Diversity Reading List

Abstract:
The Language Question is a very central subject of discourse in African Philosophy. This is consequent upon the fact that the essence of language in philosophy cannot be gainsaid. Language, as it were, is culture bound. As such, to deny a people of their language is to deny them their cultural heritage. While applying the descriptive and analytic method in this work, it is contended that language plays not only a catalyzing role in the art of philosophizing but that it occupies an inalienable place in philosophy. Again, that since philosophy is more or less about resolving “conceptual cramps” or “bottle-necks”, indigenous languages should be given a pride of place over and against their foreign counterparts because of the obvious epistemological advantages embedded therein (especially in mother-tongues). It is submitted here that a lot of homework need to be done in terms of advocacy and development on the low status of such languages so as to meet up with the international standard and nature of the discipline. Meanwhile, the need for using a language that engenders understanding across ethnic barriers alongside the language of the environment is being advocated as a short-term measure. This is not without sounding a caveat that such a transfer of knowledge which is often fraught with some degree of adulteration via the instrument of translation, though practicable, is far from being the ideal. It is on this token the opinions of experts such as Barry Hallen, Quine and a host of others on Methods of Ordinary Language Philosophy and Indeterminacy, respectively are being advanced as plausible means of meeting the challenges before us. In this manner, while using the Igala language of Central Nigeria as a case study, it is finally submitted that it is possible to have what we might term authentic African Philosophy emerging from a systematic analysis of our traditional worldviews.

Abstract:

From the newsletter's introduction: "Lauren Eichler [...] examines the resonances between feminist and Native American analyses of classical logic. After considering the range of responses, from overly monolithic rejection to more nuanced appreciation, Eichler argues for a careful, pluralist understanding of logic as she articulates her suggestion that feminists and Native American philosophers could build fruitful alliances around this topic."

Abstract:

Recent years have seen a surge in publications about the epistemology of ignorance. In this article, I examine the proliferation of the concept ignorance that has come with the increased interest in the topic. I identify three conceptions of ignorance in the current literature: (1) ignorance as lack of knowledge/true belief, (2) ignorance as actively upheld false outlooks and (3) ignorance as substantive epistemic prac- tice. These different conceptions of ignorance are as of yet unacknowledged but are bound to impede epistemology of ignorance and, therefore, need to be uncovered. After discussing three unsuccessful ways of dealing with these varying conceptions, I put forward an integrated conception of ignorance that is more adequate for serving as the foundation of epistemology of ignorance. Introducing an alternative conception of ignorance provides us with a foundation for both epistemological and more broadly philosophical work on ignorance.

Abstract:
Close friends of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat have spoken out against the advert from jewellers Tiffany which features Beyoncé and Jay-Z posing in front of one of his paintings saying it was “not really what he was about”. Basquiat’s 1982 work Equals Pi sits behind the couple in the campaign as Beyoncé wears a 128.54-carat yellow diamond, the first black woman to have done so.

Abstract:
Amidst signs of declining social capital, the typical workplace is a hotbed of sociability and cooperation. And in a still-segregated society, the workplace is where adults are most likely to interact across color lines. The convergence of close interaction and some racial diversity makes the workplace a crucial institution within a diverse democratic society. Paradoxically, the involuntariness of workplace associations—the compulsion of economic necessity, of managerial authority, and of law—helps to facilitate constructive interaction among diverse co-workers. Where racial diversity is a fact of organizational life (and the law can help to make it so), then employers and workers have their own powerful reasons—psychological and economic—to make those relationships constructive, even amicable. I contend here that it is where we are compelled to get along, and not where we choose to do so, that we can best advance the project of racial integration.

Abstract: Patient competence is an essential element of every doctor-patient relationship. In this paper I provide a case report involving an older Korean man in a Hawaiian hospital who refused treatment on the basis of mistaken facts or beliefs about his doctors and treatment. I discuss the case as it relates to competency and extends it to informed consent, autonomy and paternalism. I suggest and argue firstly, that the older Korean man is not fully competent, and secondly, that if he is not fully competent, then soft and weak paternalism may be justified in his case and in cases similar to his.

Abstract:

Fanon (1925-1961) was born in the French West Indies and studied in France before moving to Algeria to join the independence struggle. In this text, originally published in French in 1952, he addresses the Black man's condition, and more particularly his subjectivity and experience in the colonial context of the French West Indies and of France in general, also drawing parallel with North Africa and Indochina. Black Skin, White Masks is both a minute and complex description of the violence of colonization and a sketch of a liberation from its effects. A psychiatrist by training, Fanon investigates the psychological impact of both racism and colonization, with a strong focus on inter-subjective relations, including the intersection of race and gender relations. He uses a large variety of resources: philosophy (a critical reading of Sartre, an elaboration of Hegel's slave-master dialectic, Leiris, Marcel, and contemporary linguistics) ; Marxism (materialism and alienation); psychiatry and psychoanalysis; the literary Négritude movement (Black Francophones writers who, starting in the 1930s, wrote about lived experience of blackness, displacement and colonialism). Its reception, though belated, has nevertheless made it one of the seminal works of postcolonial theory.

Publisher's Note: Sex/Gender presents a relatively new way to think about how biological difference can be produced over time in response to different environmental and social experiences. This book gives a clearly written explanation of the biological and cultural underpinnings of gender. Anne Fausto-Sterling provides an introduction to the biochemistry, neurobiology, and social construction of gender with expertise and humor in a style accessible to a wide variety of readers. In addition to the basics, Sex/Gender ponders the moral, ethical, social and political side to this inescapable subject.

Abstract: In her excellent "Feminist Art History and De Facto Significance," for example, aesthetician Susan L. Feagin explains how her initial skepticism about Continental approaches-especially those drawing on Foucault, Marx, Levi-Strauss, Lacan, and "even Derrida and poststructuralist literary theory" - gave way to an appreciation of how these approaches encourage, in a way analytic aesthetics does not, "the trenchant analyses and acute observations that have emerged from feminist art historians" (305). And, indeed, although she goes on to suggest how traditional aesthetics might accommodate feminist and other politically informed analyses, she cautions that "it is too easy to miss the most innovative aspects of another's view if one tries to understand it only in terms of one's own theoretical perspective" (305).(from review by Sally Markowitz, Hypatia Vol. 11, No. 3 (Summer, 1996), pp. 169-172)

Abstract: In this essay, Feigenbaum examines heterosexism as it functions politically and interpersonally in her own experience. She loosely traces her analysis along the current political climate of the bans on same-sex marriages, using this discussion to introduce and illustrate how heterosexual dominance functions. The author aims throughout to clarify what heterosexism looks like "in action," and she moves toward providing steps to recognize, name, interrupt, and counter heterosexist privilege.