The Blog of the APA is proud to welcome alicehank winham as the new Reports from Abroad series editor. alicehank studied BA Philosophy and Theology at Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford, where ze is now pursuing an MPhil Buddhist Studies at Lady Margaret Hall through the Faculty of Oriental Studies soon to be renamed the ‘Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.’ Ze focuses on philosophy of logic and language and social epistemology across traditions, and is also dedicated to critical pedagogy, philosophies of transformation and liberation, and social and environmental activism, such as through mentoring programmes, publishing journals, and direct action. As the editor of the Reports from Abroad series, alicehank looks forward to exploring how global institutions and contexts shape APA philosophers’ relationships to philosophy, research, and their communities while highlighting research that stretches beyond the current European philosophical cannon.
What are the goals of this series?
This series questions and complicates what ‘reporting from abroad’ can mean in a globalised world that faces interconnected and local crises alongside forces grappling with how to liberate our beings from oppressive structures rooted in past and present (neo)colonialism and imperialism. We can take this as a chance to collectively and constructively consider both broader and different conceptions of philosophy than those more widely studied within USA institutions and culture —and the conditions that shape such studies around the globe by APA-related thinkers. We can learn how local institutions and global contexts shape the possibilities of research, speech, and our visions of philosophy.
What motivated you to renew this series?
Given my interests in diversifying ‘Philosophy,’ public philosophy, and global philosophies as actions amid and arising from my specialisations, the APA Blog team invited me to re-initiate this already existing series. I was indeed interested but with the slant suggested in my previous response.
What inspired your interest in diverse and global philosophies beyond that which is typically studied in more eurocentric institutions?
My interest arose when my pursuit of philosophy as an undergraduate met unjustified and silencing, indeed damaging, barriers to an open-minded and critical approach. There are multiple larger themes by which to delineate this – a British analytic stylistic feminist gatekeeping problem, experiencing intelligent womxn becoming disengaged with our undergraduate curricula while also learning about the discipline’s gender gap, the absence of even the Oxford Quartet on our syllabuses at Oxford, the tremendous lack of diversity on our reading lists, finding that Buddhist and other global philosophies had to be studied as religious thought or area studies and rarely as philosophy, learning about the history of injustice that perpetuated epistemic silencing with devastating effects, and seeking to learn as a group outside our curricula thereby meeting both institutional resistance and admirable scholars from 500BCE (and beyond) to today and studying such an array of insightful and ameliorating philosophical work whose exclusion not only impoverishes philosophy but indicates a severe human affiliction perpetuated by our academies. A care for sentient beings and pursuing philosophy with any integrity at all, hoping to seek how to live, has brought me to such action, and demands more than I have done and can do alone.
So, this series asks how the forces of our institutions and societies shape and curate our philosophical practices and communities in order to contribute to creating room for reflection and figuring out together how to live and do philosophy otherwise.
Why should others be interested in this topic?
Given my previous response: Curiosity and care, on the one hand, and engaging with expanding awareness of experience on the other. However, I seriously question whether this topic should be spun as a ‘should’ to philosophers who already recognise these attributions on some level as part of philosophy, or as a reminder to join in this way in opening our awareness and care. Perhaps the ‘should’ arises more critically amid the time and energy limits of deep beings with finite attention who deserve wellness. In that case, the specific ‘should’ for this series is more of an offering to explore the dependence between more and commonly excluded philosophical thoughts and ways of being in a way that complicates the use of terms like ‘abroad’ not only today but also in the past to give us the opportunity to reframe again how we filter our world and philosophical categories.
My more in-depth response would harken in particular to 2nd century CE India with Nagarjuna’s theory of emptiness that has been interpreted today by philosophers as not participating in a realist theory of language and as questioning metaphysics, but this already involves engaging with work not typically included in our eurocentric curricula. (For more on this: read The Madhyamaka Concept of svabhāva: Ontological and Cognitive Aspects by Dr. Jan Westerhoff, and interview with Dr. Westerhoff, as well as this SEP article). Perhaps I can entice you by asking you to take a look at how the logical arguments or responses involved in Nagarjuna’s and other Madhyamaka thinkers’ works immediately affect ethical moves in and perceptions of the world such that what might be taken to be primarily political by many in arguing for more diverse and global philosophies is also and inseparably philosophical. Early Indian Madhyamaka Buddhist theories of emptiness, not currently widely studied in eurocentric departments, directly connect to the reason to have more diverse and global philosophy departments; and you will only have a chance of investigating this for yourself by being open to and going looking.
What’s the most surprising thing you’ve discovered in this work?
The range of ways to approach and do philosophy is mind-bending and humbling. I cannot say I am surprised so much as grateful and in awe of the effort and insight shared by others in transmitting philosophical thought and in making available excluded philosophical work in all the avenues of energy and expertise this requires. I am perhaps always taken aback by this mass of vitality behind the work before me and the internal fireworks of philosophy from many times and places.
alicehank winham studied BA Philosophy and Theology at Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford, where ze is now pursuing an MPhil Buddhist Studies at Lady Margaret Hall through the Faculty of Oriental Studies soon to be renamed the ‘Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.’ Ze focuses on philosophy of logic and language and social epistemology across traditions, including classical Buddhist philosophy and its modern interpreters, feminist philosophy, and the Black Radical Tradition. alicehank is also dedicated to critical pedagogy, philosophies of transformation and liberation, and social and environmental activism, such as through mentoring programmes, publishing journals, and direct action. In philosophy, ze works on expanding our disciplinary and interpretative horizons for a more caring and considered world through oxfordpublicphilosophy.com and Philiminality Oxford. Ze also works to reflect and act upon zer values through Biblionasium, environmental activism, and Lift Economy’s Next Economy MBA.
Maryellen Stohlman-Vanderveen is the APA Blog's Diversity and Inclusion Editor and Research Editor. She graduated from the London School of Economics with an MSc in Philosophy and Public Policy in 2023 and currently works in strategic communications. Her philosophical interests include conceptual engineering, normative ethics, philosophy of technology, and how to live a good life.
