#problems of philosophy

[whoa-studymuch]

My little corner of the world | Glasgow, Thu 15th Feb 18.

[ninjaruski]

Hence, methodologically, the problem for philosophy is how to speak for all when one does not, in fact, speak to all. And the solution is to enact a doublespeak in which one justifies not speaking to the mass of humanity at the same time that one imagines oneself to be speaking for the human core which exists in all of us. The body, and difference, is simultaneously acknowledged and disavowed

Linda Martin Alcoff  "Philosophy's Lost Body and Soul"

[ninjaruski]

To answer some concerns about my work.

There is a kind of question that I am often asked with regards to my work on applying mono no aware to social contexts like race, gender, sexuality, or even environmental ethics. It goes as follows: "if this was present in Japanese culture, why have they not followed through on it?" The alternative question, often asked by scholars in philosophy, goes as follows: "can you show us ways in which Japanese people organize their lives according your thesis?" Questions such as these, while not invalid, fundamentally miss the point of my projects.

The kind of work that I am engaged in, and was made clear by my recent presentation at the NCA, is to propose the possibility of viewing things from a perspective organized around a different way of viewing the world. What my project does not state is that my thesis is the dominant way of organizing lived experience in Japan. Further, the majority of my work acts as an attempt to draw upon non-western theoretical structures in an attempt to provide a more nuanced perspective to our lived experience. That is, I seek to answer the question, "how does the world appear different from different positions and what does this difference make?"

Considering this, I can draw a parallel: when Judith Butler speaks of the materiality of the body, and the "performance" of gender, these are not things that we "perceive" in our lived experience of the world. Butler is pointing to a deeper structure of our lived experience, which she assumes underlies our gendered performance. Another, less contentious, example is John Dewey and the transactional nature of the world. It is only after a process of reflection that Dewey argues we can perceive the way in which we and our environments are changed through our interactions. If we pay close attention, we might see these structures, but this requires training our perceptions to be aware of them.

Turning back to my own work, it is not that I am seeking to demonstrate Japanese culture as a fundamentally open space for gender performance; it is that I believe there are cultural resources within the Japanese situation that result in unique performances like otokonoko and boys' style that indicate the possibility of doing gender differently. The trajectory then becomes to make certain implicit operations of the Japanese cultural situation (kuuki wo yomenai, or the ability to feel the atmosphere, for example) and indicate how these unique operations challenge the way we assume the world works. It is to ask, "what if we considered gendering as a process of articulating affect?" What would the world look like from this perspective?

While this does rely upon an investigation into Japanese culture, and certain cultural practices, my intention is not to demonstrate this as something explicitly operative in the culture. Unless involved in a particular cultural practice, it is not the case that Japanese people wake up and decide what affect they wish to articulate. The modes of articulation are supplied from dominant structures which result in a uniformity of affect and the demand that certain bodies organize themselves to produce certain affects. Again, this is not to say that there is volitional control over affect production, or that Japanese culture seeks to create an open space for the generation of affect. It is to say that this is something that exists beneath the surface of Japanese cultural performances.

The point, then, is to realize the difference between presenting a thesis that says "people in this cultural situation have control over this mode, and the culture is set up to allow for this," and presenting a thesis that says "this is an implicit structure within cultural practices that has important implications for how this mode is articulated." One demands that I demonstrate the control, the other demands that I merely demonstrate the presence. In my view, and for the purposes of my project, demonstrating the presence can allow us to re-think how we talk about gender.

[bookbegins]

Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it? This question, which at first sight might not seem difficult, is really one of the most difficult that can be asked. When we have realized the obstacles in the way of a straightforward and confident answer, we shall be well launched on the study of philosophy—for philosophy is merely the attempt to answer such ultimate questions, not carelessly and dogmatically, as we do in ordinary life and even in the sciences, but critically, after exploring all that makes such questions puzzling, and after realizing all the vagueness and confusion that underlie our ordinary ideas.

[ninjaruski]

The problem with the "canon" of Philosophy.

Philosophy, by any definition, is an overwhelmingly straight, white, male area of academics. So much so that the APA has recognized its lack of diversity and created task forces and committees (I'm on the Committee for Black Philosophers at the APA) to "address the issue." Departments around the country are scrambling to figure out how to address their diversity problem, but the one thing they seem to be overlooking is what they're presenting as the "canon" of philosophy.

Philosophy means "Western Philosophy." More specifically, it means "white-eurocentric philosophy," even going so far as to erase the racial and cultural backgrounds of its key figures. One of the most prominent examples of this erasure is the Western tradition's appropriation of the philosophical works of the Greeks as the bedrock upon which to found entire traditions. I say appropriation because most philosophy derived from the Greek works removes the works from their cultural history and treats them almost as a-historical documents.

To push a more contentious point, philosophy in general tends to construct all of its patriarchs as white men, regardless of whether or not they actually were white men. Carl F. Ellis Jr. indicates exactly this when he discusses St. Augustine's race in his text Free at Last? The Gospel in the African American Experience. Ellis present the argument that Augustine, born of North African parents, was, at the very least, not-white. Other scholars have speculated, through historical explorations of the region where Augustine was born, that Ellis' thesis is more accurate than the depiction of Augustine as a white man.

Now, I mention this point because, at least in philosophy, if the philosopher studied is not white, they are classed with philosophers of their ethnicity (or race) rather than with philosophers of their area of interest. Put another way, a seminar on political philosophy will likely contain Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Hobbes, Mill, Marx, etc. Figures in Western philosophy that have contributed to politics. Rarely would one see Confucius, whose entire project was the ordering of a society, or anyone from the Lealists, or the Mohist philosophers. The whole intellectual tradition of Chinese political philosophy is excluded from discussions on political philosophy because those thinkers count as Chinese Philosophy.

We can make similar comments about Philosophy of Mind, epistemology, ontology, metaphysics. Simply put, if the philosopher is not white, they go in a category with those philosophers of similar ethnic or racial background. To this end, the canon that is taught to intro students is largely devoid of people of color and women: they have their own sections which philosophy, in general, takes to be specializations as opposed to parts of the overall history of philosophy.

This is important because it constructs philosophy, in general, as a monolith of white men. More damningly, it presents non-white philosophers as unable to do, say, epistemology by virtue of the fact that they are not white: it positions the "canon" as the authoritative source on matters of epistemology, and all other philosophers not included in the "canon" as some how less than the canon. To this end, most students will emerge from an intro course without having read a single person of color or a single woman, unless the person teaching the course is more progressive than their peers.

Within the discipline, this has the effect of marginalizing, or reducing non-white philosophers to their race as opposed to recognizing their ability to contribute to a conversation on a variety of things. Mencius. for example, isn't doing philosophy of mind when he speaks upon the cultivation of a self, he's doing Chinese Philosophy. The Bhagavad Gita is not a treatise on virtue ethics, it's Indian Philosophy, Paulo Friere is not writing ontology or phenomenology or existentialism, he's doing Philosophy of Race. This "reduction to" denies the ability of philosophers of color to add nuance to ongoing conversations in the discipline of philosophy, broadly construed.

Now, this is not to say that these philosophies should be divorced from their cultural context and situation. Far from it: what I am arguing here is for the recognition that non-western and philosophers of color have been tangling with problems that are central to the discipline of philosophy for centuries. To merely relegate them to a category based on their racial or ethnic or geo-political location is to ignore the contributions that these thinkers can make to the canon as a whole.

Put simply, if one wants to hear voices of color on topics central to the discipline in general, one has to go far afield into things like philosophy of race or (insert culture here) philosophy: the general milieu of philosophy is restricted to the voices of white philosophers. This isolation, or pushing out, of non-white and non-western thinkers from the canon denies access to these voices by prospective philosophers of color. It constructs the intellectual activity of philosophy as one solely engaged in by white men, and thus subject to the same racializations and tensions that people of color encounter on a day to day basis.

It is the very material taught as philosophy that has the effect of denying people of color (and women) access to the discipline, and this is a move that was likely begun as an intentional denial of access and has been taken up as a general tendency of philosophy. Under this perspective, we can look at the tendency of the discipline to deny systems of philosophy status within the canon, this "reduction to," as an end result of a systemic racial bias against non-western philosophy.

Upon this basis, the lack of philosophers of color and women philosophers is not just a "lack of interest," as is usually argued, but a response to a discipline that constructs itself as overwhelmingly white and male. It is a response to a discipline that takes the perspective of white male thinkers as primary before engaging with the thoughts of people of color or women. Put simply, the general argument of the discipline of philosophy is that contributions by women and people of color are not worthy of a "place at the table."

Is it any wonder that philosophy has a "diversity problem?"