Diversity Reading List

Abstract:

By looking at a canonical article representing academic philosophy’s orthodox view against cultural relativism, James Rachels’ “The Challenge of Cultural Relativism,” this paper argues that current mainstream western academic philosophy’s fear of cultural relativism is premised on a fear of the racial Other. The examples that Rachels marshals against cultural relativism default to the persistent, ubiquitous, and age-old stereotypes about the savage/barbarian Other that have dominated the history of western engagement with the non-western world. What academic philosophy fears about cultural relativism, it is argued, is the barbarians of the western imagination and not fellow human beings. The same structure that informs fears of cultural relativism, whereby people with different customs are reduced to the barbarian/savage of the western imagination, can be seen in the genesis of international law which arose as a justification for the domination of the Amerindian (parsed as “barbarians”). It is argued that implicit in arguments against cultural relativism is the preservation of the same right to dominate the Other. Finally, it is argued that the appeal of the fear of cultural relativism is that, in directing moral outrage at others, one can avoid reflecting on the failures of one’s own cultural tradition.

Summary: As 'always already' racialized object of the white patriarchal look African-Americans have enduringly suffered from having to negotiate notions of the self from a crisis position. The act of self-portraiture for the African-American artist has the value of bestowing upon the self-portraitist a sense of empowerment.

Abstract: It has become customary among philosophers and biologists to claim that folk racial classification has no biological basis. This paper attempts to debunk that view. In this paper, I show that ‘race’, as used in current U.S. race talk, picks out a biologically real entity. I do this by, first, showing that ‘race’, in this use, is not a kind term, but a proper name for a set of human population groups. Next, using recent human genetic clustering results, I show that this set of human population groups is a partition of human populations that I call ‘the Blumenbach partition’.

Abstract:

In this talk given in 1983 at the University of Illinois, Spivak (b. 1942) criticizes a Western understanding of the political subject by examining how Third World subjects are perceived within Western discourse. She studies the way Western representations prevent the subaltern woman from making her own voice heard. Her critique depends on a definition of the subaltern, the “Other,” who is paradoxically both constituted and erased by Western theories, and is neither heard nor answered, leading Spivak to question their very possibility to speak. She specifically uses the history of British colonialism's relation to the Hindu practice of sati, the ritual self-immolation of a widow on her husband’s funeral pyre, which was read by the British as barbarism and deprived of the social signification it holds. Spivak highlights the contradictions of the so-called “civilizing mission” of colonialism, showing how women’s rights have been used by colonialism against the subalterns themselves, thereby robbing them of their own voices. Drawing critically on French theory (Derrida, Althusser, Deleuze, Foucault), Marxism (Marx, Benjamin, Gramsci) and other postcolonial scholars (Said), this landmark essay mobilizes historical documentation alongside critical theory to produce a seminal work of political and social philosophy. At the same time, Spivak offers a meta-philosophical enquiry, pointing to a major bias in the very constitution and discourse of the discipline.

Abstract:
From the canonical texts of the Arts and Crafts Movement to the radical thinking of today's “DIY” movement, from theoretical writings on the position of craft in distinction to Art and Design to how-to texts from renowned practitioners, from feminist histories of textiles to descriptions of the innovation born of necessity in Soviet factories and African auto-repair shops, The Craft Reader presents the first comprehensive anthology of writings on modern craft. Covering the period from the Industrial Revolution to today, the Reader draws on craft practice and theory from America, Europe, Asia and Africa. The world of craft is considered in its full breadth -- from pottery and weaving, to couture and chocolate-making, to contemporary art, architecture and curation. The writings are themed into sections and all extracts are individually introduced, placing each in its historical, cultural and artistic context. Bringing together an astonishing range of both classic and contemporary texts, The Craft Reader will be invaluable to any student or practitioner of Craft and also to readers in Art and Design.

Abstract:
Oriel College persists in displaying a statue of Cecil Rhodes, despite his role in British colonialism and despite opposition from the Rhodes Must Fall movement. This article considers arguments in support of Oriel's position—including three versions of the charge that removing the statue might distort history—and show that they all fail. I argue that the conclusion that the statue should be removed, despite possible costs and complexity, follows once we realise that the statue makes demands on our attention and once we correctly understand that the descendants of those previously oppressed by Rhodes and who are currently subject to racism have a special insight, standing and claim to shape the environment in which they study, work and live.

Summary: Traces the origins of, and eventually challenges, the idea that many people in non-industrialized countries refused to have their photographic portrait taken due to the belief that it would steal their soul. Investigates and refutes the evidence provided by Richard Andree, James Napier, James G. Frazer. With references to C.S. Peirce, Rosalind Krauss, Susan Sontag.

Publisher's Note: Offering a wide variety of philosophical approaches to the neglected philosophical problem of ignorance, this groundbreaking collection builds on Charles Mills’s claim that racism involves an inverted epistemology, an epistemology of ignorance. Contributors explore how different forms of ignorance linked to race are produced and sustained and what role they play in promoting racism and white privilege. They argue that the ignorance that underpins racism is not a simple gap in knowledge, the accidental result of an epistemological oversight. In the case of racial oppression, ignorance often is actively produced for purposes of domination and exploitation. But as these essays demonstrate, ignorance is not simply a tool of oppression wielded by the powerful. It can also be a strategy for survival, an important tool for people of color to wield against white privilege and white supremacy. The book concludes that understanding ignorance and the politics of such ignorance should be a key element of epistemological and social/political analyses, for it has the potential to reveal the role of power in the construction of what is known and provide a lens for the political values at work in knowledge practices.

“This anthology brings together some very prominent philosophers to address one of the most embarrassing and blatantly ignored elephants in philosophy: ignorance. While philosophers claim to be children of Socrates, who alone was virtuous and courageous enough to recognize the fecundity of ignorance, few have really addressed it with the verve and originality displayed in the contributions to this volume. I consider it a must-have for libraries, faculty, and graduate students.” — Eduardo Mendieta, editor of The Frankfurt School on Religion: Key Writings by the Major Thinkers

Contributors include Linda Martín Alcoff, Alison Bailey, Robert Bernasconi, Lorraine Code, Harvey Cormier, Stephanie Malia Fullerton, Sarah Lucia Hoagland, Frank Margonis, Charles W. Mills, Lucius T. Outlaw (Jr.), Elizabeth V. Spelman, Shannon Sullivan, Paul C. Taylor, and Nancy Tuana.

Abstract:
Cultural heritage, manifest in public monuments, plays an important role in education, providing tangible artefacts that chart the history of a society, its achievements, tragedies and horrors, contributing to human understanding and well-being. The educational impact is lifelong—everyone from schoolchildren to senior citizens visit and take in heritage sites. How heritage is to be approached, however, is a complex question, with conflicting narratives vying for prominence. Kingston, Ontario, where my university is situated, is the hometown of Canada's first prime minister, John A. Macdonald, whose ambition to unite the country sea-to-sea brought Canada into being. Today debate rages about how to understand Macdonald's legacy of colonialism, his actions against the Indigenous peoples, whose lands and children were taken from them, and against the families of Chinese workers, who built Canada's railway and were then impeded from making their homes in this country. In a climate of increasing awareness of racial oppression, exemplified particularly by the protests of Black Lives Matter, Kingston is in the grip of debate and demonstration, centering on calls for the removal of a prominent statue of Macdonald from a downtown park. This paper explores the problem of historic monuments to suggest that a focus on education can enable an understanding of heritage that seeks to provide the necessary conditions in which historic wrongs can be understood.

Abstract:

Identity politics is everywhere, polarising discourse from the campaign trail to the classroom and amplifying antagonisms in the media. But the compulsively referenced phrase bears little resemblance to the concept as first introduced by the radical Black feminist Combahee River Collective. While the Collective articulated a political viewpoint grounded in their own position as Black lesbians with the explicit aim of building solidarity across lines of difference, identity politics is now frequently weaponised as a means of closing ranks around ever-narrower conceptions of group interests.

But the trouble, Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò deftly argues, is not with identity politics itself. Through a substantive engagement with the global Black radical tradition and a critical understanding of racial capitalism, Táíwò identifies the process by which a radical concept can be stripped of its political substance and liberatory potential by becoming the victim of elite capture -deployed by political, social and economic elites in the service of their own interests.

Táíwò’s crucial intervention both elucidates this complex process and helps us move beyond the binary of ‘class’ vs. ‘race’. By rejecting elitist identity politics in favour of a constructive politics of radical solidarity, he advances the possibility of organising across our differences in the urgent struggle for a better world.