The Feminine as Structural Problem
Twelve years ago, I committed to a life in philosophy—knowing it meant poverty and prolonged adolescence. Years of it. Maybe forever, given the job...
Feminist Theory in Times of Racial Terror: Spillers, Hartman, Snorton
Feminist theory provides means for unshackling ourselves from restrictive cultural and social rules and practices, when it comes to gender relations and identities. But...
Why Engage with the Past? Philosophy and Its History
In philosophy, you quite immediately notice a striking difference between content taught and philosophical research, for example, when looking at how philosophy departments are...
When Gender Policing Backfires
Recently, I was coming home from a conference, and I had just gotten through TSA at an airport that I had been to before....
Indigenous Antif*scism
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s work has been crucial to our understanding of the subjective and objective transformations necessary not merely to respond to colonization but...
The Limits of “Indoctrination” Talk
Many recent debates about education have focused on the idea of indoctrination. The following dialectic is by now familiar: someone points to a concept,...
A Soul From Whom Nothing Can be Taken: Marguerite Porete—Mystic and Philosopher
Marguerite Porete said nothing as her life was taken from her. Or so goes the legend. The facts, according to reliable sources, are these:...
Tending to Ballroom: An Inquiry of Wayward Improvisation and Cultural Cooptation
“If everybody went to balls and did less drugs, it’d be a fun world wouldn’t it?”
I have only seen Jennie Livingston’s 1990 documentary...
The Cost of Keeping the Peace: Relationship Advice and Oppressive Norms
Many of us have probably heard the following pieces of advice when navigating conflicts in an interpersonal relationship. Pick your battles: don’t make an...
Writing Fungal Flesh
We don’t always realize the damage our words can do to others. Lately, I’ve been thinking about how rarely affective correspondences are taken into...