Diversity Reading List

From the Introduction: "Dorothea Olkowski’s chapter offers an analysis of the need to develop a logic of sense. Drawing on the work of Gilles Deleuze, Olkowski defends formal logic against feminist theorists who have urged that we organize thinking around the principles of embodiment. She warns us against the complete merging of bodily functions and sense-making activities. In Olkowski’s view, feminists need to acknowledge the usefulness of logical analyses at the same time that they must insist on formal systems that reflect and are tempered by human and humane values."

Publisher’s Note:
Olliz Boyd’s essay examines Blackness in the Latin American literary practices with the aim of showing its centrality to Latin American cultures. He argues that the African heritage of Latin America has been erased as a result of Eurocentric mestizaje. Olliz Boyd first examines this erased heritage in the understanding of race in Latin America and its peculiar processes of racialization, before moving on to centring the analysis on aesthetic practices and literature in particular. Olliz Boyd’s essay examines the erasure of Afro-Latininidad from a perspective that differs from Hooks’ analysis of the erasure of self-identified Afro-Latin communities. He argues that mestizos in general have mixed-race roots that include not just European and Indigenous ancestry, but African as well. The erasure of Afro-Latininidad is, thus, more radical as it involves the negation of an Afro-Latin reality at the heart of mestizaje.

Abstract:

Anyone who has lived with, worked on, and generally hung out with philosophy as long as I have and who, and this is a very important element, inhabits the epidermal world that it has pleased fate to put me in, and is as engaged with both the history of that epidermal world and that of philosophy, must at a certain point come upon the presence of a peculiar absence: the absence of Africa from the discourse of philosophy. In the basic areas of philosophy (e.g.. epistemology, metaphysics, axiology, and logic) and in the many derivative divisions of the subject (e.g., the philosophy of ...) once one begins to look, once one trains one's eyes to apprehend it, one is struck by the absence of Africa from the disquisitions of its practitioners.

Publisher’s Note:
Oluwole's teachings and works are generally attributed to the Yoruba school of philosophical thought, which was ingrained in the cultural and religious beliefs (Ifá) of the various regions of Yorubaland. According to Oluwole, this branch of philosophy predates the Western tradition, as the ancient African philosopher Orunmila predates Socrates by her estimate. These two thinkers, representing the values of the African and Western traditions, are two of Oluwole's biggest influences, and she compares the two in her book Socrates and Orunmila.

Publisher's note: This unique book challenges the traditional distinction between eros, the love found in Greek thought, and agape, the love characteristic of Christianity. Focusing on a number of classic texts, including Plato's Symposium and Lysis, Aristotle's Ethics and Metaphysics, and famous passages in Gregory of Nyssa, Origen, Dionysius the Areopagite, Plotinus, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas, the author shows that Plato's account of eros is not founded on self-interest. In this way, she restores the place of erotic love as a Christian motif, and unravels some longstanding confusions in philosophical discussions of love.

Abstract:

If the focus of interest is democratization, including women’s freedom, a basic income is preferable to stakeholding. Prevailing theoretical approaches and conceptions of individual freedom, free-riding seen as a problem of men’s employment, and neglect of feminist insights obscure the democratic potential of a basic income. An argument in terms of individual freedom as self-government, a basic income as a democratic right, and the importance of the opportunity not to be employed shows how a basic income can help break both the link between income and employment and the mutual reinforcement of the institutions of marriage, employment, and citizenship.

Content: Patridge discusses and rejects some of the main arguments for the exclusivist thesis that no pornography can be art: Levinson’s, Mag Uidhir’s, and one based on Rea’s definition of pornography. In doing so, she offers a useful overview of some other arguments already used against those authors. This leads her to conclude that at least some pornography can be art. A normative question follows: should we treat pornography as art? Given the high cultural status of art, and the often unethical nature of pornography, doing so might lead us to promoting unethical attitudes. She finds such treatment too unselective: at least some pornography isn’t morally problematic (and some of it can actually be morally laudable), while much of art, including erotic art, definitely is. But consumption of pornography cannot be taken out of our paternalistic and sexist cultural context. As most pornography is inegalitarian and expresses (and possibly promotes) harmful attitudes towards women, enjoying it constitutes a moral flaw. This is true even if the consumer is never inspired to actually harm women – in those cases enjoyment of pornography constitutes moral obliviousness, a ‘failure of sensitivity and solidarity with the victims of such imagery’ (54) similar to taking enjoyment in racist jokes.

Publisher’s Note:
This book examines the work of Chicana artists, feminist Mexican-Americans who aim at interrogating their identity through art. In this chapter, Pérez examines what she regards as “the general intellectual vindication of Indigenous epistemologies that characterized much of the thought and art of the Chicana/o movement”. She argues that, in opposition to the male Chicano perspective that characterized the early movement, Chicana artists embrace their Indigenousness in a way that aims not simply at antagonizing Eurocentric culture, but that aims at “a genuinely more decolonizing struggle at the epistemological level”. The chapter focuses on writers Gloria Anzaldúa, Cherríe Moraga, Ana Castillo, and Sandra Cisneros, and on artists Frances Salomé España, Yreina Cervántez, and Esther Hernández.

Abstract:
Moral distress has been written about extensively in nursing and other fields. Often, however, it has not been used with much theoretical depth. This paper focuses on theorizing moral distress using feminist ethics, particularly the work of Margaret Urban Walker and Hilde Lindemann. Incorporating empirical findings, we argue that moral distress is the response to constraints experienced by nurses to their moral identities, responsibilities, and relationships. We recommend that health professionals get assistance in accounting for and communicating their values and responsibilities in situations of moral distress. We also discuss the importance of nurses creating “counterstories” of their work as knowledgeable and trustworthy professionals to repair their damaged moral identities, and, finally, we recommend that efforts toward shifting the goal of health care away from the prolongation of life at all costs to the relief of suffering to diminish the moral distress that is a common response to aggressive care at end-of-life.

Publisher’s Note:

1950s Calcutta. Seventeen-year-old Shankar walks on to Old Post Office Street to become a clerk in the Calcutta High Court. There he meets the last English barrister, and thus begins their unusual and unforgettable relationship.

The Great Unknown is the moving story of the many people Shankar meets in the courtrooms and lawyers’ chambers of Old Post Office Street—some seeking justice, others watching the drama of life unfold. It offers a uniquely personal glimpse into their PBI – World of unfulfilled dreams and duplicity, of unexpected tragedy, as well as hope and exhilaration.

Here you will meet Marian Stuart, who journeys from Lebanon to PBI – India in search of a husband and happiness; the once-rich but now-destitute Englishman James Gould; Helen Grubert, the embittered Anglo-PBI – Indian typist, who wins her breach-of-promise case but has a miraculous change of heart; Nicholas Droulas, the betrayed Greek sailor desperate for revenge; Shefali Mitra, the distraught mother fighting to hold on to er she did not give birth to; Chhoka-da, the benevolent babu who takes the young clerk under his wing; and the barrister sahib who profoundly enriches Shankar’s life with his own experiences.

The Great Unknown (Kato Ajanarey), Sankar’s debut novel, first appeared in Desh in 1955. An instant success, it remains immensely popular more than fifty years after its publication. This first-ever English translation captures the simplicity and poignancy of the origi