Guenther, Lisa. Solitary Confinement: Social Death and its Afterlives
2013, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
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Added by: Rochelle DuFord
Abstract: Prolonged solitary confinement has become a widespread and standard practice in U.S. prisons - even though it consistently drives healthy prisoners insane, makes the mentally ill sicker, and, according to the testimony of prisoners, threatens to reduce life to a living death. In this profoundly important and original book, Lisa Guenther examines the death-in-life experience of solitary confinement in America from the early nineteenth century to today's supermax prisons. Documenting how solitary confinement undermines prisoners' sense of identity and their ability to understand the world, Guenther demonstrates the real effects of forcibly isolating a person for weeks, months, or years. -/- Drawing on the testimony of prisoners and the work of philosophers and social activists from Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty to Frantz Fanon and Angela Davis, the author defines solitary confinement as a kind of social death. It argues that isolation exposes the relational structure of being by showing what happens when that structure is abused - when prisoners are deprived of the concrete relations with others on which our existence as sense-making creatures depends. Solitary confinement is beyond a form of racial or political violence; it is an assault on being.Comment : This text serves as both a clear introduction to the history of punishment and imprisonment in the United States, as well as a clear introduction to phenomenological method. Portions of the text on the experience of social death in solitary confinement would make excellent additions to introductory courses on prisons and punishment. Some chapters would also be fitting on classes concerning race and mass incarceration.Guenther, Lisa. Critical Phenomenology2019, In 50 Concepts for a Critical Phenomenology, ed. Gail Weiss, Ann Murphy and Gayle Salamon. Northwestern University Press, pp. 11-16-
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Added by: Tomasz Zyglewicz, Shannon Brick, Michael GreerAbstract:
Phenomenology, the philosophical method that seeks to uncover the taken-for-granted presuppositions, habits, and norms that structure everyday experience, is increasingly framed by ethical and political concerns. Critical phenomenology foregrounds experiences of marginalization, oppression, and power in order to identify and transform common experiences of injustice that render “the familiar” a site of oppression for many. In Fifty Concepts for a Critical Phenomenology, leading scholars present fresh readings of classic phenomenological topics and introduce newer concepts developed by feminist theorists, critical race theorists, disability theorists, and queer and trans theorists that capture aspects of lived experience that have traditionally been neglected. By centering historically marginalized perspectives, the chapters in this book breathe new life into the phenomenological tradition and reveal its ethical, social, and political promise. This volume will be an invaluable resource for teaching and research in continental philosophy; feminist, gender, and sexuality studies; critical race theory; disability studies; cultural studies; and critical theory more generally.Comment (from this Blueprint): Lisa Guenther, author of the 2015 book "Solidarity Confinement: Social Death and its Afterlives," gives a quick overview of "critical phenomenology" and how it is different from classical phenomenology. The boundaries of critical phenomenology are still being drawn, but Guenther's concise explanation has already become canon. Understanding, in broad brush strokes, what critical phenomenology is will be important to engage with many conversations on feminist philosophy, especially in the continental tradition, since feminist theorists (inspired by Simone de Beavoir and Frantz Fanon) often appeal to lived experience in their theorizing of oppression.Haaparanta, Leila. The Relations between Logic and Philosophy, 1874-19312009, In Leila Haaparanta (ed.), The Development of Modern Logic. Oxford University Press-
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Added by: Franci MangravitiAbstract:
This chapter gives a survey of the field of philosophy where the philosophical foundations of modern logic were discussed and where such themes of logic were discussed that were on the borderline between logic and other branches of the philosophical enterprise, such as metaphysics and epistemology. The contributions made by Gottlob Frege and Charles Peirce are included since their work in logic is closely related to and also strongly motivated by their philosophical views and interests. In addition, the chapter pays attention to a few philosophers to whom logic amounted to traditional Aristotelian logic and to those who commented on the nature of logic from a philosophical perspective without making any significant contribution to the development of formal logic.
Comment : Could be used in a history of logic course, as an overview of developments at the turn of the century. It spends a lot of time contextualizing and comparing Frege and Husserl's philosophies of logic, so it could also be a good further reading for a course focusing on either of them. The text assumes almost no previous knowledge of logic, or of the authors in question.Haslanger, Sally. Resisting reality: Social Construction and Social Critique2012, OUP USA.-
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Added by: Laura Jimenez
Publisher's Note: Contemporary theorists use the term "social construction" with the aim of exposing how what's purportedly "natural" is often at least partly social and, more specifically, how this masking of the social is politically significant. In these previously published essays, Sally Haslanger draws on insights from feminist and critical race theory to explore and develop the idea that gender and race are positions within a structure of social relations. On this interpretation, the point of saying that gender and race are socially constructed is not to make a causal claim about the origins of our concepts of gender and race, or to take a stand in the nature/nurture debate, but to locate these categories within a realist social ontology. This is politically important, for by theorizing how gender and race fit within different structures of social relations we are better able to identify and combat forms of systematic injustice. Although the central essays of the book focus on a critical social realism about gender and race, these accounts function as case studies for a broader critical social realism.Comment : The book as a whole explores the interface between analytic philosophy and critical theory. As it is a collection of essays, particular chapters can easily be used separately, some serving as introductory, others as more advanced readings. It could be of interest for undergraduate or postgraduate courses in political philosophy, philosophy of language and philosophical methodology.Hass, Marjorie. Fluid Thinking: Irigaray’s Critique of Formal Logic2002, In Falmagne, R.J. and Hass, M. eds. Representing Reason: Feminist Theory and Formal Logic. Rowman & Littlefield-
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Added by: Franci Mangraviti
From the Introduction: "Marjorie Hass addresses the limitations of logical concepts, including negation, by illuminating the ongoing critique of these terms in the work of Luce Irigaray. In Hass’s view, Irigaray’s work calls the neutrality of logic into question, suggesting that the standard formalism is capable of expressing only distorted and partial interpretations of negation, identity, and generality. More specifically, in Irigaray’s work, standard symbolic logic is shown to be unable to represent the form of difference proper to sexual difference, the form of identity proper to feminine identity, and the form of generality proper to a feminine generic. Hass interprets and evaluates Irigaray’s critique of logic, arguing that many of Irigaray’s readers have misunderstood its nature and force."
Comment : available in this BlueprintIrigaray, Luce. Is the Subject of Science Sexed?1987, Hypatia, 2 (3): 65-87, trans. C. Bové-
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Added by: Franci Mangraviti and Viviane FairbankAbstract:
The premise of this paper is that the language of science, like language in general, is neither asexual nor neutral. The essay demonstrates the various ways in which the non-neutrality of the subject of science is expressed and proposes that there is a need to analyze the laws that determine the acceptability of language and discourse in order to interpret their connection to a sexed logic.Comment : available in this BlueprintIrigaray, Luce. The “Mechanics” of Fluids1985, In This Sex Which Is Not One, trans. C. Porter and C. Burke-
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Added by: Franci Mangraviti and Viviane FairbankAbstract:
The paper argues that science's focus on the ideal and stable hides, and thus contributes to the silencing of, the real and fluid, which corresponds to womanhood.Comment : available in this BlueprintIrigaray, Luce, Carlston, Erin G.. The Language of Man1989, Cultural Critique, 13: 191-202-
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Added by: Franci Mangraviti and Viviane FairbankAbstract:
This paper enumerates Irigaray's main arguments and thoughts regarding the gendered nature of language and "the logos".Comment : available in this BlueprintKorsmeyer, Carolyn. Gender and Aesthetics: An Introduction2004, London: Psychology Press.-
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Added by: Simon Fokt
Publisher's note: Feminist approaches to art are extremely influential and widely studied across a variety of disciplines, including art theory, cultural and visual studies, and philosophy. Gender and Aesthetics is an introduction to the major theories and thinkers within art and aesthetics from a philosophical perspective, carefully introducing and examining the role that gender plays in forming ideas about art. It is ideal for anyone coming to the topic for the first time. Organized thematically, the book introduces in clear language the most important topics within feminist aesthetics:- Why were there so few women painters?
- Art, pleasure and beauty
- Music, literature and painting
- The role of gender in taste and food
- What is art and who is an artist?
- Disgust and the sublime.
Comment : Chapter 5 is particularly useful in teaching on art theories. It offers an interesting review of art theories from a feminist perspective, noting the gendered character of existing definitions. It may be good to teach it alongside Brand's ‘Glaring Omissions in Traditional Theories of Art’ to best bring out these issues. Secondly, it inspires the question: given the problematic exclusionary character of art history and theory, would it not be better if we did not have a definition of art which we can use to exclude? The value of the feminist art discussed in the chapter lies largely in its ability to expose the biases present in the artworld and expressed in theories of art. Thus the fact that artists tend to create works which challenge existing theories might be in fact desirable.Kristeva, Julia. Approaching Abjection1982, In: Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, Columbia University Press, pp. 1-31.-
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Added by: Rossen Ventzislavov
Summary: The abject - expressed through the grotesque, the gross and the physically challenging - has long been a source of innovation and scandal in the art world. For Kristeva abjection accounts for much of the complexity of the human condition. She understands abjection to encompass various aspects of our humanity that are often seen as conceptually and/or experientially disparate - emotion, embodiment, affect, repression, criminality, hygiene etc. Kristeva's guiding intuition is that the abject helps arbitrate between our perception of ourselves as subject and object. In the liminal space between the two, the "I" is experienced in its full heterogeneity to the frequent detriment of traditional ethical, aesthetic, and scientific considerations. This has direct bearing on performance art, whose history is marked by the deliberate departure from beauty and, concurrently, the constant renegotiation of identity between the extremes of subject and object.Comment : Best if read together with Sigmund Freud's "The Uncanny"Can’t find it?Contribute the texts you think should be here and we’ll add them soon!
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