I read that fucking Singer eugenics paper and rarely have I been more disgusted with the state of this cursed field.
Bold of them to make this claim when the majority of these folks, and the discipline at large, refuses to engage with work by disabled philosophers, much less philosophical work that puts these "problems" in a larger social and cultural context, a context this piece ignores.
I'm suddenly reminded of Audre Lorde, of Frederick Douglass, who pointed out the hypocrisy of asking us to engage in dialogue when no such olive branch has been extended. We need only look at the citations on this paper for confirmation of this point.
This bit about echo chambers is real rich given the dearth of philosophers of disability, and disabled philosophers, within the academy.
I struggle to see how such an echo chamber can exist when there are barely enough of us in the discipline to begin with.
But also, I'll "stop thinking in purely partisan terms" when Singer and his ilk stop using disabled lives as thought experiments. For many of us, "thinking in purely partisan terms," as Singer puts it, is a matter of survival. Not just in the academy, but in the world.
We have to think in "purely partisan terms" given the ways that the work of supposed leading lights of the discipline are taken up to justify policy, to justify continued marginalization. What they treat as "finding answers" is, for some of us, defending our right to live.
This is the crux of this shitty paper: it comes down to a screed about "academic polarization" as impeding solving these "complex questions," without recognizing that how "solving these questions" has material consequences for disabled people.
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My thread on the Singer paper has apparently upset some folks with my characterization of its conclusions and how I associated it with a larger trend of using academic freedom to defend bigotry and marginalization.
I'd like to begin my response with the following:
Having said that, I'm actually going to respond seriously.
I will not be tagging some folks I'm referencing in this thread because they, and their work, do not deserve to be collateral damage in whatever twitter shitstorm emerges from the "partisan language" in this response.
That said, many of the responses are concerned about how the thread "shuts down inquiry" or uses the language of religion to essentially do what Singer and company predicted would be done in their section on "partisan language" and "polarization." This is not a problem for me.
Actually, let me go a little further about this since I'm good and mad. I warned people that the logical consequence of these "academic freedom" fights would be the creation of a field where people can pass off bigotry as scholarship unchecked.
Now, "Can 'eugenics' be defended" doesn't function in the same way as the GC's circulation of bigotry as scholarship, but it is operating in the same rhetorical sphere where inquiry must be defended at all costs, regardless of the harm it does to the subjects of that inquiry.
And, make no mistake, this article isn't calling for a reasoned conversation about the nature of "genetic enhancement" or any of the other euphemisms used by the authors: it is looking to evade the responsibility of considering the impact of this scholarship on disabled people.
Oh, you meant what else I would do? Start an educational division focused on providing students with practical, hands on experience in each of Universal's subsidiary units.
I'd focus the division's outreach at public 4 year, regional, minority serving, and community colleges.
By "practical, hands on experience," I don't just mean the actor/director/writer's craft, I mean everything from information technology, to set forepersons, to catering and transportation services, all of it.
@Helenreflects once posed a question about American Pragmatism that I've been pondering for a bit. Essentially it boils down to if American Pragmatism should be counted as a less commonly taught philosophy. My initial answer, as is normally the case, was "yes but..."
I don't think "American Pragmatism" as a sub-field is a less commonly taught philosophy, at least not in the same way that non-western, feminist, and other marginalized philosophies are treated as less commonly taught. American Pragmatism crops up in a variety of places.
For example, most "Philosophy of Education" courses engage Dewey at some point, and Dewey is a long time resident in many education syllabi in education departments. Specifically, Dewey's work on education and culture is often circulated as a grounding text on pedagogy.
Left my office for a minute to get some water and found my cat snoozing on the chapter I was editing. I think that's a sign for me to stop.
In other news, I've managed to drink water, follow up with my cat's vet, and almost completely revised an entire chapter on my manuscript.
Honestly though, the revisions weren't that bad: I spent way too much time talking about Butler, when I really should've been focusing on the meat of Sullivan's argument and supplementing it with Shusterman.
Unfortunately, this means I need to add the Shusterman stuff in, but that's maybe a day and a half worth of work from start to finish. The real challenge is going to be a whole chapter on kata, katachi, and dramatic form towards the end. And a conclusion.
To be clear, every time I've attempted to do diversity work, accessibility work, or any other work that could be enfolded into the broader class of "image work" in ways that moved beyond changing perceptions, institutions have fought tooth and nail to avoid committing.
Moreover, it is my position that every "institutional metric" used in institutional work is aimed at either refuting an "image" of the institution or revealing the "true image" of the institution. Either way, you're dealing with perception.