The APA blog is working with Cliff Sosis of What is it Like to Be a Philosopher? in publishing advance excerpts from Cliff’s long-form interviews with philosophers.
The following is an edited excerpt from the forthcoming interview with Steff Rocknak (@steffrocknak) which will be released in full later this week.
In this interview Steff Rocknak, professor of philosophy at Hartwick College, talks about growing up in small-town Maine, sculpting with wood, Donkey Kong, teaching a class on video games, internalized misogyny, the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Reagan and the Cold War, getting into Hume, naturalism, Hintikka, imagination, Hartwick and the Catskills, the Smithsonian, the relationship between her art and philosophy…
Where did you grow up?
I was born in New Jersey, and then moved to Jefferson, Maine when I was six years old. Jefferson is a small village on a 4,600 acre lake about mid-way up the state. At the time, it had a population of about 1,400 people. No stop lights, but we had a small grocery store, a post office and a hardware store.
What materials do you sculpt with?
When I was very small, I worked a bit with clay, but for the most part, I have always worked with wood. My father and I carved a human head out of oak when I was twelve, and I made my first wood sculpture when I was 22. Mostly though, until graduate school, I worked in two dimensions—I drew a lot.
As a teenager, did you get into any trouble?
I did not get into much trouble as a teenager. I was pretty much a dork, and hung out with my dorky friends—who I loved. We generally spent most of our free time at the arcade. I got pretty good at Centipede and Donkey Kong. In fact, this fall, I’m teaching Philosophy of Gaming to students who are, most likely, contemporary gaming experts. It should be an interesting class; I look forward to re-visiting my now-ancient interest in gaming.
Well, that sounds like the best thing ever. I’d love to take that class. Where’d you get the idea to teach the class?
Thanks! I think the idea grew out some of the discussions we have had in my Philosophy of Mind class. Gaming seems to come up a lot when we start thinking about Artificial Intelligence. My students and I also inevitably discuss gaming in my aesthetics classes—is it an art form or not?
What books and articles are you using?
It’s an intro course, so we are using Cogburn and Silcox’s Philosophy Through Video Games.
What would your teenage self-make of your current self?
I think my teenage self would approve, although she’d be very concerned about the stories I could tell her about the misogyny that she would face in later years. In my teens, I was still a good small-town conservative and implicitly believed in the Horatio Alger myth—if I was talented enough, worked hard enough, and didn’t complain, none of that stuff would affect me. It only happens to weak women, or the ones who walk down dark alleys at night alone, i.e. the ones who “deserve it” or are “asking for it.”
If you could give yourself advice back then, what would it be?
If I could go back in time and delete my own internalized misogyny, I would. Women are often conditioned to become women’s worst enemies, and sometimes, this is the hardest kind of sexism to fight—in ourselves, and in other women. Among other things, no woman “deserves it” or “is asking for it.”
What do you mean by internalized misogyny?
I am referring, generally speaking, to the harmful views that some women have towards other women and themselves. Members of oppressed/repressed groups often unwittingly become the stereotypes that are misleadingly meant to characterize them. Think for instance, of the lead female character in the series “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” This is a terrific narrative about a woman who wakes up, and shakes some of the stereotypes off. Don’t get me wrong, I was never a “girly girl,” in fact, I think I subconsciously became a “tom boy” to stave off the stereotypes.
What was going on in the world at that time?
The threat of nuclear war always seemed to loom large. And these were the Reagan years; the more I watched the news, the more the scales fell from my eyes. I was turning away from social conservatism.
Did you start to root out your internalized misogyny?
As the veil of social conservatism fell away, so did a great deal of my pre-conceived of thoughts on what it meant to be a woman.
Did you encounter sexism in college?
Yes, of course, and as far as I know, everyone did to some degree.
Noteworthy examples? Some people ignore it. Some people speak up. How did you deal then, and how do you deal now?
I’m not going to go into details, but like most of my friends, I had to pick my battles. That goes for recent years too, although I have been willing to take on bigger battles. It gets to a point where you’ve just had enough.
Why didn’t you end up focusing on aesthetics?
I eventually became interested in epistemological questions because I thought they were more primary—I wanted to figure some things out about knowledge before I tackled questions about art. I was particularly interested in the role that the imagination played in regard to knowledge, especially from a historical perspective. Relatedly, I became very interested in Hume’s Treatise and his naturalistic approach to the world and to human nature.
Hume rules. What do you dig about Hume, exactly?
It was not surprising that I found some relief in Hume’s empirical, and mostly non-polemical approach. I was also attracted to the complexity of the Treatise, especially 1.4.2, and I was fascinated by his dependence on the imagination. I ended up writing part of my dissertation on this, as well as a book: Imagined Causes: Hume’s Conception of Objects.
What was your dissertation on?
I wrote on the constructive imagination in Hume and Quine (in regard to epistemological questions). Jaakko Hintikka was my advisor and he was terrific.
Explain!
Hintikka was always open to new ideas and he seemed to take my work very seriously. While I was at BU, he offered me the position as Editor of Synthese. I turned it down though, it would have taken a tremendous amount of time. As a result, I would have had no time to sculpt. I always wonder, in hindsight, if that was the right decision.
You’ve been working with wood for a long time. How is working with wood different from working with other media?
Wood, like any subtractive medium, is certainly more challenging than say, an additive medium like clay. In the former case, you take material away, and each subtraction is usually permanent. But with an additive medium, you can constantly make changes and adjustments. So, when working in wood, I need to think very carefully before I make a move; I do a lot of a looking at a piece in between working on it.
One of your sculptures, “Figurehead,” appeared in the Smithsonian?
It was included in a traveling show, Captive Passage: The Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Making of the Americas. This show, including my piece, was on display at the Anacostia Museum in D.C. (Smithsonian) for about eight months in 2003.
Does your art inform your philosophy? Your philosophy, your art?
I don’t feel the need to make philosophical or theoretical sculptures; doing professional philosophy has, I think, freed me from this. I make very obvious, visceral pieces. So the viewer’s reactions should be fairly immediate and genuine, similar to how we might react to certain kinds of body language when we encounter actual human beings. As far as my philosophical work goes, I’m not an artistic-philosopher, like some of the “continental” philosophers, e.g. Nietzsche, Sartre, etc. My philosophical writing style tends to be “analytic”—not much emotion there. In this general respect, my artwork, which is mostly emotive, does not inform my philosophy.
Interesting artistic and philosophical projects on the horizon?
I do want to start writing about art and art-making, so here’s where my artistic side can play a role, at least from an introspective point of view. I’m also planning on starting a series of smaller wooden figures this fall, but I’m not entirely sure what they will look like.
Nowadays, what do you do in your free time?
In the winter, I ski a lot, and binge-watch series on my iPad. I just finished “Ozark,” among other things, it has very complicated and believable female characters. I thought that “Westworld” was also very interesting, although disturbing.
Westworld is great. Ozark is fantastic! What was your election night like in 2016?
Difficult.
I hear you. Thanks, Steff!
[interviewer: Cliff Sosis]
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This interview has been edited for length. The full interview will be available at What Is It Like to Be A Philosopher?
You can get early access to the interview and help support the project here.
