Navigating (Living) Philosophy: Playing in a Rigged Game

Dear Green BIPOC Philosophers,

Thank you for having a mustard seed’s worth of faith that philosophy can diversify and for tenaciously continuing to show up. You’ve beaten the odds, and I’m guessing it’s not been easy. In the next twenty years, your staying-power will be tested, so I hope that some of what I have learned over thirteen years of being a Latinx academic philosopher will be of some use to you. I’ve narrowed it down to three points, so skip to the one you need to hear right now: 1) It’s not “imposter syndrome,” 2) Take your own side, and 3) Wait ‘em out.

1. It’s Not “Imposter Syndrome”

Our discipline was not ready for Chicana feminist Gloria Anzaldúa in 1967 when she was taking philosophy courses at Pan American College in Edinburg, TX, and later at The University of Indiana, South Bend. I still don’t think it’s ready, but the bottom line is that philosophy needs us. As you have hopefully experienced, it isn’t hard to find professional philosophers of color who are willing to give you a tour of the beast from inside the beast. Inside professional philosophy in the US, you’ll see tokenism, unfair service distribution in the name of equity, and a steadfast loyalty to SETs (Student Evaluation of Teaching) even though they are widely known to be stained by racism, sexism, and countless other -isms and -phobias (for you, ageism will likely also make life harder). Only halfway into my career as a professional philosopher did RateMyProfessor remove the chili pepper that indicated whether a professor was ‘hot.’ And while ‘publish or perish’ applies to everyone, you might find that Dr. Kristie Dotson was right when she complained that philosophers of color have to work that much harder to prove that our work is, in fact, philosophy. Or in Carlos Sánchez’s words, we still need to carry our ‘philosophical passports’ to prove that we belong on this side of the border. 

You will undoubtedly experience your share of epistemic injustice, and you’ll have to decide whether there’s worth in continuing to try to save a discipline that has little interest in honoring us by changing its hiring practices, syllabi, pedagogical approach, cast of VIPs, tendency to compartmentalize faculty into subdisciplines instead of seriously diversify, and working definition of ‘philosophy.’ You’ll hear the same things we’ve always heard: there were no qualified minority applicants because they lacked the credentials. You’ll likely not hear anyone say ‘diversity hire,’ yet that term might haunt you anyway; you’ll never know if you are a diversity hire (or grad student). Or even what that means. You might stand in existential unease—Kierkegaard called it ‘anxiety’—because you won’t know for sure whether in such cases people see you as less deserving or as a gimme hire. Few will understand that your job taxes extra. They won’t see it because they don’t live it. This is enough to make a person sad about the prospect of becoming a professional philosopher. But the insult in the face of a list of workplace injuries like this one is that, if you let any of it in, if you for one second turn against yourself and wonder if they—students, colleagues, admin propounding these narratives and attitudes—are right, they will simply smile at you and say: “Everyone suffers from imposter syndrome.” 

Keep this close: ‘imposter syndrome’ does not apply to minoritized folks. Why? Because imposter syndrome is defined as a silly story that a person tells themself that isn’t true — as an insecurity that comes from the inside, not one that’s suggested or even promoted from the outside. Imposter syndrome makes your experience and testimony “ridiculous” to believe —no one else does. In imposter syndrome, the subject makes their own hell. Then supposedly they can work their way out to reclaim their narrative and such.

But what to call the dynamic, instead of the academy telling you in myriad subtle-to-blatant ways that you are less qualified, less worthy, less intelligent, less skilled, less-of-a-philosopher than others? That is not imposter syndrome but rather is more like reading the ugly writing about you on the wall (of the university). Don’t turn inside to find the problem. Your queasy feeling has the potential to reveal the fault-lines of your department, college, university, city, and country. Your so-called imposter syndrome more often indicates the fissures of professional philosophy than of your person.

When you feel the shake, the dis-ease, the sense that maybe I’m not that good, follow it. Which part of the institution/discipline/world put that idea there? Who benefits from your insecurity? Who wins when you name your experience ‘imposter syndrome’? Keep going: what will happen if you continue to cast your nausea as a personal problem? What are you likely to do about it: change the world or change yourself; battle the outer conditions of your employment or battle your narrative? Affirmations won’t cut it; they won’t reach down and find the real breaks. This ugly feeling is sacramental—an outward sign of something inner—here, a sign of injustice instead of grace. Reread this when you need to hear it again: your dis-ease is not imposter syndrome.    

2. Taking Your Own Side 

“I’m only half a philosopher.” I used to say that to myself (and sometimes it still slips out). “I’m not a very good academic.” These are the ways that I have interpreted my attraction to public philosophy over the years. I write simply, which I have always taken to be evidence of a simple mind. But the older I get, and the more I read of what some philosophers put out there for the public, the more I become suspicious that maybe I can do something that few philosophers do. Maybe writing public philosophy is harder than it looks.

At this point I ask: if my words are not written for my colleagues in the academy, and are written instead for my undergraduate students, my friends, my peers, then what? Does that make me a failed academic? No: I simply have a different audience in mind. This means that writing the way I was trained to write won’t cut it. The story I have told myself about myself as a philosopher has shifted significantly over the years, painfully. No longer do I see public philosophy as what people do when they aren’t sophisticated enough to do “real” philosophy. I do not believe the old adage: “those who can’t do, teach.” I do public philosophy because I am good at the elements that term encapsulates. And I have honed those skills by writing a lot of public philosophy, which I would do even if no one paid me. I have found a good career—I enjoy (most of) the work I do.

I like my ideas. Do you like yours? At the very bottom of everything, even if you tell no one, take your own side. Like your ideas. Be smitten with your own mind. Revel in yourself. When you start to feel “imposter syndrome,” see point 1. It’s not you. The narrative is a public one.

3.  Wait ‘em Out 

Philosophy will change if we stop fleeing to other departments and committees stop denying us tenure because we haven’t published enough. Keep your head down and write. Don’t be a perfectionist. If you don’t have a job yet, same advice: head down, write. Find the philosophy you are good at. I used to wonder if Hegel was right that the world-historical individuals stand out no matter their circumstance. Are we all just world-historical individuals waiting to be discovered? Now I tend to think that Mister Rogers was right when he said we are all special. Some of us don’t know it, but not because of that old dollar-store idea that we don’t believe in ourselves. We don’t know it because the world doesn’t see or celebrate it. The world finds some people to prop them up for the rest of us to admire. Most likely, the world hasn’t found or propped you up. Don’t hold your breath, though: the world has eyes for certain shades and certain genders. In the end, who the world finds and showers with love does not equal who is, in fact, insightful.

I’m not saying your time to shine will come. I am saying that the previous generation will die. The face of professional philosophy will change as long as we keep showing up and encouraging the next generation of philosophers to show up. We are all special, specialized; we have something to say, right now, and for the foreseeable future. Some people can’t hear us. They still ask how what we do is philosophy. But can you find kindred spirits? Can you purchase some armor, or maybe better, a puffer coat to make your life cozier as you write, teach, and serve on cold committees? Buy some noise-canceling headphones while you’re at it, to drown out the micro-aggressions. Whatever you do, if you are in a tenure-track position, don’t stop writing. Say to whatever gets in the way of your writing, revising, and publishing: you need to wait. Doing so will be easier if these obstacles are nonsense, harder if they are family or related to justice. But you can’t get tenure if you don’t publish. And today, you probably can’t get a tenure-track job if you don’t publish. The biggest mistakes I have seen have to do with time management and boundaries. If you have eight hours to work every day, you have enough time to write, teach, and do service. If you are finding no time to write, something else has to give. Study where those hours are going.      

Academia can be a waiting game, and also a puzzle: how to build a career in forty hours a week? You can do it if you are disciplined and if you master the art of prioritization. It will require finesse, and even then, you might still be portrayed as someone getting out of service. Some people won’t readily see that you are being asked to do a disproportionate amount. But you do, so hold the line. Document your service, teaching, and writing accomplishments every semester. Don’t let one letter of recommendation go undocumented in your files. You are building a narrative for yourself whether you have a job yet or not; see how much you accomplish in a year. No one knows what you do except you, and it comes down to how good a storyteller you are. Keep the facts steady in one document under the headings Teaching, Research, Service. When it comes time to tell your ‘story of productivity,’ you will be ready. 

While you are waiting them out, don’t get too involved in things you might kick yourself for. If you want a job or tenure, you will most likely have to say no to some nice opportunities. In the name of carving out time to publish, I have had to reject some more, some less, delicious opportunities: going for cool grants, co-teaching with interesting colleagues, organizing a philosophy summer camp for kids on my campus, getting more involved in the politics of my university, adding an MA program to our department, university in-fighting, volunteering to be on valuable but time-intensive committees, extracurricular activities with students outside of class, teaching overloads, summer teaching, and creating extra courses. I have also all but stopped applying for awards, which I find steals precious time from my writing.           

On the other hand, in my non-tenured years I took part in time-bound and balanced activities: I became moderately involved in one worthy cause at my university, created a one-hour-per-week book club for students (featuring books I wanted to read anyway), volunteered for department service that required solo work rather than useless meetings, attended and sometimes led workshops on teaching, taught my research and researched my teaching topics, built my teaching schedule around my best writing time (NB: luckily, I work in an environment where I can basically choose my teaching schedule; not everyone does), and stayed on top of my teaching to avoid a back-up. 

In the nine years it took me to get from Ph.D. to tenure, I ‘played the game’: I wrote scholarly articles and book chapters that today I find dry. With tenure, I can now write about what I want. In other words, I’ve paid my dues. There is no getting out of that. My words of caution here are: don’t volunteer to pay someone else’s dues, including students’. I know of some philosophers who take so long grading student papers that they leave themselves no time to write. This is not a good strategy for getting a job or tenure. Instead, write. If you do better in community, find or start a writing group on campus for faculty of color. Only offer to start one if it would benefit you. Merge your teaching, research, and service as much as you can. Finally, here is one piece of advice that I was given early in my career that I still live by: don’t burn bridges—you never know who you might need later. Thank you for sticking this out. I hope it was worth your time to read this. While you are waiting them out, take your own side, and remember that when you can’t that feeling is not imposter syndrome. Put on your noise-canceling headphones and open your laptop. And for God’s sake, take your own side.

Mariana Alessandri

Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) | Website

Mariana Alessandri is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Mariana writes public philosophy in defense of dark moods and against toxic positivity. Night Vision: Seeing Ourselves Through Dark Moods is her first book, and it aims to persuade readers to rethink anger, sadness, anxiety, grief, and depression. She lives with two tesoros and a spouse with whom she founded RGV PUEDE, a nonprofit whose mission is to promote Dual Language Education in South Texas public schools. You can learn more at www.marianaalessandri.com and on Instagram @mariana.alessandri