Guest Post by Jay T. Dolmage In Academic Ableism, I wrote about the connections between historically eugenic programs on college and university campuses—programs that focused on “hygiene”—and the current fad of “campus wellness.” We can draw a (rather straight) line from eugenic mental hygiene programs and physical fitness tests, to their existence as promotional programs, to […]
The Aesthetics and Politics of Depression
In Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability, I call for a conceptual revolution with respect to disability, arguing that disability is an apparatus of force relations rather than a natural human attribute, biological difference, personal characteristic, or property of individuals. In order to denaturalize and politicize disability in this way, I examine the problematization (as […]
War and Climate Change (Guest Post)
Guest post by Eric Winsberg Many human activities are responsible for emission of the greenhouse gases that are pushing the planet toward dangerous tipping points, tipping points that will cause large-scale human suffering and will, invariably, lead to global conflicts over increasingly scarce resources. If we don’t draw down to zero the rate at which […]
What’s Ahead: Against Natural(izing) Disability
Much of my writing, teaching, service, and activism in philosophy has been designed to undermine a cluster of assumptions about the relation between nature and nurture, that is, a cluster of assumptions about the relation between biology and society, assumptions that remain embedded in philosophical discourses, variously naturalizing disability, gender, race, and other apparatuses of […]
Some of Our Favourite Posts from 2019
Here is a collection of some of our favourite posts from 2019. Of course, all of the installments of Dialogues on Disability (here) hold pride of place on BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY too. Some of the CFPs that we posted over the course of the year were also amazing! If we missed one of your favourite posts, […]
Six Things You Should Know About Diversity in Philosophy, the Apparatus of Disability, and the Status of Disabled Philosophers
No department with a nondisabled philosopher of disability on its faculty has a disabled philosopher of disability on its faculty. There is not a single disabled philosopher of disability employed full-time in a Canadian philosophy department. There are no disabled philosophers of disability in the departments in which the leading advocates for diversity and inclusion […]
The Disabling Materiality of Feminist Rhetorical Practices*
Consider the expressions “women and other underrepresented groups” and “women and minorities,” terminology that has been readily transported from managerial and juridical discourses (such as corporate social responsibility statements, government policy, university administration protocols, etc.) and uncritically assimilated into feminist (and other) discourses ostensibly designed to contest and reduce the homogeneous character and composition of […]
Practical Suggestions for My Cis Colleagues in Philosophy (Guest Post)
Guest Post by Ray Briggs* A Disclaimer I’m not the official spokesperson for the trans community, because not all trans people think alike. You should be suspicious of anyone, trans or not, who claims to be giving you the trans point of view. Remember that trans people are most likely to have our voices amplified […]
“David Chalmers” Generalized and the Depoliticization of Philosophy’s Present
During the other night or early the other morning, I had a dream about David Chalmers. I’ve never met Chalmers, so this dream was unexpected. What was even stranger (though maybe not as far as dreaming goes) was that the person who, in my dream, I knew as David Chalmers didn’t look anything like the […]
Biopower, Normalization, and Slippery Slopes
[This post previously appeared on the Discrimination and Disadvantage blog which no longer exists. In an upcoming post, I will discuss how the subfield of bioethics has shaped Canadian philosophy and how the predominance of the subfield of bioethics in Canadian philosophy is intertwined with prestige bias. An earlier post on prestige bias in Canadian […]
BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 