El Kassar, Nadja. What Ignorance Really Is. Examining the Foundations of Epistemology of Ignorance
2018, In Social Epistemology, 32(5), pp. 300-310.
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Added by: Olivia Maegaard NielsenAbstract:
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.
Comment: The text provides a great overview over different positions in the epistemologies of ignorance, while also discussing and comparing the different positions. It presupposes some background knowledge on the distinction between the new view and standard view of ignorance, for example. This makes it unsuitable for beginners, but since it is a relatively easy (and short) read that roughly outlines different positions, it would be helpful to add in a seminar/reading group, following a first introduction to the three positions that El Kassar presents: The standard/new view (e.g. Peels), the agential conception of ignorance (Mills/Medina), and the structural conception of ignorance (Alcoff). El Kassar's text would be helpful to contextualize the different positions, since she ends up suggesting a conception that integrates all three. This and other of her texts also engage in an ongoing discussion with Rik Peels that might be interesting to discuss with students.
Elan, Priya. Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s Tiffany Advert Criticized by Friends of Basquiat
2021, The Guardian, 7th September 2021
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Added by: Quentin Pharr and Clotilde TorregrossaAbstract:
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.Comment (from this Blueprint): This news item discusses the controversy surrounding a 2021 advert for the high-end jewelry brand Tiffany, featuring Beyoncé and Jay-Z, and, in the background, a rarely seen painting by Basquiat owned by Tiffany. This controversy serves to illustrate both the disappointment that hooks and others feel in how Basquiat's work has been consumed in a emotionally superficial and Eurocentric manner, as well as how his work has come to be a luxury object to be conspicuously consumed primarily by the elite and used for the sake of propagating such consumption of other luxury items to the elite (in this particular instance, a 128.54-carat yellow diamond previously worn by Audrey Hepburn and Lady Gaga). The aesthetic appreciation of the painting, when used as a prop for elite interests, is under scrutiny - and, equally, whether Basquiat's intentions and what he is trying to express through his work are respected in such use and whether should be. Moreover, many of Basquiat's works are privately owned and are not displayed to the public, only to elites. So, using this ad as a case study, we should note that aspects of specific class and status affiliations and interests can affect how appropriately or inappropriately an aesthetic object is consumed, if at all.
Estlund, Cynthia. Working Together: Crossing Color Lines at Work
2005, Labor History. 46 (1):79-98
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Added by: Deryn Mair ThomasAbstract:
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.Comment (from this Blueprint): This text raises interesting questions about the relationship between diverse workplaces and democratic practices, and in particular, makes an interesting argument about the implications for racial integration. It can therefore be used to prompt students to think generally about democratic political structures, citizenship, and equality, while also encouraging discussion in particular about the role that work plays in promoting good civic practices.
Etieyibo, Edwin. The Case of Competancy and Informed Consent
2013, Journal of Clinical Research and Bioethics, 4 (2): 1-4.
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Added by: Rochelle DuFordAbstract: 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.Comment: This text presents an introduction to the relationship between competance, informed consent, and autonomy in medical contexts through the use of a case study. As such, it would be a good text for an introductory course in health care ethics or biomedical ethics within a unit on autonomy or culturally-specific applications of medical ethical principles.
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks
1967, Translated by C.L. Markmann. Grove Press.
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Added by: Zoé Grange-MarczakAbstract:
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.
Comment: This work is rather difficult by its intricacy, the importance of often implicit philosophical references, and its inscription in hyper-contemporary debates in philosophy, literature and psychology. However, both its radicalism and the descriptions of lived first-person experiences make it a rather didactic and striking short essay. A classical text of postcolonial theory and French thought in general.
Fausto-Sterling, Anne. Sex/Gender: Biology in a Social world
2012, Routledge.
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Added by: Benny GoldbergPublisher'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.Comment: This is a good text for courses in philosophy of science dealing with biology, feminist philosophy (and feminist philosophy of science), as well as courses dealing with issues of sex and gender. While it uses a lot of scientific detail, it is suitable for advanced undergraduates regardless of major.
Feagin, Susan. Feminist Art History and De Facto Significance
2010, In Peg Zeglin Brand & Carolyn Korsmeyer (eds.), Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics. Penn State Press.
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Christy Mag UidhirAbstract: 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)
Feigenbaum, Erika Faith. Heterosexual Privilege: The Political and the Personal
2007, Hypatia 22 (1): 1-9.
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Added by: Rochelle DuFordAbstract: 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.Comment: This article is a very accessible introduction to the concept of privilege via the debate over the legality of same-sex marriage. It would make a good addition to a course that covers questions about domination, LGBT rights, or same-sex marriage.
Finlayson, Lorna. The Political is Political: Conformity and the Illusion of Dissent in Contemporary Political Philosophy
2015, London: Rowman and Littlefield International
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Added by: Carl Fox, Contributed by: Emily DysonPublisher's Note: Nobody should really have to point out that political philosophy is political. Yet in this highly original and provocative book Lorna Finlayson argues that in fact it is necessary to do so. Offering a critique of mainstream liberal political philosophy through close, critical engagement with a series of specific debates and arguments, Finlayson analyzes the way in which apparently neutral methodological devices such as 'charitable interpretation' and 'constructive criticism' function so as to protect against challenges to the status quo. At each stage, Finlayson demonstrates that political philosophy is suffering from a complex process of 'depoliticization.' Even in cases where it appears that the dominant framework of liberal political philosophy is being strongly challenged - as, for example, in the case of the 'realist' critique of 'ideal theory' - this book argues that the debate is set up in such a way as to impose strict limits on the kind of dissent that is possible. Only by dragging these hidden presuppositions into the foreground can we arrive at a clear-eyed appreciation of such debates, and perhaps look beyond the artificially constricted landscape in which they seek to confine us.Comment: Good further or advanced reading on the methodology of political philosophy, and an incredibly illuminating critical complement to a Rawls-heavy syllabus. Finlayson provides an interesting and challenging critique of liberal presuppositions that are widespread in political philosophy. Individual chapters would also make very good further or advanced reading in their own right, especially the chapters on Rawls, the norm of philosophical charity, speech acts and silencing, and political realism.
2015, Journal of economic perspectives 29.1, 89-114
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Added by: Simon Fokt, Contributed by: Anna AlexandrovaAbstract: In this essay, we investigate the dominant position of economics within the network of the social sciences in the United States. We begin by documenting the relative insularity of economics, using bibliometric data. Next, we analyze the tight management of the field from the top down, which gives economics its characteristic hierarchical structure. Economists also distinguish themselves from other social scientists through their much better material situation (many teach in business schools, have external consulting activities), their more individualist worldviews, and in the confidence, they have in their discipline’s ability to fix the world’s problems. Taken together, these traits constitute what we call the superiority of economists, where economists’ objective supremacy is intimately linked with their subjective sense of authority and entitlement. While this superiority has certainly fueled economists’ practical involvement and their considerable influence over the economy, it has also exposed them more to conflicts of interests, political critique, even derision.Comment: Good overview of the sociology of contemporary economics, how much prestige and hierarchy matter to them, and how poorly they view other social scientists.
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