Rectifications
I was hoping the dogpile had ended, but it hasn’t.
Brian Leiter has a brief post about the role of Lisa Guenther.
Lisa Guenther is the Vanderbilt philosophy professor and former member of Rebecca Tuvel’s dissertation [committee?] who not only was an early signatory of the defamatory “Open Letter” but also offered several public facebook explanations for her conduct.
So I decided to look up her several Facebook explanations.
Depressing shit.
Robin James on the deep reckoning and accountability demanded of those of us who do work in philosophy — especially white feminist philosophers like myself, because we should know better than to keep using the master’s tools over and over and over again —
“Rephrasing something I said in a comment elsewhere: Hypatia is not a bad apple here–it’s symptomatic of deeper and more fundamental issues in the profession, in the institutional practice of ‘philosophy’ as such. The journal and the article’s author are doing “Philosophy” perfectly. The white supremacy, racism, and transmisognoir are embedded in the project of ‘philosophy’ itself; how many scholars have *already* said this?
Except that there was no white supremacism or racism or “transmisognoir.”
Also April 30:
Essential reading for anyone who is reeling from Hypatia’s publication of an article on transracialism, and trying to figure out what accountability means in the wake of this act of epistemic injustice. [Then a paragraph by Rachel McKinnon]
People are “reeling” – over this “act of epistemic injustice.”
May 1, linking to the Hypatia apology:
This is what accountability looks like: “Working through conflicts, owning mistakes, and finding a way forward is part of the crucial, difficult work that feminism does. As members of Hypatia’s editorial board we are taking this opportunity to make Hypatia more deeply committed to the highest quality of feminist scholarship, pluralism, and respect. The words expressed here cannot change the harm caused by the fact of the article’s publication, but we hope they convey the depth and sincerity of our commitment to make necessary changes to move forward and do better.”
There was no harm caused by the fact of the article’s publication.
Also May 1:
Via Meena Krishnamurthy: “One of the central criticism of the piece by Tuvel on the infamous Dolezal case is that it failed to engage with much of the relevant literature by POC and transgender people.”
Then a call for help drawing up a list of relevant literature. This post is innocuous in itself, but as part of a relentless series, not so much.
Also May 1:
This is what a collective demand for accountability looks like:
With a link to that disgusting Hypatia “apology.”
May 2, one I posted about at the time:
This article, like the post at the Daily Nous, goes through the arguments of Rebecca Tuvel’s article, “In Defense of Transracialism,” to argue that they’re not so bad after all: no outrageous claims, no offensive slurs, nothing but reasonable arguments. But this is precisely the problem: it’s what Charles Mills critiques as “ideal theory,” which attempts (in the words of author Jesse Singal) to “pull up one level from the real world and force people to grapple with principles and claims on their own merits, rather than — in the case of Dolezal — baser instincts like disgust and outrage.”
But ideal theory is not the only alternative to irrational “baser instincts.” What ideal theory abstracts from–and this is the reason why Mills argues that ideal theory is ideology– is the network of power relations that shape particular historical contexts and meanings.
THIS is the fundamental problem with Tuvel’s article, and with all of the defenses I have read so far: It “toy[s] around” (Singal’s words again) with a few arguments about issues that deeply and viscerally affect the lives of people whose social location is radically different from her own, with no evidence in the article of an awareness of the context, power dynamics, or stakes of these issues for trans people and people of color. This is why it should not have been published in Hypatia, and why the demand for a retraction is not simply the irrational whim of an “angry” mob, but a critique of white feminist ideal theory as transphobic and anti-black ideology.
Full disclosure: I know Rebecca Tuvel, I was on her dissertation committee, I don’t think she intended to do harm by writing this article. But intentions do not determine or reduce impact. The point is not to avoid ever saying anything “wrong” or problematic. The point is to commit to accountability — both as actors and as bystanders. This is what all of us are called upon to do in this moment.
She accuses Tuvel (somewhat indirectly) of outrageous claims and offensive slurs, then says “I don’t think she intended to do harm by writing this article.” Oh really.
The problem is not Angry Mob vs. Vulnerable Untenured Professor. The problem is white feminism. By white feminism, I do not mean feminism that happens to be practiced by white people. I mean feminism that is invested in whiteness as power and property, and that is willing to further the interests of white women at the expense of other marginalized and oppressed groups. I mean feminism as the collective self-promotion and self-protection of the most privileged women. Feminism that would rather strategically ally itself with cis hetero anti-black patriarchy than struggle to figure out what it means to become an effective ally and accomplice of black (and) trans people. THAT is the issue here, and it’s not just an issue for one or two people, it’s an issue for all of us.
YES to this post by Kristie Dotson — “Calling the righteous indignation against Tuvel’s objectifying and shoddy article a “witch hunt” is quite Trump-y. In fact, so much of the defenses and responses are Trump-y. Should you be allowed to say anything and introduce any range of “alternative facts” because you have free speech? Should you not be held accountable when your position is underdeveloped about issues that impacts people’s lives? Should you be able to speak about a class of people you are not part of in derogatory terms and claim ignorance as an excuse? Or that they are too touchy and should grow thicker skin? Should you by pass the criticisms with excuses or just double down on your right to objectify anyone you so chose because of your “good will” and PhD-privilege? Should you participate in playing a role, yet again, in securing white and cis-gendered privilege at the sake of everyone else’s well-being? Careful folks. Because this stuff is starting to get #unforgivable.”
What SHOULD accountability look like in the wake of what some people are calling the Hypatia Affair? Some suggestions I’ve heard so far: a community accountability process; the development of professional norms for philosophical engagement with issues that affect marginalized communities; changing or clarifying the editorial review process; changing the composition of the editorial board, so that there are fewer cis het able-bodied white women on the board and more trans, queer, and disabled people of color. This is an incomplete list. Please add to it, and/or critically discuss the possibilities I’ve listed here. I have not identified the people who came up with these ideas but if you’d like to self-identify, please do.
I have an idea! Choose one white feminist every week as a target for this kind of Correction. Be sure of course she is young and untenured, and that she hasn’t actually done anything wrong. Spend the week tearing her to shreds. The Perfect World will ensue in no time.
Also May 4: a link to someone else’s long long long post on the chosen target.
Over the past few days, I have posted a few thoughts about accountability. A close friend (and a few strangers) have challenged me to account for gaps and failures in my own scholarship as a feminist philosopher, and for my responsibilities as a mentor to past and current graduate students.
So she does a paragraph about her own omissions and then has the fucking gall to say this:
I still stand behind the book, but it has many flaws, gaps, and silences that I would want to address if I were writing it now, and that I would probably critique in a peer review process. I’m thankful for criticism of the book, even when it’s painful or difficult to hear, and even though there’s nothing I can do to un-write the book.
But I have never had to contend with personal attacks or insults about my work or calls for retraction, and I don’t want to underestimate the very different kind of pain that this inflicts on a person. And I want to express my admiration for those who have been supporting Rebecca Tuvel as a person throughout the past week. I want to apologize to her personally for any pain I caused by signing the open letter requesting retraction, especially given that I was a member of her dissertation committee. I did not sign the letter lightly, and I do not consider the call for retraction a personal attack. The letter was addressed to Hypatia as a journal, and I continue to see it as a demand for accountability, made in a very intense, fraught moment, in an effort to stand in solidarity _with_ and _as_ black (and) trans feminist thinkers whose scholarship was marginalized in this article, but not only in this article.
So in the same moment that we condemn personal attacks, I think it’s absolutely vital for us, as a community of feminist philosophers, not to conflate personal attacks with substantive critique, and not to silence black and trans critics of Tuvel’s article by dismissing the critical response as a mob of haters who didn’t even read the article. Structural inequalities in power and authority compound vulnerability. White feminists can and have deployed our own vulnerability as a weapon against others whose position is more precarious than our own. I say “we” here because I want to be clear that this is something I am deeply implicated in, and also because I want to participate in what will no doubt be a long and fraught process of abolishing white feminism and committing to a practice of feminist philosophy that is creative, responsible, and liberatory.
“I think it’s absolutely vital for us, as a community of feminist philosophers, not to conflate personal attacks with substantive critique, and not to silence black and trans critics of Tuvel’s article by dismissing the critical response as a mob of haters who didn’t even read the article.”
I rather think it was the lack of substantive critique in the open letter that prompted the dismissal of its signatories as a mob.
But she neglected to add that “intent isn’t fucking magic, cupcake”! Sloppy work.
Didn’t this Tuvel person know that when discussing her own ideas and seeing where they took her, she was supposed to be putting forth… other people’s ideas instead? How dare she “marginalize” other people’s opinions and conclusions when writing about her own!
Wait, people still cite that bit about “the master’s tools” seriously?
Wow. I don’t think I could think of a more effective way to sabotage women and minorities.
Social justice really does seem to be descending into self-abnegating identity politics. I recently had a quite frustrating, if small, dustup on Twitter wherein someone dismissed an explication of the Comey affair simply because the author (Hank Green, an accomplished educator and communicator who has proven his thoughtfulness and consideration on many issues, not to mention with a broad and diverse following) was white; after my sarcastic reply, I was accused (by someone else) of frozen-peachism, told that Trump’s existential threat meant my concerns over that kind of behaviour were redundant (even though the original eye-rolling tweet was *of* a Trump issue), told that why yes, social justice *is* well-served by occasionally telling white dudes to shut up simply because they’re white and/or dudes (rather than on the actual basis of what they say), and told that white people should step up and speak for people of colour rather than seeking out POC voices to boost.
The whole experience was really quite bizarre. It’s as if some social justice advocates have bought into the idea that people can be dismissed simply because of who they are, and the disagreement is just over which categories comprise the dismissable identities. To be sure, this probably has a lot to do with the very nature of Twitter, wherein context is lost almost immediately by design and the worst interpretation of any given tweet is the most tempting. But the attitude that an argument can be waged on the basis of the disputants’ identities rather than on the substance of their disputes seems very much at play in the Tuvel affair. It also seems, to me, self-evidently inimical to the very idea of social justice.
Seth:
Wait, what?
I mean, the whole situation you describe there is absolute bs, identity politics taken to it’s mind-numbing extreme, but white people are supposed to be speaking for POC now? That directly contradicts the “lived experience” narrative! Doesn’t surprise me, though. Completely regressive, too.
I’ll probably sound old-fashioned here, but l’affaire Tuvel just shows how sexist and racist the left can be. The calls to retract an article written by a young, untenured female professor and the refusal of her critics to “dignity” her paper by actually responding to the arguments she makes. The treatment of POC and trans people as monolithic borgs who are incapable of holding differing opinions, or I guess even voicing those opinions themselves. The conflation of a woman’s words with physical violence. Judging an argument not by its merits but by what group the person making the argument belongs to. It’s all very retrograde.
Morganmine, the text of that particular exchange is as follows:
This was a one-off reply by a third party, to which I didn’t respond (either out of cowardice or wisdom, take your pick). Anyway, I just needed to exorcise my frustration with the whole discussion (of which this reply was only one part); if I’m grossly misinterpreting the replier’s intent I’m open to correction, but it really looks like advocacy of speaking for rather than seeking out.
Anyway, I’m not trying to conflate this experience with what’s STILL happening to Professor Tuvel, but it was still instructive, and disheartening.
Yeah, not conflating the two situations at all. Just one more indication of, as Ophelia has so accurately put it before, of “the left disappearing up its own ass.”
And it’s infuriating, because it is regressive. And it’s worrisome, because with the right lurching onto the more extreme end of the spectrum, the left does not need to be eating itself alive like this.
It’s a mind virus of tribalism and motivated reasoning, where the conclusions are settled and then arguments are thrown out to justify them. The Paragon of Zkepticism has now weighed in on the matter, and it’s even more frustrating and point-missing than I’d expected it to be. (Also Ophelia shows up in the comments, which reminds me why I stopped perusing PZ’s comments.)
[OB here, to clarify – I don’t show up in the comments in person. I get…erm…discussed.]
Speaking of PZ, a couple of parts of the original Open Letter, specifically:
and
remind me of PZ’s “Courtier’s Reply”:
Or another version of it that he calls Shut Up and Sing syndrome:
morganmine, it’s similar to an experience (or rather two related experiences) that I had. I was subjected to a tongue-lashing tirade by a judge at a playwriting competition (which is not supposed to happen in a student competition; you’re supposed to encourage them to improve, not destroy them) because there were no POCs in my play. I, as a white woman, am responsible for assuring maximum diversity at all times (while the white dude went un-harangued about the fact that all the humor in his play came from objectifying women).
When I did present a play that did have people of color, I was again subjected to a tongue-lashing tirade, this time about cultural appropriation and I don’t have the right. I had committed violence against them by writing this play that did not represent them stereotypically, did not belittle, but was just a story about an incident that happened in my town during WWII. I was told in no uncertain terms that I, a white woman, am responsible for racism, for Trump, and whatever else – and was assured that I personally (a non-Trump voter who loathes the man) was THE ONE responsible for the rise of Trump. I was told that I could not (they almost made it sound illegal) write about people other than those that look like me.
The take home message (especially put together with the experience I’ve been having with the male playwrights I know personally who seem to be able to write whatever they want without being told it’s racist, sexist, or reeking with white privilege) – white women are not to write plays. If there is a need for a white woman in a play (and if there is, you can bet she will be quite young – middle aged women don’t exist in theatre any more than on TV or the movies), some male can write it – because they are not in a position of privilege, I suppose.
Sort of on topic:
Anyone see, hear or read Meghan Murphy’s Feminist Case Against Bill C-16 (Canada)?
Not yet. So much Trump, so little time.
iknklast @ 11 – jeezus.
But not men. What a revealing tell that was.
Especially when it’s a feminist journal. Yeah get fewer women and more men – that’s feminism!
If you really believe that clumsy, ridiculous metaphor (of course the master’s tools can be used to dismantle the master’s house, why wouldn’t they?)–what are you doing in Philosophy?
I’m serious. These people go on and on decrying privilege–and there they are, writing in impenetrable academese for a handful of like-minded people.
It wasn’t academic Philosophers who changed the world in the 1st and 2nd feminist waves. There were philosophers, but they weren’t Ivory Tower sorts addressing other highly educated sorts using words like epistemic hegemony.
Maybe some of their hyperbole about “damage” and “violence” comes from a repressed sense that they–yes, even the POC and trans people among them–are all pretty fucking privileged, and, what’s more, have about as much positive impact on the “lived experience” of women outside their rarified circles as a gnat’s fart.
OK, in my fury I may have overstated things a bit.
I don’t think philosophy, even formal, academic philosophy, is useless. But it’s not activism. It’s not supposed to be. It rarely if ever has a direct impact on the lives of struggling people. And in its modern incarnation it’s nearly impenetrable to outsiders.
(Which reminds me, Gloria Steinem long ago decided to write as simply and as clearly as she could. She wanted her prose to be as accessible to as many people as possible, including those with limited education.)
In defense of ideal theory:
Ideal theory is important, because all too often people use power dynamics as an excuse for incredible hypocrisy.
Harassing a trans person is horrible, harassing a feminist for saying something that doesn’t jibe with the exact wording for trans sensitivity is A-okay, because power dynamics define the trans individual as somehow being below the feminist so there is no need to think about what anybody is actually saying or arguing.
Hey take apart that virtually unknown and underpaid academic – she punched down at a multimillionaire celebrity former Olympic athlete by mentioning Ms Jenner was once known as Bruce. That is some prime “punching up” going on right there!
And just about every genuinely evil regime in history has seen itself as being the fighter for the oppressed. Whether it is the Nazis and their fight against the evil “Jewish Bankers” or the Apartheid government and their fight against the “English liberals”.
Communism was massively oppressive, and it defined itself as fighting the evils of capitalism.
Even in modern day America, the greatest oppressive force right now is the American Christian right, who believe that by people opposing their oppression of others they are in fact being oppressed.
It is a heady thing being the oppressed party, but it is no guarantee that what you’re saying is valid. Nor does it really actually change the meaning of what you’re saying.
Thabo Mbeki allowed South Africa’s rape crisis to build to the point where our country is the worst in the world, excluding war zones, with regards to that scourge because he felt pointing the problem out was racist.
The AIDS crisis similarly owes a large chunk of its genesis to a failure to apply ideal theory – much of the language used to prevent action against it relied on bitterness over racist caricatures. That bitterness did not translate into a cure – instead it translated into hundreds of thousands of deaths.
All of that sensitivity meant nothing except more deaths because someone was more fond of their oppression than using their brains.
And lets be blunt about this, the master’s tools are often damn good tools, they’re what helped the master become the master in the first place. Refusing to use them isn’t always some mark of rebellion, it can be noticing that guns work better than spears and taking the pointy stick into a gunfight on principle.
You need a better argument than that they were the master’s tools in order to militate against their use.
I think I’m finally getting an understanding of why I find this whole farrago so incomprehensible. It is the extremely simplistic equation of scholarship with citation count. I still haven’t found – and I have looked – anyone who has said ‘you missed this and if you had included it your conclusion would have been different.’ Surely that’s what citations are for – not to be weighed up for and against, but for their content and relevance to the argument being put forward. Argument from authority is not academic scholarship, it’s high school stuff. Scholarship is about evidence and reason, not found in any quantity here, just the opposite.
#10 Screechy and #20 Ian
It reminds me of the time opponents of the recently proposed theories of relativity published a book called A Hundred Authors Against Einstein; his response was to point out that if he was wrong, a single author would suffice. This was brought to mind very strongly when Shiv and similar pointed to huge lists of authors Tuvel did not cite; one author putting forth one cogently argued rebuttal would suffice if Tuvel’s scholarship was subpar as has been claimed. Lots of authors, lots of allegedly necessary background reading, but not a single argument advanced.