Transhumanism as “newgenics” Vice just published an article on how “prominent AI philosopher and ‘father’ of longtermism,” Nick Bostrom, “sent very racist email to a 90s philosophy listserv.” Bostrom “said that ‘Blacks are more stupid than whites,’ adding, ‘I like that sentence and think it is true,’ and used a racial slur.” The article mentions that the […]
Solidarity with CUPE and Other Unions
BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY positions itself in SOLIDARITY with CUPE education workers and all other unions and workers in Canada who are under attack from neoliberal governments that use legislative tactics like the bill that the Doug Ford Government of Ontario passed on Thursday. The passage of Bill 28 is a violation of the most fundamental rights […]
Notes on the Limits of Philosophical Discourse About Abortion
I suppose it was somewhat predictable that various so-called “analytic” philosophers would continue to uncritically accept and promulgate the arguments that liberal feminists (including liberal feminist philosophers) have made about “choice” and “personal autonomy” with respect to abortion. These arguments are very friendly with neoliberal ideas about the mobility of capital which outstrips national borders […]
Philosophy of Disability Contra Bioethics
Behind the scenes, we are gearing up for Philosophy, Disability and Social Change 2 (#PhiDisSocCh2) which takes place December 7-10, that is, begins two weeks from tomorrow. You can still register for the conference here: https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/events/philosophy-disability-and-social-change-2-conference I’m extremely pleased about the line-up for this year’s conference. I’m also very happy that I will be dropping […]
Billionaire Philanthropy: Immoral, Epistemically Corrupt, and Undemocratic (Guest post)
By Mich Ciurria Recently, news broke that the philosophy department at Bowling Green University has become a toxic environment due to infighting amongst faculty, following the controversial hiring of a new professor and the receipt of a $1.6 million grant from the Charles Koch Foundation. This infusion, notes the Chronicle of Higher Education, “could have […]
COVID-19 Pandemic: A Crisis of Care*
By The Care Collective (Andreas Chatzidakis, Jamie Hakim, Jo Littler, Catherine Rottenberg, Lynne Segal) We are in a global crisis: a new historical moment. The days pass, the virus expands its reach, fatalities rise and the world goes into unprecedented lockdown. Yet the current crisis is not only the result of a new pathogen circulating around […]
“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 […]
Neoliberalism, Bioethics, and the Apparatus of Disability in a German Context
In the fifth chapter of Foucault and the Government of Disability, I assert that philosophers and theorists of disability should recognize that the subfield of bioethics is a neoliberal technology of government, that is, a concerted biopolitical enterprise whose aim is normalization (and hence control) of populations. Given the scope of my critique of bioethics […]
AntiUniversity Now, UK and Elsewhere, Jun. 15-22, 2019
AntiUniversity Now is an ongoing programme of self-organised radical learning and education events that was set up in 2015 to challenge academic and class hierarchy, the neoliberal university and the education-industrial complex. The annual AntiUniversity festival will take place 15-22 June 2019 in venues across the UK and, this year, internationally. All events are free […]
CFP: Understanding the Family: Life – Love – Labor, Manchester, Sept. 9-11, 2019 (deadline: Jun. 1, 2019)
MANCEPT Workshops in Political Theory 9th-11thSeptember 2019, Manchester, UK Convenor: Dr. Marina Martinez Mateo (Goethe University Frankfurt) marina.martinezmateo@normativeorders.net What is the family? What is its function and position in liberalism and – more specifically – in current late capitalism? Some claim that the family stands in opposition to capitalism, while others emphasize their direct connectedness. […]