My mother has been in the hospital for the past month, in and out of intensive care; so, my time to post on BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY has been constrained. In addition, I have been writing responses to the questions that Robert Chapman and Mich Ciurria pose to me in the interview that they have conducted with me for the upcoming tenth-anniversary installment of Dialogues on Disability. Indeed, the writing that I have done for the interview has consumed my time to such an extent that I have not replied to a comment that Jason Stanley wrote on Daily Nous in reaction to a comment that I made there in which I, in effect, called out Stanley for the inaccessibility and other exclusionary dimensions of a conference that he has planned for August.

I appreciated that Jason took the time out of his busy schedule to write a lengthy response to my comment on Daily Nous. Nevertheless, I was disappointed with the overarching message that the response conveyed, namely, that the micro-politics of the university and philosophy in particular are irrelevant to the study of and resistance to fascism and, furthermore, that attention to these social and economic conditions is far less urgent than attention to the latter, where the latter, that is, fascism, is understood to pertain only to circumstances beyond academia. Indeed, as a Foucauldian and a feminist, I refuse these sorts of top-down approaches to political analysis and political thinking in general. The problematic character of Stanley’s remarks is exemplified in this paragraph of his response to me:

It’s not an either/or of course, but I simply no longer have any interest in the sociology of US academic philosophy. I confess I don’t care at all about who gets what US academic philosophical accolades, or gives what talks. Even worse, such obsession seems to me like navel gazing. That said, I greatly appreciate those who do focus instead on making US academic philosophy more inclusive. It’s just not what I’ve chosen to expend my limited resources on.

I could say a lot about the assumptions that seem to underlie the remarks that the paragraph comprises, including Jason’s suggestion, which he immediately dials back, that attention to DEI in philosophy is “navel-gazing” and his rather dismissive invocation of the phrase “the sociology of US academic philosophy” to refer to the material conditions and sociopolitical constitution of his workplace and the practices of his employer.

Given my current time constraints and preoccupations, however, Jason’s reply on Daily Nous motivated me to incorporate my thoughts about the reply into my response to a question that Mich poses in the upcoming Dialogues on Disability anniversary edition. I have copied the relevant excerpt below. Time permitting, I may write a future post about the professional implications of Jason Stanley and other American philosophers migrating to Canada given the current economic divisions between Canada and the United States and the potential consequences of this migration for disabled philosophers and other marginalized and excluded groups in Canadian philosophy. In any case, Jason’s reply to me motivated me to write the following in my interview:

I want to pause and underline that work on social justice done in academia and work done on and for the achievement of social justice in academia, that is, work that aims to reorganize the material conditions of academia, including its demographic composition, are not trivial pursuits, as some philosophers have suggested. Universities and colleges have increasingly become central pillars of a growing number of societies worldwide. Hence, millions of people throughout the world are detrimentally affectedꟷe.g., experience food insecurity, confront homelessness, are culturally ostracized, lack health care, endure poverty, are deportedꟷby the injustices that sustain the neoliberal academy, including the injustices that pertain to: the kinds of people that it comprises, the types of research and knowledge that these people (are permitted to) produce, the kinds of people that this research engenders, and the types of social institutions and structures whose emergence and entrenchment that these people and their research compel.

In short, academia has become one of the crucial institutional and cultural sites at which we must fight for the future that we want. As recent events in the United States, for instance, vividly demonstrate, universities and colleges are primary targets of fascists and other racists who recognize the vital role that academia serves in the production of social knowledge and ideological narratives; the rationalization of economic agendas and arrangements; and the establishment of cultural and political alliances, including both affiliations of conservatism and enclaves of dissent.