9th Meeting of the SIPP-ISPP
Our next meeting on ‘Any Body, Anybody : The Matter of the Unconscious’ will take place from November 9-12, 2016, at the New School for Social Research, New York.
With this title, we invite reflections on the body and the materiality of the unconscious. How does psychoanalysis help us think about how bodies become laden with and deprived of identity in a social and political space? The term “Anybody” also asks us to think about how the unconscious is not bound to a known identity but rather emerges from and belongs to a “nobody” that is nevertheless material; the phrase “Any body,” conjures up the psychic ambiguities subtending the way sexuality affects every body including but not limited to trans-sexual bodies. This conference also offers us an opportunity to think about how the targets of recent acts of terrorism are construed as “anybodies” and/or “nobodies.”
For more information, please read our CFP or write to 16SIPP@gmail.com.
Andrea Pitts, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, gives a lecture entitled:
“Carceral Medicine and Prison Abolition: Trust and Truth-telling in Correctional Healthcare”
The United States Supreme Court ruled in 1976 that the privation of healthcare for incarcerated persons would constitute a violation of the Eighth Amendment. While that ruling, in effect, mandated a standard of care for incarcerated persons, the institutional means through which healthcare is provided in federal, state, and private detention facilities have been neither uniform nor without their share of problems. A number of human rights organizations and prisoner advocacy groups have documented patterns of neglect and malpractice within the nation’s prisons, jails, and detention facilities, including basic sanitary concerns, undertreatment for severe illnesses and injuries, and the structural incapacity of many correctional healthcare systems to meet the needs of their aging patients. Alongside the literature outlining concerns in correctional healthcare, a distinct and theoretically dense body of evidence on the structural patterns of racism operating through carceral systems in the U.S. has also demanded scholarly and political attention. Much of this work marks the continuities that mass incarceration in the U.S. has with historical patterns of disenfranchisement, exploitation, and state-sanctioned violence inflicted on communities of color, and especially Black Americans. Within this discourse, arguments for penal abolition have become prominent alongside critiques of structural racism. In this vein, a number of scholars and activists have been calling for the comprehensive dismantling of penal institutions, legislative measures, and associated corporations that have built the very carceral networks that perpetually inflict harm on communities of color both in the U.S. and abroad. In dialogue with contemporary research on correctional healthcare and literature on institutional racism in the context of clinical and colonial medicine, this presentation analyzes trust and truth-telling among patients and providers in correctional settings with the aim of developing an argument for the abolition of systems of incarceration. While the improvement of systems of healthcare has been defended as an important goal within the field of correctional medicine, structural epistemic injustices operating through race, gender, and disability within correctional medicine point toward a broader argument for the dismantling of carceral systems of punishment more generally.
Bio:
Andrea J. Pitts is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. Their research interests include philosophy of race and gender, social epistemology, Latin American and U.S. Latina/o philosophy, and philosophy of medicine. Their publications appear in Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, Radical Philosophy Review, and Inter-American Journal of Philosophy. Dr. Pitts is also currently co-editing two forthcoming volumes: one on the reception of the work of Henri Bergson in decolonial thought, feminism, and critical race studies, and a volume on contemporary scholarship in U.S. Latina and Latin American feminist philosophy.
The concept of invisibility is powerful, pervasive, and multifaceted. It is paradoxically double-edged, affording the possibility of great power as well as the complete absence of power. It is both magical and a spur to scientific experimentation and exploration. It is a central concept in science—whether as something to be achieved or overcome. It is evident in the development of technologies that allow us to find new evidence of the invisibly small (e.g. the Large Hadron Collider revealing the Higgs boson) and the invisibly far-away (a new planet in the solar system); conversely, it is also evident in devices that allow us to render objects invisible, devices that may have implications for warfare and for medicine.
In addition, invisibility is present in the social sciences, as evidenced most clearly by the economic concept of the “invisible hand” and by the troubling phenomenon of social invisibility, which affects large groups of people who are ignored, underrepresented and under-served by the dominant culture. But that is not all. The concept of invisibility has also played a central role in the thinking of many philosophers, literary figures, and in theological thinking.
Thus this conference is designed to explore the multitude of ways in which invisibility figures in our intellectual and social lives, as a thread running through our human endeavors, and the ways in which the power of invisibility can lead to a quest for understanding as well as render us altogether disenfranchised. The first three sessions will address the concept of invisibility in different fields, and the concluding session will bring together experts from various fields who will seek to underscore the shared aspects of invisibility that account for the important role it has played in our lives and in our thinking in the sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. Each session will include a Q&A in which panelists can address questions to each other and audience members can address their questions directly to speakers.
This conference will offer a unique opportunity for experts to reach across fields to better understand their own explorations of invisibility, through discussion with others, and with the public.
This conference is made possible with generous funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
This event is part of the Nth Degree Series with the The New School.
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Session of note:
3:00 – 5:30 PM
Location: Theresa Lang Student and Community Center, 55 W. 13th St, NY, NY
SESSION 2: Invisibility in Cultural Context
This session examines invisibility in the context of the humanities, economics, and philosophy. Discussion will range over the philosophical explanatory power of invisibility, e.g. Kant’s noumenon or Plato’s eidos; its role in economic theory, e.g. “the invisible hand”, its place in literature, e.g Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, and in mythology, e.g. the Ring of Gyges
Adam Bradley, Associate Professor of English, University of Colorado, Boulder
Wendy Doniger, Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions and the Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago
Mark Johnston, Walt Cerf Professor of Philosophy, Princeton University
William Milberg, Dean of the New School for Social Research, The New School
Moderator: Simon Critchley, Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy, The New School
In this paper I draw attention to Sophie de Grouchy’s 1798 distinction between negative and positive right, which, upon examination, prefigures the famous distinction between positive and negative liberty. I analyse her treatment, and I argue that she should be accorded a significant place in the discussions of the tradition(s) of reflection on the famous distinction.
First, I frame my discussion by revisiting Isaiah Berlin’s famous lecture and a recent editorial by Jason Stanley and Vesla Weaver; I note the presence of a paternal liberal tradition going back to Constant which gets invoked alongside the famous distinction between the two concepts of liberty. Insofar as a tradition can be conceived as a lineage or an offspring, it is striking that the matriarchs are absent from it.
Second, I discuss De Grouchy’s neo-Lockean analyses of justice and property rights, which form the context in which she introduces her distinction between positive and negative right. I illuminate her views by way of comparison with the writings of Rousseau and Adam Smith.
Third, I offer evidence and analysis of De Grouchy’s version of the distinction and show how it can be mapped onto the more famous distinction. Fourth, I close by arguing that if there is a liberal tradition worth reviving and extending, De Grouchy ought to have an honoured place in it.
Eric Schliesser (PhD, Philosophy, The University of Chicago 2002) is Professor of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. He publishes widely on early modern philosophy (especially Spinoza and Hume) and science (including political economy, especially Newton and Smith), philosophy economics, the history of feminism, and so-called meta-philosophy. He has just published Adam Smith: Systematic Philosopher and Public Thinker (OUP) and edited numerous volumes, including most recently Sympathy: A History of a Concept and Ten Neglected Classics of Philosophy (both with OUP).
Presented by The New School for Social Research (NSSR) Philosophy Department.
This talk focuses on two concepts that are central to discussions of minority politics and social justice: intersectionality and the epistemic privilege of the oppressed. Both concepts are often misunderstood as leading to separatism and essentialism, but this paper shows why they should be seen instead as crucial components of an adequate social theory and a cogent theory of social identity, theories that can be the basis of a progressive politics of coalition and solidarity.
Satya P. Mohanty was born in Orissa, India, and was educated in India and the United States. His work in literary criticism and theory has focused on issues that are shaped by his bi-cultural background and his commitment to a vision of culture as “a field of moral inquiry” (on this view of culture, see chapter 7 of Literary Theory and the Claims of History). In the field of literary and cultural theory, Mohanty is best known for his “post-positivist realist” theory, a position that is simultaneously a critique of postmodernist theory and an elaboration of a radical alternative to it. Postpositivist realism draws on recent analytic philosophy and has major implications for such key theoretical questions as the nature of social identity, the value of objectivity as an epistemic goal, and the epistemic status of our moral and political values. Mohanty’s theory of identity has been the subject of a major book published by the U of California Press, a collection of essays by literary scholars, intellectual historians, and philosophers that is titled Reclaiming Identity: Realist Theory and the Predicament of Postmodernism (edited by Paula Moya and Michael Hames-Garcia).
Mohanty has edited or coedited the following books: Colonialism, Modernity, Literature: A View From India; Identity Politics Reconsidered; The Future of Diversity; and the forthcoming China, India and Alternative Asian Modernities. He is completing a book titled Thinking Across Cultures, to be published by Duke Univ Press.
Presented by The New School for Social Research (NSSR) Philosophy Department.
Many academics work on issues of social justice, and in this politically tumultuous moment, we want to ask: What is our social responsibility as academics? What does it mean to assume this responsibility?
In response to the untimely suspension of all Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature programs at Stony Brook University, the final graduate conference (co-sponsored by Minorities and Philosophy, NSSR) will be an interdisciplinary event where we aim to confront the limitations of our position as academics and conceive possibilities for moving beyond those limitations.
Schedule
9:45–10:15 Participant Registration/ Coffee & Bagels
10:15–10:30 Opening Remarks
10:30–12:00 Panel 1: Humanities & Political Insight
10:30–11:00 Amy Cook (Associate Professor of Theatre Arts and English, Stony Brook University): “Disciplinary Futures and the Political Impact of Counter Casting”
11:00–11:30 Jack Wilson (PhD Student History, UCLA): “The View from the Waste Land: Poetry as Anti-Totalitarian Critique in Postwar Japan and Beyond”
11:30–12:00 Sabrina Tremblay-Huet (LLD Student Université de Sherbrooke, Visiting Research Fellow Fordham School of Law): “Human Rights and the Trap of Speaking for Others: Law in Literature as a Better Source of Resistance Discourse?”
12:00–1:30 Lunch Break
1:30–2:30 Panel 2: Institutional Critique
1:30–2:00 Jonathan Rawski (PhD Student Linguistics, Stony Brook University): “Pirates and Emperors: On Publishers, Journalists, and Academic Elites”
2:00–2:30 Forrest Deacon (PhD Student, Politics, The New School for Social Research): “Foucault’s Clinic and the Academy: Systems of Truth, Intelligibility, and Repetition”
2:30–2:45 Coffee Break (light refreshments)
2:45–3:45 Panel 3: The Praxis of Academics
2:45–3:15 Andrew Dobbyn (PhD Student Philosophy, Stony Brook): “Praxis Makes Perfect: Why Politics Isn’t like Riding a Bike”
3:15–3:45 Laura Pérez (Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophy, Cornell University Society for the Humanities): “The Objects of Philosophical Inquiry as Public Entities”
3:45–4:00 Coffee Break (light refreshments)
4:00–5:00 Keynote: Professor Patrice Nganang (Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature, Stony Brook University, Visiting Professor Princeton University): Title TBA
5:00–5:15 Closing Remarks
5:15–6:30 Reception (wine and refreshments)
Presented by The New School for Social Research.
The New School for Social Research Graduate Student Conference in Philosophy
Discourse concerning the role of bridges and walls has become commonplace in our contemporary political scene. Xenophobic, racist, and nationalistic calls for the building of walls are opposed by calls to construct bridges by those seeking to form coalitions of solidarity and resistance. An example of this is given by the way in which colonialism/imperialism has repeatedly used ‘bridges’ as Trojan horses of sorts, by means of which distances were lessened and inequality worsened. Thus, this conference wishes to explore the normative consequences of the ubiquitous discourse of epistemic and geographic stratification by interrogating the way in which this metaphor is used—implicitly and explicitly—within philosophy, to the extent that the latter, as a frame of epistemological and experiential articulation, also builds its own bridges and walls.
It is with this in mind that at this year’s NSSR Graduate Student Philosophy conference we wish to provide a platform for a very particular kind of ‘philosophical investigation’ in which a vast range of approaches concerning the significance and use of spatial metaphors within philosophical debates could take place. Such an investigation of margins, bridges, walls, localization and beyond should be undertaken in a manner that makes room for ontological, ethical, epistemological, phenomenological, political and psychoanalytic discourses. To this end, we encourage full liberty and creativity with how this topic could be approached. This is because we conceive this investigation as an open, interdisciplinary kind of quest whose aim will be to rethink the way in which we conceive of boundaries, gaps, stages and common spaces for the purpose of interrogating the tensions underpinning our current political discourse, while also showing the ways in which these affect the way in which we conceive of Philosophy.
Possible Topics (This list is in no way exhaustive):
- Walls and Bridges as Philosophical Metaphor
- Migration and (In)Justice
- Decolonial Theory and the Use of Walls/Bridges
- The role of Bridges and Walls in the construction of Imagined communities
- Walls/Bridges and Political Membership
- Walls and Solidarity
- Walls/Bridges and Globalization
- Social Epistemology and Imagined Walls
- Persuasion as an Epistemological Bridge
- Political Topologies and the Role of Walls/Bridges
- Privacy, Space and the Political
- Walls/Bridges and Human Rights
- Administrative Violence
- Philosophical Topologies/Political Topologies
- Space and Violence
- Localized Violence
- Violence in Bodies
- Bridges/Walls and Cross-cultural Discourse
- Digital divisions and Digital Connections
- Technology and Changing Spatial Relations
Please submit complete papers by December 20th in the form of a Word attachment (.docx) to NewSchoolOnBridgesAndWallsConf@gmail.com
Include your name, institution, and degree-program in the body of the message.
Deadline:
December 20th 2017
Word Limit: 3500
I argue we can make progress in three contemporary debates about transnational feminisms by a) clarifying the normative commitments central to feminism and b) rethinking the role of normative ideals in transnational political practices. These debates concern the purported tension between taking seriously critiques of Western imperialism and retaining feminism’s status as a normative doctrine. Understanding feminism as opposition to sexist oppression unthethers feminism from commitments to controversial forms of individualism and antitraditionalism. Understanding transnational feminist praxis as a practice of nonideal justice-enhancement permits a universalist feminist position that is not monist about the endpoint of gender justice or the strategies that should be taken to achieve it.
In preparation for the next transnational feminist strike on March 8th, we will have a discussion about the new feminist wave with some of its protagonists and organizers from around the world and a conversation around Arruzza, Bhattacharya, Fraser, “Feminism for the 99%. A Manifesto” (Verso 2019).
Program:
4:00 p.m.: Welcome and Opening Remarks: William Milberg (Director of the Heilbroner Center for Capitalist Studies) and Cinzia Arruzza (NSSR)
4:15–6:00 p.m.: The New Feminist Wave
Speakers:
- Ximena Bustamante (IWS)
- Julia Cámara (National Coordination 8M, Spain)
- Luci Cavallero (Ni Una Menos, Argentina)
- Mayra Cotta De Souza (NSSR)
- Chair: Meg Beyer (IWS and NSSR)
6:00–6:15 p.m.: Break
6:15–8:00 p.m.: Feminism for the 99%. A Manifesto
Speakers:
- Cinzia Arruzza
- Tithi Bhattacharya
- Nancy Fraser
- Barbara Smith (founder of the Combahee River Collective)
- Chair: Michelle O’Brien (IWS)
Cosponsored by Robert L. Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies (New School for Social Research) and International Women’s Strike
“Everyone is female”—this is the first of several “untenable claims” presented by Andrea Long Chu in her forthcoming book Females: A Concern (Verso, 2019). Drawing inspiration from Valerie Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto and her forgotten play Up Your Ass, this lecture in numbered theses whips through a variety of ugly objects (films, manifestos, performance art, psychoanalysis, porn, and the alt-right) to give a portrait of femaleness as a universal category of self-ablation against which all politics—even feminist politics—revolts.
Andrea Long Chu is a writer and critic completing her doctorate at New York University. Her writing has appeared, or will soon, in n+1, Boston Review, The New York Times, New York, Artforum, Bookforum, Chronicle of Higher Education, 4Columns, differences, Women & Performance, TSQ, and Journal of Speculative Philosophy. Her book Females: A Concern is forthcoming this year from Verso.
People in Support of Women in Philosophy is a group dedicated to the advancement of women and those who experience marginalization within the field of philosophy. Our group meets weekly to workshop papers, help members prepare for conference presentations and seminars, host guest speakers, and in general celebrate the work of our women and gender-non-conforming colleagues and mentors. Men are welcome and encouraged to take part as allies.