Diversity Reading List

Abstract:

Published in French in 1990, this book is among the later conceptualizations of postcolonial and racial relations. Glissant (1928–2011) is a novelist, and his attention to politics operates through an interest in linguistics: studying creole languages, he exposes how colonized people transformed the tool of the master, leading to the creation of a new, creolized culture and expression. He reads the long-term effects of the slave trade, where people were forcibly taken from their cultural and linguistic milieu an put in another one, characterized by an extremely violent relation of subjection. In this context, he elaborates the notion of antillanité, as a French West Indies description of the unpredictable linking and blending of cultures and languages, extending and specifying the idea of négritude found in Césaire and Senghor in the 1930s. This complex analysis leads to two seemingly contradictory concepts: first, his idea of opacity argues in favor of untranslatability and of irreducible yet non-hierarchical differences. Second, his poetics of relation leads to an understanding of identity as an extension of the connection to the other. From there, he sketches a new definition of culture, taking into account power dynamics, which is also a departure from the idea of authenticity or autochtony. Against a binary reading of colonialist relations of power, Glissant explores the formation of identities through the process of creolization, where a new language is invented as a mean of resistance, thus undermining any possibility for a pure, uniform identity.

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."

Abstract:
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.

Abstract:
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.

Abstract:
This paper enumerates Irigaray's main arguments and thoughts regarding the gendered nature of language and "the logos".

Abstract: This paper examines Duhem's concept of good sense as an attempt to support a non rule-governed account of rationality in theory choice. Faced with the underdetermination of theory by evidence thesis and the continuity thesis, Duhem tried to account for the ability of scientists to choose theories that continuously grow to a natural classification. The author examines the concept of good sense and the problems that stem from it. The paper presents a recent attempt by David Stump to link good sense to virtue epistemology. It is argued that even though this approach can be useful for the better comprehension of the concept of good sense, there are some substantial differences between virtue epistemologists and Duhem. The athor proposes a possible way to interpret the concept of good sense, which overcomes the noted problems and fits better with Duhem's views on scientific method and motivation in developing the concept of good sense.

Abstract: Poincare is well known for his conventionalism and structuralism. However, the relationship between these two theses and their place in Poincare's epistemology of science remain puzzling. In this paper I show the scope of Poincare's conventionalism and its position in Poincare's hierarchical approach to scientific theories. I argue that for Poincare scientific knowledge is relational and made possible by synthetic a priori, empirical and conventional elements, which, however, are not chosen arbitrarily. By examining his geometric conventionalism, his hierarchical account of science and defence of continuity in theory change, I argue that Poincare defends a complex structuralist position based on synthetic a priori and conventional elements, the mind-dependence of which precludes epistemic access to mind-independent structures.

Abstract: In this paper I argue that Poincare's acceptance of the atom does not indicate a shift from instrumentalism to scientific realism. I examine the implications of Poincare's acceptance of the existence of the atom for our current understanding of his philosophy of science. Specifically, how can we understand Poincare's acceptance of the atom in structural realist terms? I examine his 1912 paper carefully and suggest that it does not entail scientific realism in the sense of acceptance of the fundamental existence of atoms but rather, argues against fundamental entities. I argue that Poincare's paper motivates a non-fundamentalist view about the world, and that this is compatible with his structuralism.

Abstract:
From the writing of her first book, Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Modern Muslim Society in 1975, Mernissi has sought to reclaim the ideological discourse on women and sexuality from the stranglehold of patriarchy. She critically examines the classical corpus of religious-juristic texts, including the Hadith, and reinterprets them from a feminist perspective. In her view, the Muslim ideal of the silent, passive, obedient woman has nothing to do with the authentic message of Islam. Rather, it is a construction of the 'ulama', the male jurists-theologians who manipulated and distorted the religious texts in order to preserve the patriarchal system. Mernissi's work explores the relationship between sexual ideology, gender identity, sociopolitical organization, and the status of women in Islam; her special focus, however, is Moroccan society and culture. As a feminist, her work represents an attempt to undermine the ideological and political systems that silence and oppress Muslim women.

Abstract:
From the writing of her first book, Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Modern Muslim Society in 1975, Mernissi has sought to reclaim the ideological discourse on women and sexuality from the stranglehold of patriarchy. She critically examines the classical corpus of religious-juristic texts, including the Hadith, and reinterprets them from a feminist perspective. In her view, the Muslim ideal of the silent, passive, obedient woman has nothing to do with the authentic message of Islam. Rather, it is a construction of the 'ulama', the male jurists-theologians who manipulated and distorted the religious texts in order to preserve the patriarchal system. Mernissi's work explores the relationship between sexual ideology, gender identity, sociopolitical organization, and the status of women in Islam; her special focus, however, is Moroccan society and culture. As a feminist, her work represents an attempt to undermine the ideological and political systems that silence and oppress Muslim women.