-
41Making sense: The multistability of oppression and the importance of intersectionalityIn Namita Goswami, Maeve O'Donovan & Lisa Yount (eds.), Why race and gender still matter: An intersectional approach, Pickering and Chatto. pp. 43-58. 2014.
-
33Inheriting Patricia Hill Collins’s Black Feminist epistemologyEthnic and Racial Studies 38 (13). 2015.In this paper, I begin to construct an inheritance map for the epistemological insights in Patricia Hill Collins’s book Black Feminist Thought. An inheritance map attempts to take stock of what one has been given in a particular project and what one inherits as work yet to do. Here I outline that Black Feminist Thought demonstrates that knowledge has no proper subject, while leaving a project to imagine black feminist epistemology outside of ascriber dynamics.
-
45XIII—Dear Octavia ButlerProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 123 (3): 327-346. 2023.One of Octavia Butler’s common sites of exploration concerns the impact of parenting on her main characters. She appeared to locate reproduction and child-rearing as parts of human life with great potentials for transformed futures. From a perspective of intergenerational survival, that hope appears perfectly reasonable. In this letter to Butler, I put the goal of intergenerational survival into question as an existential mandate by querying its relationship to gestative capture. Gestative captu…Read more
-
19Environmental Justice, Unknowability and Unqualified AffectabilityEthics and the Environment 18 (2): 55-79. 2013.Environmental justice seeks fairness in how environmental burdens and risks are visited on poor people, women, communities of color, Indigenous peoples, minorities, and citizens of developing countries. It also concerns whether members of these same groups have fair access to environmental goods such as urban green spaces, forested areas, and clean water. Environmental goods extend, also, to opportunities to benefit from enterprises such as tourism and green infrastructure (Shrader-Frechette 200…Read more
-
14Agreeing to Disagree, Perhaps? A Commentary on Naomi Zack, "The Ethics and Mores of Race"Radical Philosophy Review 15 (2): 347-352. 2012.
-
380On the Costs of Socially Relevant Philosophy Papers: A ReflectionJournal of Social Philosophy 53 (4): 454-472. 2019.Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.
-
1414Contested Terrains of Women of Color_ and _Third World WomenHypatia 32 (3): 731-742. 2017.This piece contextualizes a discussion by liminal feminists on the identifiers ‘women of color’ and ‘Third World women’ that emerged from some uncomfortable and constructive conversations at the 2015 FEAST conference. I focus on concerns of marginalization and gatekeeping that are far too often reiterated within the uneasy racial dynamics among feminist philosophers.
-
12Querying Leonard Harris' Insurrectionist StandardsTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 49 (1): 74-92. 2013.
-
142On the Politics of CoalitionFeminist Philosophy Quarterly 3 (2): 1-16. 2017.In the wake of continued structural asymmetries between women of color and white feminisms, this essay revisits intersectional tensions in Catharine MacKinnon’s Toward a Feminist Theory of the State while exploring productive spaces of coalition. To explore such spaces, we reframe Toward a Feminist Theory of the State in terms of its epistemological project and highlight possible synchronicities with liberational features in women-of-color feminisms. This is done, in part, through an analysis of…Read more
-
37Moi, féministe noire : Pour qui je me prends?Diogène 235 (3/4): 109-129. 2012.In this paper, I offer a partial picture of my conceptual location as a US black feminist, professional philosopher and, by doing so, illustrate one of the ways Africana philosophy is being shaped and engaged. I offer a portrait of my conceptual location by identifying a value shared by some ‘anti-theory’ black feminists and some Africana professional philosophers in the US that ultimately recommends a consistent engagement in black feminist/philosophical praxis.
-
1399Epistemic Oppression, Resistance, and ResurgenceContemporary Political Theory 21 (2): 283-314. 2022.Epistemologies have power. They have the power not only to transform worlds, but to create them. And the worlds that they create can be better or worse. For many people, the worlds they create are predictably and reliably deadly. Epistemologies can turn sacred land into ‘resources’ to be bought, sold, exploited, and exhausted. They can turn people into ‘labor’ in much the same way. They can not only disappear acts of violence but render them unnamable and unrecognizable within their conceptual a…Read more
-
1971984: A Love LetterSouthern Journal of Philosophy 59 (1): 28-46. 2021.Dear Kris, I know you will read this letter if it ever manages to get to you. You like reading. I’m not sure what you’ll think of it though. I just know I had to make this attempt to talk to you about the summer of 1984. There are some things you and I come to know in the summer of 1984 that will take us 35 years to learn to talk about. They were not an easy 35 years. And I want to help change that.
-
74Another Letter Long DelayedPhilosophical Topics 46 (2): 51-69. 2018.This paper is an effort toward conceptual transparency around toxic inclusivity in academic feminism and the kinds of care it lacks toward, what amounts to, bad knowledge production practices. In this paper, we claim that some of the forms of reductive inclusion that ought to be avoided are epistemologically unsound practices that propagate disempowering, false, and/or distortive messages about targets of inclusion. We take reductive inclusion to be inclusion that treats the targets of inclusion…Read more
-
36On the Way to Decolonization in a Settler Colony: Re-introducing Black Feminist Identity PoliticsAlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples 14 (3): 190-199. 2018.In this paper, I explain Black feminist identity politics as a practice that is ‘on the way’ to settler decolonization in a US context for the fact that it makes demands that we attend to our “originating” stories and, in doing so, 1) generate potential for difficult coalitions for decolonization in settler colonial USA and 2) promoting a range of refusals (Simpson 2014) that aid in resisting the completion of settler colonialism in North America, which is still an uncompleted project. Ultimatel…Read more
-
322Tales from an apostatePhilosophical Issues 29 (1): 69-83. 2019.Here I outline an often under-appreciated position within Anglo-analytic epistemology, that of the apostate to operative metaphilosophical constraints. To help identify and promote awareness of metaphilosophical apostacy, here, I describe the form of metaphilosophical apostacy that I practice in Anglo-analytic epistemology (AAE). My apostasy with respect to AAE begins with significant, metaphilosophical divergences or deep senses of incongruence. A metaphilosophical divergence, on my account, re…Read more
-
307Accumulating Epistemic PowerPhilosophical Topics 46 (1): 129-154. 2018.On December 3, 2014, in a piece entitled “White America’s Scary Delusion: Why Its Sense of Black Humanity Is So Skewed,” Brittney Cooper criticizes attempts to deem Black rage at state-sanctioned violence against Black people “unreasonable.” In this paper, I outline a problem with epistemology that Cooper highlights in order to explore whether beliefs can wrong. My overall claim is there are difficult-to-defeat arguments concerning the “legitimacy” of police slayings against Black people that ar…Read more
-
201Distinguishing Knowledge Possession and Knowledge Attribution: The Difference Metaphilosophy MakesPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 96 (2): 475-482. 2018.
-
107On intellectual diversity and differences that may not make a differenceEthics and Education 13 (1): 123-140. 2018.Calls for diversity in higher education have been ongoing for, at least, a century. Today, the diversity movement in higher education is in danger of being co-opted in the US by a move to make ‘intellectual diversity,’ i.e. the diversity of political opinion, on par with the cultural and historical diversity that one finds within differently racialized populations. Intellectual diversity is thought to track different modes of thinking between conservatives and progressives that need policy inter…Read more
-
111Theorizing Jane Crow, Theorizing UnknowabilitySocial Epistemology 31 (5): 417-430. 2017.In this essay, I offer an epistemological accounting of Pauli Murray’s idea of Jane Crow dynamics. Jane Crow, in my estimation, refers to clashing supremacy systems that provide targets for subordination while removing grounds to demand recourse for said subordination. As a description of an oppressive state, it is an idea of subordination with an epistemological engine. Here, I offer an epistemological reading of Jane Crow dynamics by theorizing three imbricated conditions for Jane Crow, i.e. t…Read more
-
9“Thinking Familiar with the Interstitial”: An IntroductionHypatia 29 (1): 1-17. 2014.It's not that we haven't always been here, since there was a here. It is that the letters of our names have been scrambled when they were not totally erased, and our fingertips upon the handles of history have been called the random brushings of birds. (Lorde , ix) Because… [racialized peoples'] dehumanization has not been successful, conceiving of self and others and their exercise of themselves both against dehumanization and toward liberatory possibilities has meant living double lives backed…Read more
-
116In Search of Tanzania: Are Effective Epistemic Practices Sufficient for Just Epistemic Practices?Southern Journal of Philosophy 46 (S1): 52-64. 2008.
-
203Word to the Wise: Notes on a Black Feminist Metaphilosophy of RacePhilosophy Compass 11 (2): 69-74. 2016.It is not uncommon to ask a race and gender-based question of a philosopher of race, only to hear ‘I do race, not gender’. To the ears of many Black feminists, this sounds, to be frank, utterly foolish. Here, I identify three metaphilosophical assumptions, i.e. the disaggregation, fundamentality and transcendental assumptions, that aid in underwriting the ability to use the statement, ‘I do race, not gender’, as a means for avoiding gender-based questions in ‘race talks’. Then, I gesture to a re…Read more
-
87Curious Disappearances: Affectability Imbalances and Process‐Based InvisibilityHypatia 29 (4): 873-888. 2014.In this paper, we analyze the recent public scandal involving Nafissatou Diallo and Dominique Strauss-Kahn to offer an account of the role affectability imbalances play in process-based invisibility. Process-based invisibilities, in this paper, refer to predictable narrative gaps within public narratives that can be aptly described as disappearances. We demonstrate that compromised, complex social identities, maladjusted webs of reciprocity, and a failure to fully appreciate basic affectability …Read more
-
219How is this Paper Philosophy?Comparative Philosophy 3 (1): 3-29. 2012.This paper answers a call made by Anita Allen to genuinely assess whether the field of philosophy has the capacity to sustain the work of diverse peoples. By identifying a pervasive culture of justification within professional philosophy, I gesture to the ways professional philosophy is not an attractive working environment for many diverse practitioners. As a result of the downsides of the culture of justification that pervades professional philosophy, I advocate that the discipline of professi…Read more
-
143Tracking Epistemic Violence, Tracking Practices of SilencingHypatia 26 (2): 236-257. 2011.Too often, identifying practices of silencing is a seemingly impossible exercise. Here I claim that attempting to give a conceptual reading of the epistemic violence present when silencing occurs can help distinguish the different ways members of oppressed groups are silenced with respect to testimony. I offer an account of epistemic violence as the failure, owing to pernicious ignorance, of hearers to meet the vulnerabilities of speakers in linguistic exchanges. Ultimately, I illustrate that by…Read more
-
79A Cautionary Tale: On Limiting Epistemic OppressionFrontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 33 (1): 24-47. 2012.
-
University of Michigan, Ann ArborDepartment of Philosophy
Afroamerican and African StudiesProfessor
Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Black Feminism |
Metaphilosophy |
PhilPapers Editorships
Black Feminism |