Stephanie Rivera Berruz is an Assistant Professor of philosophy at Marquette University. Despite nomadic movements across the US, she proudly calls Puerto Rico home. Growing up on an island has meant that she always yearns for proximity to bodies of water; their fluidity, their power, and their grandeur are inspirational. She is a lover of sonic experiences. When she is not philosophizing with a book or conversation, she is thinking through the body by dancing.
What excites you about philosophy?
At its core, philosophy teaches us how to think more complexly and critically about the world. I like to think about philosophy as a skill set that we direct toward particular topics. As a result, we are all potential philosophers. Our ability to think more complexly and critically has the potential to create ruptures in our ways of thinking so that we can become more understanding of why the world looks the way it does. Furthermore, the critical insights that we gain from philosophy can force us to not just think about the world around us, but ourselves in the world. It demands that we ask who we are in relationship to our world and how that dynamic is continuously evolving. To me, much like for Gloria Anzaldua, “rigidity means death” and the excitement of philosophy for me is found in its ability to ensure constant questioning. The making of my body, as Fanon notably closes Black Skins, White Masks with, is a making that constantly questions.
What three things are on your bucket list that you’ve not yet accomplished?
My bucket list has never quite been a solid list so much as long term projects that I continue striving towards. My first is travel. I love travelling deeply as it creates disorientations that I think are so important for continuing to live a rich life. However, there are places that I am dying to go to and those include Patagonia, the Andes, Sri Lanka, and Morocco. Each of these places has captivated my heart in different ways; from the penguins of Patagonia, the rich histories of Morocco, the altitude of the Andes, and the coasts of Sri Lanka each of these locations calls different parts of me and so I look forward to giving them their due place in my life experiences. Second, I want to cultivate practices of home-making. I have been rather nomadic for the past ten years of my life and I would like to start home-making in different ways and part of that includes learning more about getting my body in closer communion with the Earth. I would like to learn to garden and grow my own herbs, fruits, and vegetables. I think in so many ways our technological age pushes us further and further away from our environments (and other people) and so orienting myself toward the Earth more has been and continues to be part of my life-long bucket list project. Finally, my bucket list is framed through my desire to continue to learn; learn about people, places, language, ideas, culture, and religion. I do not think learning is the type of thing that one ever owns, but rather is part of a life-long embodied project that I see myself always striving towards in different ways.
What do you like to do outside work?
I love to visit bodies of water although I have a strong preference for salt bodies of water. I am an ultimate beach person at heart, but unfortunately I have not lived in a consistently warm place since I left Florida for graduate school. So, I make a point to visit these types of places on a regular basis as I find these visits replenish my creative energy in ways that continue to surprise me. I also love to dance so I spend a substantial amount of my free time Latin dancing. I dance on an adult performing team in Milwaukee and do a lot of social dancing on weekends. I am looking forward to doing more congresses and learning different styles of Afro-Latin dance. I am also a really big fan of music, particularly listening to vinyl, and so I will regularly take time to listen to albums as they are constructed. Sonically, given the technologies we have today, we do not tend to listen to albums in the order in which they are constructed, and I think we forget that there is an art form to the flow of sound from song to song. So I like to take the time to listen to albums as they are structured. I really enjoy being what we might call “physically” active: specifically I love running and yoga, which offer me interesting meditative spaces of movement. Finally, I love being with people. Nurturing myself means nurturing and loving others, and so I spend a good amount of time in communion with other people, not to mention the importance of my immediate family in my life. I talk to my mom everyday and cherish the sound of her voice even if I can’t share physical space with her all of the time.
What would your childhood self say if someone told you that you would grow up to be a philosopher?
I think a childhood version of myself would have told this hypothetical person that they were severely missing the mark. My childhood self would say that there is no way I would ever be a philosopher. I think the incredulity is largely due to the fact that I did not enjoy reading or writing as a child. Part of the problem, retrospectively, is that I was not given readings that reflected who I was or readings where I could locate myself in the text. It is no surprise then that I have dedicated my research to changing these conditions in philosophy, but it is rooted in conflicted childhood experiences with the very activities I engage with on a daily basis. I imagine a very opinionated childhood version of Stephanie would simply have laughed and said: “Well you clearly do not know me. I do not even like to read…”
What time of day are you most productive and creative?
I am most productive in the early morning to late afternoon hours. I like to start my writing, reading, and research day early and work until early afternoons. I find that my brain is most lucid and able to synthesize and explain complex information the best during these times. However, that is not to say that all of my creative energy is lost after that time, but rather that I redirect my attention toward other types of activities as the day progresses. I like to do creative active activities in the evenings. Anything from cooking, baking to dancing tends to happen later on in the day.
If you could have a one-hour conversation with any philosopher or historical figure from any time, who would you pick and what topic would you choose?
A large sum of my most recent work focuses on recovering philosophical figures, often women, from marginal philosophical fields. At the moment, I have been working closely with Luisa Capetillo, a Puerto Rican labor anarchist from the turn of the 19th century who unapologetically developed an anti-colonial and anti-imperial intellectual project that has now garnered her the position of Puerto Rico’s first feminist. She argued for the abolition of marriage, free love, and the education of working peoples and women more specifically by and through their local communities. She was stylistically resistant as she wore gender non-confirming clothing on a regular basis. The woman in pants or la mujer en pantalones, as she has come to be called, has become infinitely fascinating to me. In many ways, I identify with her ideas as well as her need to enact resistant modalities in order to be taken seriously. At a time when most working people were illiterate and women did not occupy politically visible roles, Luisa Capetillo defied all odds. I would talk to her about her ideas and their evolution over time. However, I would be more specifically interested in what it was like, that is, her embodied lived experience as an intellectual woman at a time when no one thought about women as being intellectual in the first place. On a tangential note, she was a vegetarian and I would love to know more about how she made that happen given the meat heavy nature of Puerto Rican diets.
If you could only use one condiment for the rest of your life, which condiment would you pick and why?
Adobo is life. It flavors everything from eggs to meat. It serves as a vehicle for salt, but with flavor. Most importantly, adobo reminds me of home and this alone would suffice for me.
This section of the APA Blog is designed to get to know our fellow philosophers a little better. We’re including profiles of APA members that spotlight what captures their interest not only inside the office, but also outside of it. We’d love for you to be a part of it, so please contact us via the interview nomination form here to nominate yourself or a friend.
Dr. Sabrina D. MisirHiralall is an editor at the Blog of the APA who currently teaches philosophy, religion, and education courses solely online for Montclair State University, Three Rivers Community College, and St. John’s University.
