 

CL: Paper: “Hetero-next-uals: Rupturing Straight Time in Cringeworthy Phases of Sexual Experimentation,” Rachel McNealis, Marquette University 

 

CM: Panel: Feminist Biologics of Becoming through Raymond Ruyer

“Irigaray and Ruyer: The De-Specularization and De-Spatialization of Form,” Annu Dahiya, Duke University

“Embryogenesis, Firstness, and a Cosmologics of the Maternal,” Maryann D. Murtagh, Duke University

 

Sat. 10:45 – 12:30

LL: Panel: Grappling with Materialisms 

“Resonance as a Metaphor for Biopolitics: On Cavarero, Barad, and the Ontology of Frequency Ratios,” Robin James, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

“Feminism, Force, and Finitude: (Mis)understanding Elizabeth Grosz’s Darwinian Reflections on Life, Politics, and Art,” Claus Halberg, University of Bergen, Norway

“God Particle: Sublimity, Physics, and Virtuality in Black Feminist Poetics,” Zakiyya Iman Jackson, University of Southern California

 

CL: Panel: Bodies of Knowledge 

“Eating and the Existential Phenomenology of Bodily Control,” Talia Welsh, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

“Sometimes Quiet is Violent: On Radical Reflection, Queer Phenomenology and Epistemic Violence,” Valérie Simon, University of Oregon

“Trans Identity and the Politics of Biology,” Sarah Hansen, California State University, Northridge

 

CM: Book Panel: Shelley Tremain’s Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability (U of Michigan Press). Moderated by Melinda Hall, Stetson University (see below for info)

Commentator: Devonya Havis, Canisius College

Commentator: Lauren Guilmette, Florida Atlantic University

Response: Shelley Tremain, Independent scholar

 

CF: Workshop (pre-registered participants only): On Gender and Violence: Course Design and Pedagogy”.  Moderated by Erika Zimmerman Damer, Mariela Mendez, and Mari Lee Mifsud, University of Richmond

Remembering Jackie Anderson

 

From Crista Lebens: "We are saddened by this loss. Jackie participated in Midwest SWIP for many, many years. Her words resonate with us."

(Details about a scholarship fund in Jackie Anderson's honour are at the second link below.)

 

[Description of coloured photo below: A smiling Jackie, who is looking directly at the camera, is shown from the chest up. Jackie is wearing a large silver labrys on a chain and has greying short hair.]

 

From The Windy City Times:

Chicago lesbian pioneer and civil-rights activist Jackie Anderson died after a short illness on Jan. 7, surrounded by family and friends. She was 75.

Anderson is survived by her daughter Tracey Anderson and her grandson Torrence "Doc" Gardner. . .

Born in Chicago, Anderson graduated from Roosevelt University and retired from a long career as assistant professor of humanities and philosophy at Olive-Harvey College, where she started work in 1975. She twice served as department chairperson.

Her brilliant academic mind was among things her friends remembered most about Anderson. A steadfast feminist, she especially supported African American lesbian projects on Chicago's South Side.  

Click here to read more about Jackie Anderson . . .

Sarah Hoagland writes of Jackie's work at Midwest SWIP:

"Bringing complex and provocative questions/thoughts to the Midwest Society for Women in Philosophy, energizing both the Women of Color Caucus and the Lesbian Caucus."

Please consider contributing to the scholarship in Jackie Anderson's memory. Click on the following link for information about how and where to contribute to the fund: Jackie Anderson Scholarship Fund

 

posted by Shelley

philoSOPHIA 2018: Biopower, Biologics, Biospheres (Richmond, VA, Mar. 22-24)

 

Text of the poster below:

12th Annual philoSOPHIA 2018

March 22-24

"Biopower, Biologics, Biospheres"

 

"The Captive Maternal and Political Trauma: A Testimonial for Erica Garner (1990-2017)"

Keynote Speaker: Joy James, Francis Christopher Oakley Third Century Professor of Humanities, Williams College

 

Book Sessions on:

Shelley Tremain, Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability

Jennifer Scuro, Addressing Ableism: Philosophical Questions via Disability Studies

 

All sessions will be held at:

University of Richmond Downtown Campus

626 Broad Street, Richmond, VA 23219

 

Conference Hotel: Richmond Marriott Downtown

500 East Broad Street, Richmond, VA 23219

website: www. philosophiafeministsociety.com

 

Submit Your Cutting-Edge Work to Public Philosophy Journal (PPJ)

 

Public Philosophy Journal, of which I am very pleased to be an Editorial Advisory Board member, now accepts submissions of short philosophical essays intended for the general public, as well as submissions from activists interested in crafting their essays with philosophical peer review. The PPJ’s innovative Formative Peer Review process offers great opportunities for emerging authors to practice their public engagement skills and for more established authors to model these skills. Find out about PPJ’s Formative Peer Review process here.

The journal continues to grow in both scope and the nature of its activities, with possible future opportunities for classes to be involved in some of these activities. As an Editorial Advisory Board member of PPJ, I would be happy to answer questions about the journal  and communicate ideas to Andrea Walsh, Managing Community Director of PPJ, and Christopher Long, PPJ Project Director. Professor Long’s essay, “Practicing Public Scholarship,” offers insight into the mission and goals of PPJ and provides a good example of the appropriate length and preferred style of submissions to the journal. Read Long’s essay here.

Vol. 1, No. 1 of Public Philosophy Journal can be found here. The submission and style guidelines for Public Philosophy Journal are here.

The Current is PPJ’s constantly evolving stream of vital and informative curated material from across the web, an archive that I am delighted to say includes all of the interviews with disabled philosophers that I have conducted in the Dialogues on Disability series. Find the Current here.

For information about the members of Public Philosophy Journal’s Editorial Advisory Board, our role, and the purposes, goals, and activities of the Board, go here.

 

posted by Shelley