Discrimination and Disadvantage

Citation Practices: More About Power Than You Think They Are

 

The number of citations that a philosopher's work gets is taken into account in the hiring, tenure, and promotion decisions of many philosophy departments. In addition, repeated citation of a given article can establish a new direction in the discipline, a new style of doing philosophy, or some other novel trend in philosophy. Furthermore, frequent citation of a certain philosopher’s work can elevate the professional status of the given philosopher and the area of study in which the philosopher works. In other words, the citation practices in which individual philosophers engage can, and usually do, have cumulative effects. To put it another way, citation practices on the micro-level produce systemic and profession-wide effects, many of which have significant and lasting consequences.

Some of the most significant and enduring systemic effects of citation practices comprise the reproduction, in various forms, of the status quo in philosophy with respect to the exclusion or marginalization of some philosophers, including disabled philosophers, and the exclusion or marginalization of certain areas of inquiry in philosophy, including philosophy of disability. Thus, marginalized philosophers and privileged philosophers who aim to eliminate the current asymmetries in the profession increasingly scrutinize citation practices in the profession: Who gets cited? Where do they get cited? By whom do they cited? Who hasn’t been cited? Which body of work has been obscured, ignored, and disregarded?

In short, a growing number of philosophers have become cognizant of the political character of citation practices, asking, among other questions, whether philosophers who have engaged in sexual misconduct, or make racist and antisemitic claims, or endorse policies that violate the civil rights of LGBTQ people, should be promoted through the citation and use of their work.

To date, most of the inquiries into citation practices have been concerned with the gendered nature of current citation practices in philosophy, demonstrating  the ways in which epistemic authority and professional recognition more often accrue to (white) male philosophers than to women philosophers and how the conferral of this epistemic authority and esteem affects hiring and promotion practices, reproduces biases in the profession, and even ultimately encourages women to leave the profession.

Although these critical inquiries into citation practices have helped to throw into relief the irreducibly political character of epistemic authority and esteem in philosophy, I want to argue nevertheless that critical inquiries about citation practices need to go beyond their current focus on who gets cited, how often they get cited, and in what venues, in order to examine how citation takes place, how it is done, and why a certain philosopher gets cited. For I maintain that even seemingly ameliorative citations can reinstate asymmetrical relations of power if they are done in careless or inappropriate ways.

Reviewing the Reviewer

 

My book, Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press), was published on November 22 of last year. Yet the book has not been reviewed in The Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (NDPR). Nor has Jennifer Scuro’s book, Addressing Ableism: Philosophical Questions Via Disability Studies (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield), been reviewed in NDPR, despite the fact that it was published in October of last year. Nor, furthermore, has Melinda Hall’s book, The Bioethics of Enhancement: Transhumanism, Disability, and Biopolitics (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield), published in November of 2016, been reviewed in NDPR.

As one of the most prominent online publishing venues in philosophy, NDPR does not, it seems, feel compelled to solicit reviews of books that are authored by disabled philosophers or that address philosophy of disability. Indeed, NDPR seems to do an inadequate job of publishing timely reviews of books by members of underrepresented groups in philosophy, of soliciting reviews from members of underrepresented groups in philosophy, and of soliciting reviews on books that consider marginalized areas of philosophy.

Although neither my book, nor Jen’s book, nor Melinda’s book has (yet?) been reviewed in NDPR, over the course of the summer I began to see NDPR reviews online of books by male colleagues that were published only a few months ago.

So, I decided to take a quick look at whose books are reviewed in NDPR, who acts as a reviewer for NDPR, which publishers’ books get reviewed in NDPR, and what areas of philosophy the books that are reviewed in NDPR cover.

A quick look at NDPR reviews for the past 2 months suggests that roughly 3 times more books authored by men are reviewed in this prominent online publication than are books authored by women. In addition, roughly 3.5 times more male philosophers act as reviewers of books for NDPR than do women philosophers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, furthermore, a preponderance of the books reviewed in NDPR in the last 2 months were published by either Oxford University Press or Cambridge University Press.

Yesterday, I posted the results of this quick review of NDPR on my Facebook page and in the blog’s Facebook group, indicating that I intend to do a more careful and systematic examination of the NDPR in the coming weeks, an examination that scrutinizes whose books get reviewed in NDPR, who serve as reviewers for NDPR, which areas of the field NDPR reviews tend to cover, and how long it takes for some books to be reviewed in NDPR.

I will report the results of this study on the blog in due course.

 

posted by Shelley

Feminist Philosophy and Foucault

 

In Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability and various articles, I assert that feminist philosophers should incorporate a denaturalized conception of disability into the field of feminist philosophy, drawing upon the work of Foucault in order to do so. I predict that some, perhaps many, feminist philosophers will resist my conviction that Foucault’s insights suggest ways in which they could contribute to the philosophical denaturalization of disability and, by doing so, extend critical inquiry into the problematization of disability. Feminist philosophers have long disparaged and dismissed Foucault’s work because of its alleged sexism and masculinism. In particular, feminist philosophers (and theorists) have argued that Foucault’s history of sexuality ignored the significance of gender.

The first volume of The History of Sexuality has been the primary target of these criticisms. In the final chapter of this book, Foucault had introduced a reversal of the causal relation between sex and sexuality that the feminist sex-gender distinction institutes.

Whereas the feminist sex-gender distinction posits that “sex” is a self-evident fact of nature and biology from which gender and sexuality follow, Foucault argued that “sex is the most speculative, most ideal, and most internal element in a deployment of sexuality organized by power in its grip on bodies and their materiality, their forces, energies, sensations, and pleasures.” “The notion of ‘sex,’” Foucault claimed, “made it possible to group together, in an artificial unity, anatomical elements, biological functions, conducts, sensations, and pleasures, and it enabled one to make use of this fictitious unity as a causal principle, an omnipresent meaning.” With this innovative reversal of the terms of debate about sex, gender, and sexuality, Foucault posited sexuality as the “real historical formation [that] gave rise to the notion of sex” (1978, 157), that is, as the apparatus of force relations that produces the ideal of “sex” as the foundational property that sexuality seeks to evoke or express.

For Foucault, in other words, “sex” was an effect of force relations that comes to pass as the cause of a naturalized human desire. Sex, though it initially emerged as a mechanism of the apparatus of sexuality, has itself become an apparatus of force relations with which the apparatus of sexuality (among other apparatuses) is mutually constitutive and reinforcing.

Foucault’s intervention into discussions about sex and sexuality presented a challenge to conventional understandings of these terms, a challenge that one might have expected feminists to embrace. Indeed, Foucault’s reversal of the causal relations between sex and sexuality seemed to anticipate Judith Butler’s transformative claims about these categories (see Butler 1999).

Regardless, one might have expected feminists to applaud the way that Foucault historicized and relativized the category of sex. Some feminists argue, however, that a significant and troubling result of this reversal of sex and sexuality is the separation of gender from both these terms. E. L. McCallum explains this feminist objection to the reversal thus: “By refocusing the foundation of the debate around the reversal of the order of sex and sexuality, Foucault seem[ed] to place an inordinately narrow emphasis upon the relation of these two terms at the expense of considering any others—most notably ‘gender’” (1996, 79).

The prominent feminist theorist Teresa de Lauretis has argued, for instance, that insofar as Foucault relied upon the conceptual premise that sexuality is a technology of sex, but not gender, “[his] theory, in fact, excludes, though it does not preclude, the consideration of gender” (1987, 3). De Lauretis asserts that Foucault’s critique of the technology of sex “does not take into account its different solicitation of male and female subjects, or the conflicting investments of men and women in the discourses and practices of sexuality” (ix). In Foucault’s history of sexuality, de Lauretis states, sexuality is not understood as gendered, that is, “as having a male form and a female form, but [rather] is taken to be one and the same for all—and consequently male” (14). De Lauretis argues, furthermore, that even when Foucault located sexuality in women’s bodies—as he did by pointing out that women’s bodies have historically been regarded as “thoroughly saturated with sexuality”—he perceived sexuality as an attribute or property of the male (14).

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:

Dialogues on Disability: Shelley Tremain Interviews Julie Maybee

 

Hello, I’m Shelley Tremain and I’d like to welcome you to the fortieth 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 Julie Maybee. Julie is Professor of Philosophy at Lehman College, CUNY, an adjunct professor in the Masters of Disability Studies program at CUNY’s School of Professional Studies, and Director of the Disability Studies Minor at Lehman. Her specialties include nineteenth-century Continental philosophy (especially Hegel), Africana philosophy, race and philosophy, and disability.

 

Welcome to Dialogues on Disability, Julie! Julie, you began your university education as a journalism student. Please tell us about your background and the motivation to pursue an education and career in philosophy.

First, I’d like to thank you for the opportunity to participate in this interview series, Shelley, which I have very much enjoyed reading and am now thrilled to be part of.

I took my first philosophy course as an elective in my freshman year in the School of Journalism at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, loved it, and made philosophy my minor. In third year, I realized that I did not want to be a journalist. I thought about changing my major, but would have been required to take a lot of extra courses because the distribution requirements were so different in the School of Arts and Humanities. An advisor told me, however, that if I finished the journalism degree and wanted to do a second degree, the distribution requirements for the second degree would be waived. I also hammered out a deal with the chair of the Philosophy Department that would allow me to finish the philosophy major in only one additional year, if I loaded up a bit on credits.

While negotiating the fifth year with the Philosophy Department, I told a senior philosophy professor—who I thought had never really noticed me, even though I had done well in his courses—that I was thinking about doing another year to major in philosophy and he told me that I should apply to the Ph.D. program in philosophy at his alma mater, Cornell. It’s amazing what a difference one little comment can make. His brief comment helped me believe I was good enough to go to grad school. So, I applied to Cornell and went there to do my Ph.D. Pursuing a career as a philosophy professor essentially lets me continue to be a student for the rest of my life, as my father likes to tease me, which I think is a real privilege.

 

Please describe your recent and current research projects and teaching activity.

I have actually been on sabbatical this year, which has been lovely. Ordinarily, I teach a range of interdisciplinary and cross-listed courses: on Africana philosophy, race and ethnicity, philosophy of disability, and disability studies. As you know, I recently published an article on embodiment and disability in the special issue of Journal of Social Philosophy that you guest edited. I also recently completed a forthcoming article on African philosophy, disability, and the social conception of the self—or the idea that identities are defined, not by individuals on their own, but rather by societies and social contexts—and another forthcoming article on disability, oppression, and homelessness.

I’m currently working on a book manuscript that expands on the argument offered in the Journal of Social Philosophy article, as well as working on another book manuscript that examines the contribution that Hegel’s argument in the early parts of the Phenomenology can make to debates in Africana philosophy about whether the self is socially defined—self-consciousness or spirit is, Hegel said, echoing a traditional African proverb, “[the] I that is we, and the we that is I”. In this latter project, I also apply to the Phenomenology the strategy for diagraming the logic of Hegel’s argument that I developed in my book Picturing Hegel.

 

In your contribution to the special issue of Journal of Social Philosophy, you developed a way to undermine a criticism that is often directed at my arguments about the social constitution of impairment, namely, that the position denies the material reality of the impaired body. You argue (and I agree) that this criticism relies on a Westerncentric conception of the body that ignores how the body is understood in some African traditions. Please elaborate your argument.

We often assume that the Western understanding of the world—including of the body—is the only way to understand the world. But there are different ways of cutting up or defining the world. The fact that there are different ways calls into question our own taken-for-granted ways of cutting up and defining the world. Like you, Shelley, I do not deny that there is a material reality to the world. I am claiming only that what that reality is like—how it is defined or identified, what kinds of things we say there are in it and, indeed, whether there are any “things” in it at all, given the meaning of our term “thing”—is determined by social contexts, by socially-shared languages and learning. As African philosopher Ifeanyi A. Menkiti, as well as philosopher of science Norwood Russell Hanson suggested, languages do not produce what we perceive or think about, but they do form and organize what we perceive as the facts, or what we regard “as so.”  

Today’s concept of impairment is a highly abstract concept according to which an impairment is one of many (biological) conditions located in an individual’s body. Traditional cultures do not seem to have this abstract concept of impairment. The Maasai term that is often translated into English as “disabled”—where disabled here is a synonym for the word impaired—for instance, refers to a lizard that walks in an awkward way, and so is only a description of physical movement and does not include what we would think of as intellectual or psychological impairments. Even in Western societies, the concept of impairment has not been transhistorical. I think there is good evidence showing that, up until the early 1800’s in Europe, people did not have today’s, Western concept of impairment. Actually, it’s not clear to me what the point of our highly abstract concept of impairment is, outside of the social arrangements in many Western societies that, since the nineteenth century, have disadvantaged and excluded people “with impairments.” After all, neither the term impairment nor even terms such as cerebral palsy or autism, which we use to capture smaller categories of impairment, tell us much about what people can or cannot do.

Some traditional societies also do not regard the body as individual. The Suyá Indians of Brazil, who call themselves the Mekin Seji, for instance, believe that the body and body-parts are socially shared through the sharing of bodily substances—milk, blood, urine, sweat, spit, vaginal secretions, semen and so on. When Dombá, a Suyá/Mekin Seji man who anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes wrote about, received a kidney transplant and found that eating red peppers offended his new kidney, no one in his socially-shared, bodily-substance group was allowed to eat red peppers. Since substance-group members share bodies and body-parts, Dombá and other members of his substance-group believed that the consumption of red peppers by the other members would offend Dombá’s new kidney as well. The Suyá/Mekin Seji also do not seem to experience their bodies as individual.

Even the discipline of biology is just one way of cutting up and defining the world.

Philosopher of science Jesse Prinz has pointed out, for instance, that biology tells us that bad moral behavior can’t make one sick. But African philosopher Godwin S. Sogolo has argued that in traditional African cultures that do not make a sharp distinction between the natural and supernatural/spiritual, people believe that bad moral behavior can indeed make one sick. Moral violations or poor social relations with other people or with spirits can make someone ill by reducing the body’s ability to heal itself. As Sogolo notes, these views are not that different from the claim in Western societies that stress can make people ill, though traditional African societies focus on strained social relations rather than, say, overwork, as the source of stress.

Feminist scholar and sociologist Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí has suggested, furthermore, that traditional Yoruba culture did not have a concept of (biological) sex. Although the Yoruba obviously recognized that people had different roles in reproduction (obinrin, the ones who have babies and okùnrin, the ones who do not have babies), because children had no role in reproduction, children were neither obinrin nor okùnrin. Critics might say that this example shows only that the Yoruba did not recognize the fact that boys and girls do indeed have a biological sex. But this reply presupposes the central assumption of biology, namely the idea that, as Ladelle McWhorter has pointed out, living things should be classified in terms of function and development. Since most girls develop into women and most boys into men, biology regards girls as little women, and boys as little men. But even on our own terms there are ways in which girls are different from women, and boys different from men—one of those differences is that neither girls nor boys have any role in reproduction. So why not then say, as the Yoruba did, that no children are women or men? In other words, to say that there are biological sexes, impairments, or even individual bodies is just one way of cutting up and defining the world.

 

Julie, you had worked in philosophy of race and ethnicity for several years before you came to recognize the ways in which disability is as socially constructed as race and ethnicity. Describe the circumstances of this realization.

I am embarrassed to say that I had never thought about disability as a socially constructed category until it happened to my family. I had been working on issues in the study of race and ethnicity for twenty years when, in 2002, my daughter, Leyna, who was twelve at the time, had a brain aneurysm. While accompanying Leyna to cognitive rehab one day, I complained to the director that their program was culturally biased. The director, who knew that I am an academic, told me that there was a then-recent issue of American Psychologist, the official journal of the American Psychological Association (APA), that I should look up. 

 

[Description of coloured photo below: A selfie of a smiling Julie who has short hair, is wearing glasses, and looking directly into the lens. A smiling Leyna who also has short hair and wearing glasses, is behind Julie, her chin resting on Julie’s right shoulder, their heads touching each other's. Light is pouring in from a window behind them.]

 

 

Philosophy is Not Flat—Empirical Considerations for Prestige Bias in Philosophy (guest post)

 

Guest Post

 

by

Helen De Cruz*

 

Recently, Alexander Rosenberg, R. Taylor Cole Professor of Philosophy at Duke University, argued that philosophy is essentially a non-hierarchical discipline: “I never experienced any hierarchy or rank-pulling in philosophy. You had a good argument, or you didn’t”, he says in an interview (see also here for an interesting discussion thread). He doesn’t deny prestige bias, but insists that it is very rare: “Of course, there are a few (very few) philosophers who attach importance to pedigree.”

Is this correct? In my forthcoming paper on prestige bias in philosophy (to be published in Ergo), I provide empirical evidence that suggests that prestige bias is pervasive in philosophy. It has a profound influence on who gets to shape the discipline or who is relegated to only comment on it.

The main form (but not the only form) of prestige bias is focused on the doctoral department a job candidate got their PhD from. I present both correlational data and further arguments to show that the PhD granting department’s prestige plays an important role in where one gets hired and what opportunities one has subsequently. One striking pattern, shown in the figure below, which is based on hiring data as reported by Carolyn Dicey Jennings and collaborators’ Academic Placement Data and Analysis is as follows: the most prestigious departments provide job candidates to schools at all levels (unsurprising, since most schools are unranked), but people from lower-ranked departments seldom get jobs in more highly-ranked schools. At the time that I received the data (summer 2017), only one person who was not from a ranked school was hired at a PGR-top 20 institution.

 

[Description of image below: A stream diagram showing the different streams of hired candidates, from the origin of their department by PGR rank to the department they are hired at. The candidates from top-ranked departments (N=461) get hired both at other top-ranked departments, lower-ranked departments and unranked departments. By contrast, candidates from unranked departments (N=390) get mostly hired at other departments. Only 1 candidate from an unranked department was hired at a top-20 school, and only 14 were hired at PGR lower-ranked schools, the remainder were all hired at other unranked schools.]

  

Figure 1. Streams of placements from three different kinds of PhD granting institutions: PGR top 20 (purple), PGR top 21–50 (orange), and unranked (green).

 

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.

____________________________________________________

 

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

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