As readers and listeners of BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY may recall, I am guest editing a special issue of Feminist Philosophy Quarterly on the theme “Foucault and Feminist Philosophy: Other Perspectives and Approaches,” which will commemorate the one hundred-year anniversary of Michel Foucault’s birth on October 15, 1926. Late in September, I will begin to receive the […]
Philosophy of Disability: Its Purposes and Places. Presentation to the Eastern APA, January 16, 2024
Before I begin, I want to express my sincere gratitude to Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson for the tremendous effort that she has made to organize this symposium. I also want to thank Melinda, Julie, and Catherine for their participation in the symposium, as well as thank everyone else in the room who has come to the session. […]
Factors that May Contribute to Logic’s Lack of Diversity
“What might the factors be that contribute to [logic’s] lack of diversity? At the undergraduate level, students from less socioeconomically advantaged backgrounds may lack information about [the philosophy major or about logic as a possible field of specialization]. In some cases, less-privileged students may lack the opportunity to take [logic at all (for example, because […]
Marginalized people are not your subject to write about, but your peers to engage with
A couple of weeks ago I attended a new book fair at my neighborhood and, unbeknownst to me, my colleague and friend Siobhan Guerrero-MacManus was scheduled to talk on a roundtable by people from the sexual-generic diversity. She was giving a very short time to talk, so she had to cover a lot of ground […]
The Exclusion of Disabled Academics from Canada Research Chairs (CRCs) – Report from UBC Study
In previous posts, here and here, I drew attention to the exclusion of disabled philosophers and other disabled academics from Canada Research Chairs (CRCs) and academia in Canada more generally. I explained that I had participated as a consultant in focus groups and a workshop for the Equitable Research Productivity Assessments research project conducted by […]
Inclusion and Exclusion in Philosophy: Alcoff, Mills, and Tremain
In July of last year, Linda Alcoff, Charles Mills, and I participated in a podcast discussion for the Larger, Freer, More Loving series hosted by Matthew J LaVine and Dwight Lewis. The motivation to record the discussion was the announcement (and ensuing remarks) on Daily Nous about the SSHRC funding of the project “Extending New […]
List of Participants for Philosophy, Disability and Social Change 2 (#PhiDisSocCh2) Conference, University of Oxford Online, Dec. 7-10, 2021
Planning is already underway for Philosophy, Disability and Social Change 2 (#PhiDisSocCh2) which will take place December 7-10, 1-7pm GMT. This year’s conference promises to be as groundbreaking as last year’s conference and has expanded to include more presentations. This year’s conference, like last year’s, is technically supported and funded by the Blavatnik School of […]
Dialogues on Disability on Wednesday, June 16th, at 8 a.m. ET
“I have read almost all of your interviews and they are always wonderful. … I am really looking forward to the next installment of Dialogues on Disability.” — Adrian Piper “[Shelley Lynn Tremain’s] interview series, Dialogues on Disability, has arguably had a greater impact on the status of disabled philosophers in the profession than anything else […]
How Ableism in Philosophy Has Destroyed Me
About ten years ago, I wrote an email to Eva Kittay requesting a letter of reference for a job application. I wasn’t really expecting a response. In the last email I had received from Kittay a few years earlier, she had told me that she would not open future email from me. What had I […]
(How) Is Disability Relevant to the Field of Social Ontology?
The conception of disability that currently prevails in philosophy construes it as a philosophically uninteresting and value-neutral biological trait, that is, as a self-evidently natural and deleterious characteristic, difference, or property that some people embody or possess. Insofar as philosophers hold this naturalized and individualized conception of disability, they assume that disability is a prediscursive […]