Philosophers Can Be Fun(ny), Too!*

Tonight I finished reading Tina Fey's Bossypants, and yes, it's worth your time to read it. Especially if you are a woman. Especially if you have other work you should be doing. Especially if you are depressed. Especially if you have to eat some food tomorrow.  Because it's not only very funny, but also very inspiring.

Before I had even finished the book I wanted to write a post about the little insert on pages 84-85 entitled, "The Rules of Improvisation That Will Change Your Life and Reduce Belly Fat." I used to know these rules thanks to my brief stint with improv during high school when I was part of the theater freaks clique (yes, I used to call us that because theater people are weird, eclectic, and very often queer and those are all reasons for why they should be loved even more), but I was so happy to be reminded of them again because, as Tina notes, these are some good rules for life. They are:

1) Agree and Say "Yes", which means that you should respect what the other person has created and start with an open mind about where your scene will go.
2) Say "Yes, and...", which means that after agreeing you are to add something of your own. Don't be afraid to initiate and make your own contributions. They are worthwhile and will help keep things moving.
3) Make Statements, which means don't just ask questions about the scene, thereby putting extra pressure on the other person. Instead of simply raising questions and pointing out obstacles, be part of the solution.
4) There Are No Mistakes, only opportunities. Obviously, this means that what might be feared as a mistake could actually present the best opportunity for something really original, creative, and new. A happy accident. A new discovery, and something that could turn out to be really, really good.

If you stopped reading right now, I won't be hurt because if everyone lived by The Rules of Improv alone, the world would probably be a much better place. I envision a world with lots more collaboration and experimentation where statements that something is "random" or "awkward" would actually carry meaning again. (You should still buy the book though.)

If you are still reading because you are curious about what I finally decided to write upon finishing the book, well first, thank you for your perseverance. Second, I want to write about writing, philosophy, and how I wish I could be more funny like my friends. I'll start with the last one.

I have loads of funny friends. The handful of people from my high school theater clique with whom I am still in touch have, like me, gone to college and earned their degrees. Unlike me, they continued doing improv and sketch comedy over the past number of years, moved to big cities like Chicago and LA, and are really just a few laughs from the right people away from making it big time and living the dream. As a result of all that improvising, their levels of comedic timing and originality have undoubtedly exponentially eclipsed my own. (If you haven't heard of the Luke, Lee, and Matt Barats then I assure you that someday you will. And that someday is today, because now I expect for you to look up their respective stuff on YouTube.) Where they are acting and performing for live audiences multiple times a week, I have spent the years since high school graduation attending bigger and bigger universities while living in smaller and smaller towns, all the while reading dense (and mostly incredibly boring) philosophical texts from old men of centuries past. The only outlet for my humor is in poorly referenced jokes while teaching when I forget that my students are of the generation that was born in the early nineties, so they hardly know who Mel Gibson is or that "Willow" was actually a really scary movie. It makes me feel old and completely out of touch.
 

Over the years, while I have accumulated an ever-increasing library of books by dead people on things like death (so not funny...unless you pick any random page of Heidegger's Being and Time to read aloud and give a little chuckle at how utterly and ridiculously difficult it is to understand his writing (perhaps only philosophers will understand that reference, and perhaps that was actually Heidegger playing a joke on us that we're all just too dumb/take ourselves too seriously to get)), I have been fortunate enough to continue meeting more funny people. One of my friends is a super hip-artsy-cool lady who's rubbed elbows with the Groundlings peeps (think the cast of Bridesmaids if you are unfamiliar), who is now utilizing her openness for play in psychotherapy for kids. One of my other best friends' first response to the question, "What is the most important thing to you that you must share in common with your partner?" was that they needed to be able to play together, to act silly, to talk to one another in ridiculous voices. When I first met her, I walked into the living room of her one-bedroom apartment to find her making a fort while listening to The Sound of Music. Maybe that's not funny ha-ha, but it is fun-fun-fun-fun, especially for someone who at the time was twenty-four and a doctoral student.

She was also wearing this.

And finally, I tend to date really funny people. My boyfriend, who happens to also have some pretty hilarious friends, was singing Tenacious D's "F*** Her Gently" like a professional to a whole bar the night that we met. During our first real conversation with one another, we discovered that he was already familiar with some of my previously mentioned friends' videos on YouTube. I'm not surprised by this at all now given that he checks up on Collegehumor.com in the morning like it's the source for daily funny news, has introduced me to videos of  amazingly hilarious sketch comedy duos, would love to make a career out of doing his own sketch comedy if his band doesn't hit it big and he decides to not dig in people's mouths for money (I mean, he wants be a dentist, not that he doesn't know that picking pockets would be more lucrative), and he makes me laugh all of the time.

There are other funny people in my life, but I'll stop describing them here so that I don't make myself feel any worse about my decisions to become a perpetual academic nerd who hasn't had time to watch Billy Madison or Anchorman enough to laugh when my boyfriend quotes them or to know from experience that Modern Family is actually a really quality television show (I fake the latter when my grandmother talks to me about how great the show is, and when the former happens, I'm usually just met with countenances of subtle disappointment, mostly from myself to myself.) But before this turns into a pity party, let me quickly turn to the other two things I said I would talk about: writing and philosophy.

The short of what I am about to say in everything that follows is this: Perhaps it is the case that philosophy doesn't have to be boring and writing philosophy doesn't have to dry/tedious/painful/anxiety-producing, but perhaps reading philosophy, writing philosophy, and teaching philosophy can be fun....or even FUNNY.

Just because philosophy tends to be very "intellectual" doesn't mean that it's somehow above comedy--trust me, all of funny friends are as equally smart as they are hilarious. Nor is it the case that comedy can't address really important social and political issues--think of all the comedians who have been able to see the really effed up shiz in society and then make other people see it by getting them to first laugh at it (Two relevant examples most people recognize: Jon Stewart, whom I love, and his satirical counter-part, Stephen Colbert, whose early days on the Report proved how scary it is when Americans are unable to tell the difference between satire and right-wing neoconservativism. And don't forget my feminist, anti-racist, queer-mingling, even-less-bourgie-than-Fergie inspiration, Tina Fey. That's really why you should buy and read her book). Without saying that philosophy is not seriously valuable for personal and social change, perhaps there lacks an easily-identified or readily-produced overlap between philosophy and humor because philosophers often take themselves and what they do too seriously.

Fortunately, I can think of two exceptions, and they are not new names to appear on my blog. The first time I ever heard Charles Mills speak about his book, The Racial Contract (an extremely important book about very serious matters, mind you), he opened with a little routine about how, thanks to an epistemology of ignorance about the workings of global White Supremacy, one might be led to think that Africans, Native Americans, and everyone else in the world said, "Oh hello, White People! We are so happy to see you!" and then offered up their labor, their land, and everything else they had, like freedom and a quality of life, as a welcoming gift. Charles then noted how philosophy could perhaps be done a lot more like stand-up. I think that is a really good thought. If you've never been to a philosophy conference or heard someone give a philosophy talk (which actually means they just read aloud the paper they wrote in front of you for AN HOUR), then trust me on this. You would most definitely want it to be more like stand-up. I heard Charles give the same presentation about six months later. He opened with the same joke. It was still funny and his presentation was still a pleasure. And, truthfully, there are very few philosophy talks that I would actually enjoy sitting through a second time.  

The other funny philosopher who comes to mind is Ladelle McWhorter. Del is a philosophical role-model and inspiration to me in many, many ways (look around this blog and you will find her name everywhere), but one way that she inspires which I have not mentioned before is in how she writes her books. Like Charles, she's easy to listen to when she gives a paper, but like hardly anyone else, reading her writing is challenging, thought-provoking, inspiring, intensely philosophical, and really, really funny. Probably thanks to her Southern upbringing, Del can tell a great story. But it probably comes down to the simple combination of her terrific wit, honesty, and an unmatched willingness to speak in her own voice that makes Del's work so damn funny and fun to read. There are times when her sarcasm drips off of the page, and if one is diligent enough to check her footnotes, one quickly learns that footnotes can be so much more than places to put bibliographic references and self-indulgent digressions. They can turn reading philosophy into an activity that's more like a conversation with a really smart, but really weird friend. The kind of friend who throws strange tidbits of information in a story that aren't really necessary but that actually make the conversation way more interesting.

Charles and Del are two contemporary philosophers who make me laugh, and they are two who have been absolutely integral to my own ways of thinking about very important philosophical and political issues like racism and homophobia. And my man Nietzsche, well, he may have been really depressed and lonely, but he was also a syphilitic genius, and all of that together makes Ecce Homo a super entertaining read. Not just that, it's also the book where Nietzsche sheds the most clarifying light on what he was up to in all of his previous works. And one thing that is often mentioned about my other philosophical homeboy, Foucault, is that he would laugh in response to a lot of questions people would ask him about his work and what we should do. He read Nietzsche. I read them both. And I think there's a reason for my affinity towards them because, while I would never feel comfortable saying that I am the funniest person in the room, especially not when I'm with my friends and perhaps only if I'm the only one in the room, I would pretty comfortably guess that I might be the one who laughs the hardest, the loudest, and the most.

 

Why is that important?

Well, to show you how redundantly unoriginal I am (because I've already blogged about this a number of times before), Lynne Huffer writes, "As Nietzsche affirms, 'there seems to be nothing more worth taking seriously' than morality, a territory whose excavation will render the future rewards 'of a long, brave, industrious, and subterranean seriousness.' Among those rewards will be what Nietzsche names as cheerfulness. Such hope in cheerfulness is something Foucault and Nietzsche shared, as Deleuze reminds us in his description of Foucault's inimitable laughter. So perhaps the quintessentially Foucauldian cheerfulness of a self-shattering, life-affirming laughter will be the reward of a practice of thinking Nietzsche calls, in his own queer language, 'a gay science'" (Mad for Foucault, 186).

It's probably a consequence of being personally and philosophically influenced by the personalities and works of Charles Mills, Ladelle McWhorter, Nietzsche, and Foucault (not to mention all of my hysterical, non-philosopher friends), that I feel strangely comfortable with what some people have noted as my very "casual" style--which perhaps is a more polite way of noting that I have insisted on doing things (teaching/writing/philosophy in general) how I want to do them simply because I want to do them that way, regardless of how other people say one should do it. (There are other ways that people have described this attitude; put in terms of non-verbal communication, I think it involves thumbs or at least one finger.) Really, though, it's simply that I try to not take myself and academic philosophy too seriously, which again, doesn't mean that I don't think that academic philosophy can't do very important and meaningful work. I just mean that I think it's okay to have fun and enjoy it, too, and it may even be that doing so makes our philosophy better.

 

When I teach, I often....I mean, on a daily basis, I say really outrageous things to my students. In class, they laugh, I laugh, we laugh, and quite a lot actually (no, not all of my jokes are about Willow, and yes, sometimes I can craft a pretty witty little quip). I think that my approach to philosophy and my personal style helps make class fun, exciting, and engaging. I enjoy teaching, and I think that my students often enjoy learning about and doing philosophy with me. So I may not be doing improv in Chicago with the best of them, and I will probably never get to realize my childhood dream of being on Saturday Night Live, but that doesn't mean that I don't also have plenty of opportunities all of the time to practice being a funnier person. My students might not appreciate being the guinea pigs of my slow comedic development, but somebody else down the road might really appreciate that he or she didn't have to be the one to grimace and shake her or his head at all of my bad jokes. Sorry, reader, you're still a part of the grimace and shake-head audience of the  present. 

I know, I still haven't gotten to the bit on my own writing yet.

If it isn't obvious by now, and I think it really ought to be, I am seriously considering the possibilities for how to write philosophy in a way that mimics how I teach philosophy. I've noted before that I can write on this blog in one sitting for hours on end without hitting the walls of my writer's block, and that maybe I could just write my dissertation in pieces on here (kind of like what started to happen with this post). But I was probably putting too much emphasis on the formatting differences between the encouraginly small-ish text box that I see when posting here on my blog and the blank Word document that spans the monitor screen when I sit to write my "real" work. Maybe it's less a matter of what medium invites my writing and more a matter of how I write at all.

When I teach my class, I'm totally myself. I'm a whole person and I let my students see that. I'm honest, I make mistakes, and actually, my best classes are often when I don't prepare lectures but instead improvise to facilitate discussions after my students give their presentations. When I write, though, I often feel restricted by what is "appropriate" in terms of structure, voice, style, and language. I usually feel disconnected from my academic papers when I go back and read them again months later. They hardly ever sound like me (and yeah, I even think that they can be pretty boring).

So here I sit, having read Tina Fey tonight and not enough on theories of affect, having written almost 3,000 words in one sitting and hardly any at all in the past week and a half on my (still not enough to even be called a sufficient rough draft of a) dissertation prospectus, but also feeling really inspired and excited about philosophy. What's a girl like me to do, huh?







*In case you didn't know, the use of parenthesis to create a play on words and meanings in the title or body of a philosophical piece is now commonly employed and widely considered a mark of one's complexity of thought, of one's affiliation with the traditions of post-structuralism or feminist theory, or simply as evidence of one's desperate desire to prove that she can be clever, too, just as clever as her non-philosopher friends.

Revisiting Philifesophy with a Smile

It's been four months since I sat for my comps and defended my exam, which means that it's been four months since I last read a book and since I last committed myself to the daily grind of doing academic philosophy. Remember when I decided to give myself "a week or two off" and not worry about work but rather really allow myself to enjoy a break and drive across the country with my best friend? Well, the break that was supposed to only be a couple of weeks grew into a month. I thought that when I started summer teaching I would be forced back into a routine that would be more conducive for writing and research. Turns out it was, but in a different way. I wrote more on my blog. And I learned a whole lot more than I would have anticipated from teaching. I did not, however, return to my old routines of doing philosophy.

Instead, in May I found myself at the beginning of new relationship. Although unexpected, as the weeks passed I continued to allow myself to be and feel more like myself than ever before with this one person. Without a doubt, this has definitely been one of the greatest things that I could have done for myself over this summer. In terms of my happiness, my goals, and my hopes for my future, it may have been one of the most important things I could have done as well, for I have learned more about the things I think and write about all of the time--such as experience, affect, trust, vulnerability, identity, relationality--by simply being with and in them than I really thought possible for me right now. And it's been easy. Super easy.

And very, very fun.

So with respect to the other key elements of my philifesophy, I have been experiencing things that are very important for my life and my research. In my dissertation I want to talk about positive affective experiences that can make us healthier, happier, stronger, more vibrant beings, and fortunately, when I think of the past four months of this summer and this new relationship, such words are constantly apt descriptors along with:  exuberance, gaiety, cheerfulness, laughter, pleasure, and play. All the same words that are central to my philosophy have been thematic of my personal and interpersonal experiences this summer, and perhaps in this way, even though I wasn't doing much reading or academic writing, this connects back to one crucial part of doing philosophy that I identified back in May--that there are many ways that we can and should take care of ourselves, and that life is necessary for philosophy. If philosophy is the art of life, then it should come as no surprise that to do philosophy well, we ought to be living well, too. One affects the other, and it goes both ways.

It's a little strange to think of this past summer as a gift to myself, but in a way, it was. I allowed myself to not do the work that I had fully intended on doing, and I surprised myself by directing my attention to other important parts of me that have been wanting to be cultivated for a really long time now. Parts of me that I have been tending to already, but that didn't yet have their opportunity to grow. When some rich, fertile soil presents itself though, it's very hard to not seize the day and attempt to put down some roots. Such an act can be scary at times, and there are risks involved (echoes of Nietzsche ring out to me!). And sometimes timing is everything. This time, it worked out. I had long open summer days filled with friendship, dancing, adventures, cooking, traveling, movie watching, and talking. And feeling at home with another person. I don't know when another opportunity to be so free and open with my time and with myself will present itself. I am so glad that it did. And I am very grateful that I took put myself into it.

So another month went by, and then another month. My summer class ended. And now, the fall semester has begun. I had my first class today, and I have been kind of hoping all along that the routine and rhythm of the fall semester will pick me up and put me back into the swing of things so that I can actually get some "real" work done. Just like I had hoped from my summer teaching schedule. But I am a bit worried that maybe it won't. Maybe I'll stay really relaxed, really grounded, really healthy. Maybe this relationship will continue and I'll continue to feel balanced, playful, and prioritize my time in ways that I wouldn't have ever anticipated two or three years ago. Isn't it weird that my "maybes" seem to indicate that these feelings and graduate work are mutually exclusive?

And/or/but maybe this will be the best thing for my writing. Maybe I'll be writing from a place of health, exuberance, and joy, and that will positively affect the work that I do. (That's what I've been suggesting for quite some time now, so I hope that it is the case...for a handful of reasons.) So, after a good, healthy, wonderful, and replenishing four months of summer, I am trying to prepare myself for a fourth year of graduate school. I feel healthy, excited, calm, and confident. And I am happy. I am smiling.

I hope that things (can and do) continue like this.

You've Gotta Give 'Em Hope

As indicated by my more recent posts, teaching has been on my mind. It's in large part thanks to the students in my summer course that I have realized one more thing:

You've gotta give 'em hope.

In this class we've spent six weeks talking about really heavy stuff like disciplinary norms of compulsory heterosexuality, gender policing, insecurities of masculinity, and the the interplays of racism and other forms of domination and oppression. Although it's called "Philosophy of Love and Sex," I've made it about how attitudes, assumptions, beliefs, pleasures, choices, desires, and some of the most basic parts of our experience that are usually taken for granted work within a historical, social, and very political framework that privileges some and restricts the freedom of others. Sure talking about sex for 75 minutes every day sounds like a lot of fun for most 18-21 year olds, which is why I think most people initially sign up for the class, but after weeks like this past one where the focus of our attention shifts to the brutality of transphobic violence, it becomes pretty clear that even though we often have a lot of laughs and a good amount of fun, we are always talking about serious stuff. Matters of life and death. Pretty soon, once one begins to traverse the path of a philosophical undertaking, where historical narratives about how and why things are the way that they are become increasingly complicated and interwoven, the structures of normalization and oppression can quickly become overwhelming.

For it's not enough to simply critically explore the nature of heterosexuality, but also all of the other kinds of sexualities that people have like bisexuality, homosexuality, pan- and asexuality. And then we add issues of race, culture, gender, ability and disability, intersexuality, transgender embodiments, class, and how these factors shift the meaning and experience of sexual identities in ever more complex ways. At the same time, notions of science as a normalizing discourse, religion, and history are cast under the skeptical light, while what counts as natural bodies, reality, and even truth itself are also revealed to be elements of a much larger network of institutions and discourses that serve particular, and political, ends. And yes, even standard appeals to evolution are no longer accepted at face value.

This is a review of six weeks worth of material for my summer course

For some people, all of this critical thinking is just too exhausting. Thinking and talking about these issues takes work, dedication, and if one really tries to untangle the issues, there's a risk of throwing everything into question. Even what you think and believe and know about yourself. Or perhaps especially what you think and believe and thought you knew about yourself. Yes, sometimes people would just rather not know because it's "easier."  And sometimes some people describe these issues as being "real downers," and they criticize those who do dedicate their time and energy to bringing these issues to light as being too sensitive, too dramatic, or overly politically-correct. If nothing else, people who focus on such "downer issues," like forms of oppression, might be accused of being bitter, resentful, miserable people who have to blame others for their own struggles. Such attitudes reflect a general dismissal of the issues and what's at stake concerning people's lives (but more accurately, it's probably the lives of others). It also can reflect an attitude of apathy.

These responses came up this week in Jose Medina's public talk as part of PIKSI (Philosophy in a Key Summer Institute) at Penn State (Here's a link to the website). In his paper, "Invisible Identities, Social Blindness, and Irresponsible Ignorance" Medina noted that addressing social ignorance about particular communities (such as the Jewish Community at Vanderbilt) requires addressing cognitive gaps--what people really don't know--as well as the affective lacks, such as when people learn about something but then respond with apathy and don't care about the issues at hand. This notion of apathy became a topic of discussion in the following Q&A session, and the challenge seemed to be this: How do you get those who have the privilege of not needing to know or care about the practices and experiences of other groups to actually own up to some degree of epistemic responsibility and begin to care about how their own identities stand in relation to those of others? When we are talking about people in privileged positions, whose privileged status may actually be better served by not knowing these relationships which often involve the domination and oppression of marginalized groups, apathy becomes a real problem.

While apathetic responses are certainly problematic, I don't think that the challenge of motivating social change and increased political sensitivity ends there. Even after apathy, there's the sheer size of the struggles and complicated relationships between related forms of oppression that are, as if by their very nature as oppressive systems, institutions, and discourses, disempowering.

Fortunately, in my experience of teaching, and in this summer class in particular, many of my students have managed to identify and appreciate the individual pieces of this puzzle we have discussed over the past few weeks. By the questions they ask and the insights they offer, I can also tell that many of them are able to see how the pieces fit together to make a bigger picture, an interrelated mosaic of seemingly disparate issues. And the better news is that many of them really seem to care. Few, if any, are overtly apathetic.

But as we approach the end of the summer session, I have been picking up the distinct sense that something else is creeping into the room. Not so much apathy, but rather something more like hopelessness and despair. But it's not just because they see how so many violent, dehumanizing acts affect the lives of real people, but rather because they do understand even more that these issues are not going to be easily resolved.  After unpacking and undermining some of our most basic assumptions, they are starting to realize the magnitude of what they did not know before (and by implication how much they still do not know), that the world and politics and history and how they have always gone about living their lives might be part of a historical narrative that they actually don't want to be a part of anymore.

The problem is that now, they don't know what to do about it. Or they may think that there is nothing that they can do about it.

So, at this point in the semester, it's not uncommon for students to write a sophisticated re-telling of the current state of affairs, again, evidencing a deeply developed critical perspective, only to follow this up by stating, "But change is unlikely because it would take so much to make any difference at the level of society and culture as a whole."  And class discussions are at risk of dissolving into empty repetitions of all the right words, "It's because of heteronormative patriarchal society's values and our dependence on binary oppositions that people feel threatened by the identities of others because they reveal the instability of faithfully assumed "truths" about sex and gender." (Lest one fear that I am only creating queer little feminist monsters in my classes, the vacuity of statements like this concerns me almost as much as when students say that transwomen are really just men trying to be women by wearing dresses).  And at this point in the semester,  even when the most unapathetic students in my classes on race and diversity or sex and love echo the refrain, "Why can't we all just get along?!" I assure them that no matter how many times they plead for equality, peace, and justice, simply begging for it does very, very little.

This is what I mean when I say that our challenge as educators of ethical and epistemic responsibility goes beyond the mere apathy of some (and this relates back to this post regarding the end of the world). One of the biggest roadblocks for change is revealed when even the most passionately and critically insightful minds and bodies feel disempowered, overwhelmed, and hopeless, like the very, very hard work they may do will all be for very,very little return, like any act of resistance is negligible because the few who care enough to fight are fighting discursive and institutional regimes that dwarf Goliath. But as I mentioned before, it is probably the nature of the beast itself, as if by design, that systems of oppression leave those who might work to resist them feeling disempowered. The challenge, then, seems to be finding ways to empower people and show them that they do make a difference, that their effort is worthwhile, that change is possible, and in fact, that it's already happening around them.

This thought for me relates to my interest in affective politics and affective relationships with philosophy. On one hand, simply undertaking the task of continual, self-reflexive critical thought is itself doing something to make changes. But it doesn't just have to start and end and stay within that one individual's changing mind because, on the other hand, these sorts of practices can serve to empower people to find ways to relate to themselves and others in new ways, and to live and be and act and speak in new ways that also affect others. All of which can be manifested at various levels, from grassroots political activism to how one talks to little kids.

The worst thing that we can do as educators is fall into our own sense of despair and hopelessness by believing that people don't or won't care. I think it is gravely mistaken, and obviously counterproductive, to underestimate the capacity for people to become invested in certain issues.  Even with my limited experiences while teaching, and thanks to the feedback from strangers on the Internet about the handful videos I've posted, I'm continually inspired and encouraged to keep doing what I do because people do care. Many people want to learn. And they want to think. And they want to develop the language and tools to be able to change the world that they live in and the experiences that they (can) have.

Our task, perhaps our responsibility, is to give them hope that this is possible.

Teaching Against Evolution

For over a year now I've had mounting suspicions about Evolution, but since I know very little about evolutionary theory, the most I can really say about why I raise an eyebrow is that, well, maybe Darwin isn't 100% right about heritability, genetic fitness, natural selection, and the survival of the fittest. And yes, I fully acknowledge that beyond those "catch phrases," there is literally very little else that I am able to say. I don't know the lingo, let alone the theory, to say much more about it. And I think that's significant for reasons that I will later explain.

My doubts, vague as they are, are not, however, leading me down the path toward Creationism. Actually, it's even more ridiculous, naive, or foolhardy than that because I want to challenge evolution on its own terms. But let's face it, I've been educated in the liberal arts and I'm not in a position to read or study enough to intelligently argue against the droves of scientists who have been trained to revere Darwin as the evolutionary king of the life sciences. That's why people with science backgrounds scoff (usually as politely as possible) if I even mention my rebellious plans. To speak on their levels would require lots of education, but while I'm finishing my own degree, the last thing I could imagine doing right now is getting myself up to speed in the basics of biology.

For now, then, I've decided to let this project of identifying the problems and finding the loop-holes in Darwinism sit for a later date, but I do have him on the periphery of my mind. I allow my ears to perk up when my favorite podcasts mention Darwin and evolution, and I listen with an imaginatively skeptical ear for hints of where things could be understood differently. And much like I've done before with other philosophical hunches, I already purchased a four volume collection of Darwin's "greatest hits" earlier this summer. Ever since it arrived in the mail, the collection has been dutifully stationed on my kitchen table but the books remain entirely unopened. I don't want to force things between Darwin and me, but I do keep him close.

As Irony would have it, now that I've resigned myself to the fact that I won't be able to dive deep into the hard sciences for a good long while, which means that my chance at uncovering any new scientific breakthroughs will have to wait, evolution has only become an even bigger problem. In the past few weeks I have been teaching my summer class, "Philosophy of Love and Sex," and evolution has developed into nothing short of my theoretical and pedagogical arch-nemesis. This is because, when it comes to matters of sexuality and the related topics of sexual intercourse, men and women, and the pulls of our desires, my students seem to think that evolution can explain almost anything. It's like I am Bill Murray in a twisted philosopher's version of "Groundhog Day,"--no matter how hard we work one day to critically engage topics of sex and sexuality and how far I think we have traversed into new theoretically territory, by the next day, it's as if none of that ever happened. Once the discussions begin, we are back at square one. Back to evolution.

But just because one can play the evolutionary card doesn't mean that "evolution" is the best explanation, the whole explanation, or even a good explanation with which we should find ourselves content for why things are the way that they are or why people do the things that they do. In fact, I am beginning to realize that the more "acceptable" and comfortably satisfactory an "explanation" is, perhaps the more we ought to critically think about it again. I let my frustrations shine through last week in class after one student evidenced the typical, uncritical recourse to an argument from unquestionable, evolutionary natural facts. She defended herself by saying, "But it's the easiest way to explain why this happens." I said, "Yes, it is easy, but I don't want us to fall back into that so quickly." "But I can't think of any other reason if it's not evolution," she replied, herself now pretty visibly frustrated. To which I responded, "Perfect! All the more reason for us to think harder." I pointed to my head and said to the class, "Make it hurt!"

I feel that as a philosopher and an educator I have a certain kind of duty to direct my students towards their own greater intellectual freedom. (This is super hard.) I tell them from the beginning of the class that I don't ever need for them to agree with the texts that we read, but neither do I want to hear them explain why things are the way the way they are based on what they already thought before reading the material. The idea is to use the material so that we have a shared ground for our discussion and to provoke our thinking. Sometimes, it’s better if they disagree.  I tell them, "I don't want to know what you already think. I want you to demonstrate to me and the rest of the class that you are thinking." This is an incredibly difficult task for any educator, and it is made even more difficult since thinking is itself a really hard thing to do, especially for students if they haven't been shown what it means to really think or how to do it. Because evolution, day in and day out, has become one of the biggest obstacles to overcome in order to have real, genuine thinking in my class, I have become a lot less worried about evolutionary theory per se and much more concerned about the role of  "evolution" in our thinking.  So while I still may not be able to say much about evolution as a scientist, as a philosopher, this experience has led me to a few insights about "evolution."

One of the scariest parts about "evolution" is that, in a sense, my students are right about something: evolution can be used to "explain" almost anything. Consider the following:

1. Why is that most people are heterosexual? Because in order for the human species to perpetuate itself, men and women must procreate, so they are naturally attracted to one another.  The continuation of the human race depends on it, so it must be natural.
2. What is considered to be "real sex," and why? Well, when a man finally puts his penis in a woman's vagina (sorry to be so crude, but this is what they say...), that's sex. Anything else is at best just foreplay but not the real thing. At worse, anything else is unnatural and perverted, like when two guys have anal sex. This is because sex is for reproduction, and clearly, penis-in-vagina sex is the necessary element for making babies.
3. Why are the penis and the vagina recognized as the most obviously sexual body parts? Why not the breasts, the clitoris, the prostate gland, or any other area on one's body that could also be experienced as an erogenous zone? As stated before, because you need a penis and a vagina for biological reproduction.  Duh. The rest might be fun to play with, and having them played with might make one more interested in actually having sex, but all of that would in the interest of has-the-potential-for-baby-making sexual intercourse with a penis and a vagina.
3. Why is it that men seem to struggle more than women to be monogamous (Dan Savage is a huge fan of referring to "human nature" and evolution with this topic)? Because, by virtue of the sheer body mechanics of it all, men can "spread their seed" to an many, many women in one day, whereas if a woman gets pregnant, she can only select to mate with one man. So, clearly, men are on the prowl to propagate their genes to as many people as possible, while women will have to be choosier and just cling to the one man who gets her pregnant. 
4. Why is it that women are so frequently attracted to jerks and are less attracted to the nice guys? Because men are stronger and more powerful which, in terms of survival, means that they would be more capable at providing and protecting the young. A woman is then naturally attracted to men who can demonstrate their power, which these days means anything from muscles to money. 
5. Why do many women find it erotic to be "taken" by a man, or overpowered, even to the point of fantasizing about rape? Because women are weaker than men, and they have to be taken care of, eroticizing the power differences between men and women might make it more "enjoyable" for them to be where they naturally are; i.e., weaker than, and submissive to, men. If you are naturally going to be weaker and submissive, you might as well find it hot. (A couple of students even stated that because women are weaker when pregnant and they can't do as many things as they normally could, they need a strong man to take care of them. So, again, it's a matter of survival and protection over the young...no need to worry about basing such a view on the relatively short period of time in a woman's life during which, if she has ever babies, she is actually "weakened" by pregnancy...)

It's amazing to me how quickly my students can develop explanations like these to account for so many different phenomena.  The more I teach, the more wary I become when the first words out of someone’s mouth are “This is the case because...” or “The reason why is that...” since this just screams “I’m not going to take even a second to ponder the question itself.” More important to note, however, is that a very bizarre epistemological insight is revealed in how people who espouse such views often fail to see that there are at least two sides to the evolution coin. Claims to survival of the fittest and natural selection for the sake of biological reproduction can also be employed to argue in the other direction. For instance, homosexual behaviors can be found throughout the animal kingdom (thereby not just in the acts of sinners or pedophiles) which would seem to indicate that it is completely "natural" and not just a symptom of some prior trauma, disease, or the consequence of being exposed to gay culture or being raised by gay parents. Since homosexual behavior has been around throughout human history and across cultures, one would think that it would have been "bred" out by now if it was not somehow beneficial to the species. Perhaps, one could say, homosexual behavior hasn't disappeared on its own because it is actually good for the species by encouraging particular social bonds and the building of communities. Furthermore, biological reproduction can't be the only important end, at least in the sense that not everyone should be or would be driven to procreate (evolutionarily speaking). In fact, if everyone had babies, that would probably be to the detriment of the species, right? At least it would be in terms of overpopulation and the planet's carrying-capacity. So rather than specifying that homosexuals, people of "degenerate" races, or those with mental illnesses are the particularly unfit who should not be reproducing, perhaps we should question the idea that the main goal of our human existence is reproduction at all. What if it was something else, like pleasure? We could say instead, then, that the reason why humans have evolved to be such smart, rational, and technologically advanced creatures is so that we could come up with even more tools, toys, procedures, and contraptions to increase our pleasures. Now isn't that a fun alternative to imagine?

These counter-examples can be creatively thought up in many different ways, and although it took a little while, eventually a couple of my students identified this strategy of argumentation and started using it to pose counter-points to those students who are the most incessantly devoted to evolutionary explanations. It’s a classic case of giving someone a taste of their own theoretical medicine.  Unfortunately, this only goes so far. After a few rounds of tit-for-tat battle, in the end, both sides usually have to acknowledge that they will just disagree on matters. I get the sense though that pretty much everyone in the class views the side that offers counter-points from an evolutionary standpoint as only playing the role of "devil's advocate" while the side that defends the naturalness of heterosexuality as the necessary means for biological reproduction is still judged to be more compelling. This is because, as I have tried to explain to my students, the counter-arguments engaging with the other side work on the same level of "scientific explanations" and with reference to "natural facts."

But there are at least two levels of concern at stake: 1) Even if science could be shown to support something like the naturalness of homosexuality or the outrageously insatiable sexual appetites of women, that is, even if counter-factual discoveries were made by further scientific investigations into gay genes or that support increasing recognition for women’s sexual pleasures, these are small pebbles that will not be able to crack the fortress of "naturalness" that has been built up and reinforced by centuries of what is trusted and recognized as "good," objective science. 2) Furthermore, such an approach still reflects an attitude that places unwavering faith in science’s ability to uncover pre-social truths about the REAL, natural world, where neither science nor the world itself are considered to have been shaped or influenced by politics and values. But this simply is not how science has been developed nor how it has been used.  All scientific inquiry has been pursued by particular individuals within a particular historical, social, political, and cultural context. Rather than throwing small stones at the tower and arguing at the same level of scientific facts, another strategy with greater political promise can be employed that works to undermine “scientific facts” by paying close attention to these “extra-scientific” influences.

On this note, I can't really get into the ways that scientists have approached evolution in particular right now because it's a long, involved discussion that brings up challenging approaches to metaphysical things like truth and reality (ya know, the simple stuff). What should be mentioned, though, is that plenty of philosophers have issued many compelling and very important critiques of notions like pure objectivity, neutrality, and impartiality in science and knowledge production. They have also revealed the influences that things like identity, social values, cultural metaphors, and political interests have on shaping the direction and evaluation of scientific inquiry. Despite the recognition of these critiques within some philosophical circles, however, their force appears to be hardly felt by most within scientific communities and are even less acknowledged by the general public (as evidenced by the brute assumptions that my students boldly assert upon entering the room on the first day of class). But again, since I'm skipping over the issues with scientists in particular for now, it's time to explore this latter issue of how "evolution" works on the streets.

The conversations I have been having with my students have helped me realize a very important thing: Most people have heard of evolution, but very few would be able to say a single intelligent thing about it that wouldn't be able to fit on the little slip of paper in a fortune cookie. I think this is both philosophically and politically significant. As I confessed at the beginning of this post, I may be one of those highly-evolved apes, but I am also shamefully ignorant when it comes how I actually have evolved in relation to the apes or the amoebas or the dodo birds.

However, thanks to the story I have been told throughout all of my growing up, I can tell a quick story about "evolution." It goes a little something like this: Life begins with small, rudimentary, simple organisms that contain the basic building blocks of life in their genes. Through a series of many mutations, organisms develop different characteristics and behaviors that enable them to adapt to the external forces that they encounter (such as predators, diseases, bad weather), which increases their ability to survive against these conditions. This is survival of the fittest. Those organisms that are too weak, sickly, or poorly protected from the elements will be killed or die off on their own...that is, nature will run its course and clean out the gene pool of weakness. But it's not enough to live; Life seeks to reproduce itself. So for those that survive because they are fit enough to live, we can say that "nature has selected them" (natural selection) as fit enough to reproduce and pass on their good, strong genes.

What might not be fully acknowledged by the general masses but that is implicit in this story is the idea that life develops toward a higher goal, and that the direction is one towards greater perfection, a higher realization of...something. There is a teleological development on a mostly-one-directional path, which allows for a recognition that development can be stunted, leaving some at the "more primitive" stages of life, like lower animals, or those organisms with less complex nervous systems, or even certain types of humans may be "less developed" than others. With this developmental march toward the highest realization of the species, or of life, or whatever else we think we're talking about, whenever someone or some things step off of the path of higher development, it is presumed that they or it will eventually be "corrected" and brought back on track, or be eliminated ("You shouldn't have stepped off the path in the first place!").

I believe that many people are quite familiar with this story of “evolution.” In order to understand why I am so concerned about it and how familiar everyone is with it, we must first note what is at stake here. Aside from the fact that the view of linear, consistent, teleological development to the highest realization of life already represents a view form a particular lens that identifies what it wants to see (in other words, other scientific studies could show that this is not actually how things go...but we’re not engaging on that level, remember?), I find it terrifying that so few of my students seem concerned about the implications of what they say when they bring up arguments from evolution. If we uncritically buy into this stories about how human nature has evolved and accept it at face value, one only has to go a half-step further along this path of thinking to see how it can be used to support discriminatory practices, unjust institutions, hateful attitudes and behaviors, and even multiple forms of violence on individual and state levels.

If we return to the series of questions above about phenomena that can be explained away by evolution, a really rudimentary half-step ahead reveals that "heterosexuality" (as we have come to think of it today) assumes and maintains the status as the natural sexual orientation for humans, thereby making anything else (for example, homosexuality, bisexuality, asexuality) unnatural, a deviation from normal behavior, which then can (or even should) be regulated, corrected, or extinguished for the sake of the species. Since this thinking also associates what is natural with what is morally good, right, and justifiable, whereas unnatural things are things to be shunned, heterosexism is not considered a matter of political bigotry, but rather a plain, "straight-forward" defense of the natural order of things.

There are lots of worrisome implications if "real sex" is considered only that which involves a penis and vagina for the sake of reproduction. For one, contraception becomes a problem, though most people have somehow gotten around having any qualms about preventing reproduction, which indicates, I think, that it's the kind of sex that matters, not necessarily whether or not it actually brings any subsequent generations into the world. If it's the kind of sex that matters, namely that which could result in biological reproduction, then any other sex acts are superfluous at best, unnatural at worst. Lesbians can't actually have real sex. Gay men are gross perverts. And all the other things people can do (even if done by heterosexual couples) can be judged as "dirty" or so kinky that it's freaky. Pleasure is displaced as an unnecessary bi-product of sexuality. If penises and vaginas are the only parts that matter for sex, and pleasure is not a main concern, then other pleasurable parts and practices are dismissed, ignored, or rejected. Let's not forget how this affects people with certain types of disabilities. Furthermore, given that it doesn't matter if a woman gets off for reproduction, concerns of woman's sexual pleasure in particular can be completely dismissed as unimportant. But since I doubt that babies really care if their parents thoroughly enjoyed the process of conception, limiting views of what counts as "real sex" by focusing on a reproductive goal is really only preventing people from being open to even greater pleasures (and giving lazy dudes a good excuse to not be worried about satisfying their lady partners). If people won't allow themselves to pursue pleasure for the sake of pleasure and only for reproduction, this certainly has implications for straight men, but it has even more serious implications for women, non-heterosexual, and non-normatively-heterosexual people.  (As for my own two cents: Because it applies so widely to many situations and people, I think that the sheer act of expanding notions of sex for the sake of pleasure itself would be enough to make the world a significantly better place.)

Finally, to say that men have a naturally hard-wired urge to impregnate everything that moves works as a wonderfully comprehensive "get out of jail free" card. Sometimes, literally, because this explanation doesn't just bring up issues around monogamy and infidelity, but also makes excuses the apparently uncontrollable male sex drive that leads men to sexually harass and assault other people, especially children and women. But if we say that women are naturally attracted to meat-head jerks who push them around as an assertion of their power, and go even further to say that its "natural" for women to like it and find this erotic, this easily develops into the first-cousin of "blaming the victim" rhetoric. "No" is taken to mean "Yes." And while this way of thinking is, once again, a convenient way to say that women have lower sex drives than men and that having pleasurable sex is less of a concern for them (and the lazy dudes win again!), such a naturalized conception of men and their power paints a rigid yet precarious portrait of masculinity without accountability.  This view is detrimental to men, gay and straight alike, since if you cannot act like a hard, strong, powerful, and horny man then you are inadequate, weak, unattractive, and undesirable....I mean, unfit for reproduction. And we wonder why so many men are insecure with their masculinity.

Aside from the fact that these "reasons from evolution" are the justificatory building blocks of so many social and political ills like homophobia and sexual violence (not to mention that pretty much any talk about evolution easily links more generally to things like eugenics practices; here's a quick story that was recently published in the Huffington post this week), the role "evolution" plays in our thinking is one of deflection. It distracts attention away from particularly political issues and thwarts the ability to seriously consider the mechanisms of systems of oppression. Forces and institutions like white racism, compulsory heterosexuality, and gender policing are less readily recognizable in terms of their actual operation and are rather quickly explained away with "evolution." And because evolution is a fact of the natural world, whatever forms of oppression might be accounted for in terms of "evolution" are also naturalized in a way that suggests that this is how things just are. In other words, the status quo is what it is naturally, on its own, and has not been produced through the maintenance of economic inequality, social limitations, techniques of medical interventions, violence and terrorism, or even the progress of scientific discovery itself.

What this means, then, is that "evolution" functions more like a place holder that, while itself a pretty empty concept, fills an epistemological space so that there does not appear to be a reason to question what people assume to know about sex, sexuality, gender, and the lot. This is another example of what Charles Mills coined as an epistemology of ignorance. With respect to matters of race, Mills notes that an epistemology of ignorance is "a pattern of localized and global cognitive dysfunctions (which are psychologically and socially functional),. producing the ironic outcome that whites will in general be unable to understand the world they themselves have made" (18). Understood in this way, ignorance isn’t about getting things wrong and erring in scientific discoveries--it’s about setting the conditions up for something to be or not be.  With respect to heterosexism, heteronormativity, partriarchal sexism, ableism, and racism in conjunction with sexuality, "evolution" is a key element in an epistemology of ignorance that "precludes self-transparency and genuine understanding of social realities" so much that heterosexual and/or white and/or men can say and act as they do under the safety of it all being presumably natural, instinctual, biologically motivated thanks to the force of "evolution." In many ways, then, to explain oppressive systems and behaviors in light of "evolution" is to be complicit in the maintenance of this ignorance, upon which oppression depends.


Here's the video I did a while back about discussing the concept of an epistemology of ignorance:

Being Affected by Nietzsche

[I tried to write something to introduce myself to the idea of writing an introduction for my prospectus. And this happened...]

You know those times when you meet someone new and pick up a certain kind of vibe from them? Sometimes, even if your encounter with them is brief and superficial, you might get the sense that you could really get along well together or that they are someone who you don't particularly need or want to get to know any further. In some cases, you might get a weird read from them that leaves you somewhat unsettled, or maybe there is just something about them that makes you feel better, lighter, more relaxed, or even happier. It may be that you don't even know precisely what it is about the other that resonates with you, but for whatever reason, you just have a hunch about them. Call it sheer intrigue or an insight from intuition, these experiences reflect the idea that there is something there. Even if this "I don't know quite what" can't be described, it sometimes suffices to say, "It's just a feeling."

These types of experiences have been described by the late feminist philosopher Teresa Brennan in terms of the transmission of affect. For Brennan, the felt dimension of another person's presence, how they can lift you up or bring you down, is a phenomenon that reveals something about our ontology as social subjects. More specifically, such phenomena exemplify how affects are literally transmitted among individuals and within groups. More than just sensations and "feelings," Brennan explains that affects are themselves material. Gesturing to the role of things like pheromones, Brennan notes that they are literally "in the air." Furthermore, affects can be understood in terms of the material, physiological, and biological changes that they engender in our bodies, which means that the affective dimension of our embodiment and such experiences of being energized or depleted by the presence of another are not just psychological in character, but biochemical. According to Brennan, there is also a cognitive dimension to affective experiences since affects are not mere sensations but rather occur at the moment of a (perhaps mostly unconscious) judgment. So even if you don't know what it is that makes you feel a certain way, people like Brennan want to say that an affect does, in a sense, "know" on its own. The affect indicates a judgment about whether one takes in and incorporates the affects of another or rejects and deflects them.

Brennan's analysis presents a number of important implications. Perhaps most importantly, the transmission of affect reveals that our social interactions with others affect, alter, and shape our biological bodies, for better or worse depending on if the transmitted affects are positive ones like love or negative, as in the case of anger. This is a provocative inversion of the more typical view that our social interactions are mostly guided by our biological constitution, as if one is more nurturing or aggressive because of one's biological sex (and all that this is presumed to entail in terms of hormones and "natural tendencies") rather than the affective atmospheres within which one engages with others. Already, then, the transmission of affect blurs the boundaries between what is social and what naturally biological and if one can actually be thought before the other.

A second implication arises in light of Brennan's suggestion that affects are judgments, which gestures to the epistemological importance of affects. There are various and contradictory views espoused across and within numerous disciplines regarding affective embodiment and cognition, and although there is little agreement on the precise nature of the relation between cognition and affect, the sheer volume of attention dedicated to the topic is noteworthy in that, if nothing else, it reflects the social, political, and epistemological value that is already attached to what people can "know" by virtue of their affects. This is especially evident with respect to heavily value-laden social and political issues such as discrimination and oppression or the evaluation of morally right or wrong actions. In such instances, an epistemological link is often tacitly acknowledged in appeals to things like "gut instincts" about what is right or wrong, what sort of actions are viewed as disgusting or attractive, or which groups of people evoke fear, distaste, or aversion in others.

Finally, the transmission of affect and subsequent biochemical changes in one's self that occur in light of this blur the borders between self and other. The notion of a self-contained, independent individual disintegrates. At the fundamental level of our ontology, we come to be recognized as thoroughly intersubjective beings. I (and my affects) affect you while you (and your affects) affect me. So much so that we can literally feel it when we encounter one another.

While each of these issues regarding the transmission of affect merit further analysis, I will not yet pursue them here. At this moment, I bring up Brennan's emphasis on the transmission of affect to shed light on a specific and peculiar kind of hunch that I've had in the past that is different from Brennan's analysis of the transmission of affect but that certainly shares a kind of resonance.  My hunch was about a man, but I didn't ever meet him in person. I only read his books. But it was more than that. As I read, I was deeply affected by his words. I felt charged, giddy, and much like one on a high from a new crush, this excitement would often materialize in outbursts of laughter. Sometimes his words would make me feel uncomfortable. Not just uncomfortable because I couldn't understand what he was saying, but really, physically, or better yet, physiologically uncomfortable insofar as considering the implications of his arguments would put my stomach on edge in ways that he often anticipated throughout his own writing. At other times, I would fall silent or even cry because his writing is just so poignant. So beautiful. It possesses such resonance. This man, of course, is Friedrich Nietzsche.

My first introduction to Nietzsche was in the fall of my junior year in college when I took a phenomenal class with an amazing professor entitled "Meaning and Truth in Religion."  Though I really didn't understand much about the theology we were reading, I was exposed to a different kind of philosophy, or a different way of doing philosophy; different questions, different problems, different understandings. I have since realized that this was my first exposure to what is frequently referred to as "Continental philosophy." Although I found Nietzsche's critical thoughts on metaphysics and ontology interesting then, I wasn't quite yet grabbed by him. In fact, from what I had gathered in the short time that we focused on Nietzsche in class, I was more interested in making him politically palatable--the will to power seemed to be too frequently interpreted (by myself, too, at the time) in violent and forceful ways that didn't sit well with me. I gather now that my initial desire to make him more "acceptable" reflects a good deal about my philosophical sensibilities then, but it probably also indicates that  I didn't really "get" Nietzsche yet.

We can fast forward a couple of years ahead when I found myself in graduate school in a predominantly Continental philosophy program surrounded by other philosophers and enthusiastic new graduate students. As is probably the case in most academic disciplines, whenever philosophers meet for the first time, one of the first questions people raise to break the ice asks about what kind of philosophy you are interested in and who you study.  Having declared my major rather later in my undergraduate career, I was still relatively new to philosophy, and given that I had a mostly analytic background, I wasn't even able to make sense of most of the names and topics with which others would align themselves and their projects. Heidegger and phenomenology were pretty empty signifiers for me then. But I do recall the moment when I started to align myself with two particular thinkers. It was within the first couple of weeks of my first semester in graduate school when I said to an older graduate student, "I don't know for sure what I am going to do in philosophy, but I have a hunch that I will become quite involved with two figures: Nietzsche and Foucault."

At that point, I still had a hunch, but it was only a hunch. I guess it was significant enough to act on though since, despite the fact that I still hadn't ever read a single book by Nietzsche or Foucault, but thanks to the convenience of online shopping and the impulsiveness of my spending, I actually already owned a number of them. My guess is that my theological glimpse at Nietzsche and the references to Foucault made by feminist philosophers I read during the last two years of my undergraduate studies planted some seeds in my mind, and from those seeds, my own little library had already started to sprout even before moving to graduate school. I was probably able to anticipate my trajectory just from the things that I had gathered about them through what other people had written. But even once I recognized that I had this hunch about the two who would eventually be adoringly referred to as "my philosophical homeboys," I didn't want to force things. Like with any healthy love relationship, I was willing to let it develop organically on its own. Instead of making it a point to test my feelings by immediately diving into their books, I chose to let it sit as it was for however long it needed to. I trusted that there would be a time when their relevance would make itself known, and I suspected that it would be at a time when I was ready for it.

It wasn't until the second semester of my first year in graduate school (Spring 2009) when I took a seminar on 19th Century Continental philosophy that I became fully involved in what became known to myself and others as my semester long love affair with Nietzsche. For those fifteen weeks, I truly was in love and everyone around me knew it. It even became the topic of my seminar paper. Here's the shameless introduction:

Upon my first close reading of some of Nietzsche’s work I felt myself being wrapped up in what was to be light-heartedly referred to for the rest of the semester as a love affair.  Whether I was reading in my bed at home or at a coffee shop surrounded by other people, Nietzsche made me toss my head back in laughter and throw my hands up in awe.  Literally, there were times when I read something that would make me exclaim, “Yes, Nietzsche!”  At other parts of his texts, those that proved more difficult to swallow, I noticed my discomfort rise. And there were even times in Thus Spoke Zarathustra that made me cry.  How could I explain to my friends and colleagues the experience of my semester-long fling with Nietzsche—the way his words would resonate with me, or rather, the way they would sing? This little love affair of mine might have been aptly named at the beginning, for it had quickly turned into an impassioned exploration of Nietzsche’s pages and of my own relationship to them. I am grateful that I can continue to carry around The Gay Science even after the semester is over, yet I have been left sheepishly wondering, “Could this really be love?”

While affects are certainly at play in how and when  I read Nietzsche, their presence and operation differs in important ways from the kind of transmission that Brennan discusses. Rather than being transmitted via biochemical pheromones and olfactory cues that happen when people physically encounter one another in the same time and space, my affective experiences occurred in the presence of books. Beyond mere books, however, I want to suggest that my affective experiences while reading Nietzsche indicate at least one possible way in which affects can be produced through philosophy; more specifically, through the reading of certain philosophical texts of a particular character which reach intended audiences through specialized aims.

It is because reading Nietzsche's books has so profoundly affected me on personal, physiological, and certainly philosophical levels that I will argue that the nature of philosophy itself can be understood as an embodied practice that can, at the level of our physiological constitution, affect us in ways that produce greater health, well-being, and vitality. This claim is found in the content of Nietzsche's own work (and it harkens back to more classic conceptions of philosophy among Hellenistic thinkers. This is something I will pick up at a later time). One of my aims is to show how an appreciation for Nietzsche's philosophical emphasis on health and physiology, along with the distinctive style of his writing, reveals an underestimated, and so far under-explored, connection between affect and philosophy. By no means does this mean that Nietzsche is the only philosopher to have this effect on others, but I will refer to my own affective experiences while reading his work as a kind of case-study for this connection, which involves other issues around pedagogy, rhetoric, and the "ends" of philosophy. I think it may even implicate a revision of what is characteristically understood to count as "philosophy."

This means that there are at least two distinct approaches for unpacking the relationship between affect and philosophy that I will discuss in turn. Not only are there interesting insights to be understood with respect to the philosophy of affect, that is, in terms of how we are to understand the ontological and cognitive (or not) dimensions of affect, but a greater sensitivity to the potential for affects of (or within) philosophy reveals exciting new possibilities for how we might understand, and undertake, philosophy as a transformative, even therapeutic, practice. Numerous issues surface when philosophy is undertaken as a kind of therapeutic practice that can produce such transformations, including questions about the connections between mind and body, and psyche and soma.  Metaphilosophical questions about the nature and aims of philosophy itself also become relevant. For instance, new lines can be drawn that reinterpret the classic analogy between medicine and philosophy as perhaps more than just an analogy. Furthermore, the relationships among truth, philosophy, and pedagogy can be reevaluated in terms that echo, once more, a view of philosophy as a practice, as an art of life.

Exploring the connections between affect and philosophy in both directions and raising such questions invites a dialogue of different voices and views from apparently disparate disciplines including philosophy, psychology, physiology, and neuroscience. As disparate as these fields might initially appear, on issues related to affect, emotion, and embodiment they have already been brought together in ways that reveal exciting new possibilities for health and healing. Furthermore, understanding the particular methods by which affects are cultivated, produced, evoked, or transmitted is valuable in order to better appreciate the role of affect with respect to personal well-being and political oppression or resistance. This is because, as was mentioned above, I want to suggest that not only are affects philosophically significant, but they also already operate in politically charged ways. While much of what I will explore deals with the two pronged approach to the philosophical significance of affect (that is, the philosophy of affect and affect of philosophy), this investigation is motivated by a sensitivity to the already political dimension of many affective experiences and their role in perpetuating and justifying discriminatory attitudes.

[After writing this, I went to an empty classroom with two chalkboards and sketched out a rough outline of what I think will shape up to be my dissertation.]

PART I.

PART II.

"Oh, Philosophy. So what do you want to do with that?"

"Do you want to teach?"

Yes.

In fact, before I even knew what philosophy was I wanted to teach, at least in some capacity. I didn't know what I wanted to teach, but I knew that I have always felt comfortable in the role of an educator, leader, and mentor.

"So do you want to become a professor?"

Well, I don't know.

I only ended up here--in academia, in graduate school pursuing a dual PhD in Philosophy and Women's Studies--thanks to a unexpected and, yes, lucky turn of events. The tale of my path includes the moment when I decided to not drop out of college after my second year and then when I declared a major in philosophy, not because I loved it so much, but because it was pretty much the only thing I could do and still graduate in four years. There was one justifiable benefit of becoming a philosophy major though. As one of my not-so-warm-and-fuzzy professors at the time told me, at least it would teach me how to read, write, and think, which are helpful skills no matter what you end up doing. So, I stayed in school and studied philosophy. 

I could not have anticipated how my life would change so quickly after that.

In the fall of my junior year I took an amazing, mind-opening, totally inspiring class with a brilliant and enthusiastic young professor who has since retained his position as easily one of the most influential people in my life (Shout out goes to David Deane!). And with that class, as I heard about new ideas that I had never even considered before and was introduced to concepts that seemed already familiar because they made sense of my experience but that I couldn't have articulated on my own, I knew that something big was happening.

I felt the metaphorical path beneath my feet twisting in new directions, leading me, a naive, but excited twenty-year-old, to board planes to Syracuse, NY on my own and attend a conference for no other reason than to just go and listen to some of the people whose work I had started to read, such as Judith Butler and Helene Cixous. Being that this was my first conference and I was so new to everything in the world of philosophy, I didn't really care enough to heed the advice of my professor to make connections and make myself known (to people who, for example, are now vice-presidents of the American Philosophical Association..and my facebook friends! Ha!). Motivations for networking were out of the question, but I was so moved by Cixous's keynote paper, "Promised Belief," and again, so unaware of professional etiquette, that I did follow her around and pester her until I was able to tell her about the amazing experience I had during her reading of her paper and ask about feminine writing. The funny thing was that I was actually disappointed when she responded to my question. She stated, "I am a philosophical poet. Derrida is poetic philosopher. But I never intend to "demonstrate" anything with my writing. I just write to write." At the time, I didn't really even know who Derrida was, let alone appreciate how awesome it was that she followed this deflating comment by saying, "That is not my project. But it could be yours!" Despite how incredible it is to me now that one of the most significant figures in feminist theorizing and writing passed a torch on to me (a torch that I guess was never really her's but perhaps was already my own), at the time I was more intimidated by my young professor's comment during one of our coffee-fueled conversations when he said, "Of course you will go on to graduate school, and you will write a book, and you will become a professor. And you will be superb." A BOOK?!? Now that was unfathomable.

But he was right and my path was obviously heading in that direction. I got more involved in philosophy, went to a week-long summer nerd camp for aspiring young philosophers at Penn State before my senior year, returned with even more passion and energy for doing philosophy in new ways, and when I returned to Colorado, I used that newly found perspective and confidence to become more outspoken in the many philosophy classes and graduate seminars that I took during my senior year to complete my bachelor's degree. And in the course of those two years between nearly dropping out and being admitted to graduate school, I totally fell in love with philosophy. More importantly, though, I developed my own voice.

The unpleasant truth about graduate school, though, is that no matter how much you love what you do--the research, the learning, the intellectual stimulation--and no matter how passionately your pursue it for noble causes like greater justice, equality, and positive social changes, it doesn't take long for doubt and disillusion to set in. Even (or perhaps especially) those who are most passionately motivated for all the right reasons come to the conclusion that academia is just not for them, that they can't actually bring about the changes that are most important to them, that theory and practice don't really intersect in sufficient ways. So people burn out. And a lot of people leave. And at some point, many of those who remain do so only because they've already gotten so deep and dedicated so much time that there don't really seem to be any other viable options.

For the first two years of my graduate career I was constantly tempted by the thought of quitting, especially when the end of the semester rolled in and paper-writing season consumed every hope for sanity and a healthy, balanced life. I would have emotional break downs and cry. I would be in physical pain from typing for so long and cry. I would think about a lifetime ahead of me of doing this all the time for my career--reading things that other people wrote that nobody else ever read or cared about except for a few people like me, who were trapped in the depths of hell forcing themselves to write papers that nobody else would ever read or care about. And then I would sometimes cry some more.  Much like when other people find themselves in an unhappy marriage and have a mid-life crisis, for graduate students it is during those times when papers have to be produced and turned in that everything else seems to lose its meaning and you really question your life choices. However, even when my now best friend (whom I met when we both started the philosophy PhD program together) left before Thanksgiving break of our first semester, I decided to wait it out at least a year before making any drastic decisions.

With time my perspective shifted, but only a little. During my second year, most of the graduate students I knew in my own program and in other disciplines had gotten quite comfortably blunt about their dissatisfaction of being in graduate school. My own discomfort manifested itself in explicit questions that I directed to my advisors, professors, academic superiors, and even "philosophical role models." I asked many of them, "Do you have any regrets?," meaning, would they have gone a different route in life if they could do it over again? Some actually had the nerve to forsake any kind of consolation for why I would ask such a question and said yes. Others gave a very qualified no. Only one person could say, "Absolutely not. I love what I do." (This person was Ladelle McWhorter, another of the most influential philosophers in my life, and definitely one of the handful of people who have encouraged me in ways that have actually kept me in philosophy. I am hugely grateful for her, and my style and approach to philosophy are significantly indebted to her example.)

Despite the lack of overly-encouraging hindsight from my superiors, it was at the end of my second year when I was finally able to come to my own decision about whether or not I would stay in graduate school and finish my doctorate degree. And the decision was made because during my fourth semester I was able to teach my very own classes for the first time. I was able to craft one syllabus on my very own, and I taught it to two classes, about 65 students. And I loved it. It wasn't easy, especially since I was taking four graduate classes of my own, but I did it. As part of all of the experiences that we had in those rooms together, I learned an awful lot. I learned about philosophy. I learned about my students. I learned about myself, as a person and as an educator. By the end of it, I was very aware of how cool it was to be able to say that at the age of 23 I was actually able to do exactly what I've always wanted to do. I was getting to teach material that I wanted to teach, how I wanted to teach it, and we were all learning as a result of that. Given that finishing my degree would mean that I would continue teaching for at least three more years, I had come to better appreciate that I was in a pretty cool situation. Not only do I get to do what I have wanted to do for so long even before I finish my twenties, but at the end of it, I will also have a couple of degrees. Sweet deal. So I stayed in it.

That justification worked out well throughout my third year of graduate school. I was able to put the pressure and anxiety aside about "what I would do" with a PhD in philosophy, not worry so much about working hard to look super impressive for my impending run on the job-market gauntlet, and focus more on simply doing what I love to do. It's worked out well. So far I'm one of only two people in my cohort to actually be on track in terms of our program's timeline. I even heard through the grapevine that when a somewhat skeptical, and very befuddled, professor in the department questioned how it was possible for me to be getting through the program as I am, he surmised for others that it was because I said, "Screw the expectations of everyone else! I'm doing it my way! Why? Because I want to." In  a sense, he's right. But moreover, it's not that I am doing my work as I am just to be a rebel, but rather because I actually enjoy and love the work more when I do it in my own way. In fact, I think it is the only way for me to be able to produce or teach anything at all.

But now, as I prepare to enter my fourth year (and yeah.....I am still working on putting together my dissertation prospectus), I have entered a new stage in my graduate career, one that makes evident that I am steadily approaching the end of this journey. I still have a couple more years to go, but there's really only one more thing to do. Write the dissertation. And then what? Well, I guess go on the job market and try to get a one of those very rare, tenure-track jobs.

But for all the same reasons that I worried during those first two years about what it means to live a life in academia, I have some reservations about my future and to where this current path is leading. Is that all that is available for someone who has reached the end of formal training in reading, writing, and thinking? I realize that all of the people around me who have doctorate degrees in philosophy are professors, but aren't there people who have also earned their degrees and gone on to do other things? What do they do? What other options are out there? Without a very clear or bountiful set of answers to these questions, I have spent a good amount of time imagining what other things I could do with my life after graduate school. This morning (though there was nothing particularly unique about this morning, it just came up in conversation over breakfast) I allowed myself to say a couple of things that I have always tried hard to recognize and appreciate:

I love to teach and I want to keep teaching. But I don't know if that has to happen in a university, or if I really want to deal with all of the other (less pleasant stuff) that comes with that kind of job. If I could do absolutely anything, I think I would really love to teach philosophy in a more community-based setting and within a greater demographic range. Sure, I like college students. And it would be fun to go with a older-than-college-kids crowd and do philosophy with grown adults, but my real passion for philosophy compels me to go the other direction--to work with younger kids. Like kid kids, middle schoolers, and high school kids. Those years are some of the most formative times that I can remember, when your peers are more influential than your parents, and they can also be some of the most difficult of times. Especially for those who are going through a lot at those ages, who have to deal with a lot of "grown up" issues and face "real life" experiences but probably lack sufficient tools to help them make sense of their experiences, I think that philosophy can be a very rich resource for those tools.

The greatest value for me in practicing philosophy has been found in the confidence, strength, and empowerment that it has cultivated within me. As I have gained new insights on how to understand myself, others, and the world around me, I have also developed a voice that has enabled me to articulate my thoughts and describe my experiences. So I would love to teach philosophy in a way that encourages the development of minds, bodies, and voices of those who need to know, and embody, their own sense of strength, value, and significance. I want to help cultivate the skills that have so drastically shaped me in those whose voices need to be heard.

In short, practicing philosophy has literally changed my life. And I have changed as a result of that. Thanks to the texts written by innumerable others before me, and the guidance, conversations, and examples from my professors and peers around me, I have become who I am today, and I continue to grow and change. Philosophy has the capacity to make significant changes and powerful transformations. In those moments when I begin to question the importance of doing philosophy, I only have to remember that I am a testament to the powerful affect that philosophical practice can have on our lives and how we live them.

So when I finish my degree, yeah, I want to use it to teach.

On a side note about how people accidentally get into philosophy and what it's about for some contemporary intellectuals, here's the title sequence to a film by Phillip McReynolds (Penn State). 



AND. I really like this part of the film. If you're into it, go watch other clips from his film.

Thinking of You

Philosophical possibilities aside (because I know that there are many passages I could bring in here), I've been wanting to mention one thing that has really been on my mind over the past couple of weeks.

There's a really good chance that you are part of it. Seriously.

Because what I've been paying attention to are the many instances, minutes, and days in which thoughts of other people are present to me. Most likely, all of this occurs unbeknownst to those who cross my mind. I imagine that many, many people would be surprised to know how often I actually think of them. Once I started paying attention to it, it even surprised me. I'm talking about strangers, friends from 10 years ago who I no longer talk to (in fact, lots of people with whom I've seemed to lose touch), peers from high school, teachers, students, friends of friends, people I've never actually met but whose path I've crossed enough to recognize their bags, and of course, family members, loved ones, friends, and acquaintances. I often think of people who I've never had the chance to meet but whose stories I've heard, as well as (of course!) those who make their way into my stories. And there are those who I don't simply conjure up in my memory but who I literally see throughout any given day. When I'm sitting in a coffee shop or watching people walk by me, I wonder how many of them are aware of the fact that I am aware of them.

That is what all of this comes down to: Recognition. Acknowledgment. Consideration. Awareness.

This has come up for me pretty strongly lately in part because I have had the great fortune of being contacted by lots of people over these past couple of months. Just last week I was taken aback by the amount of birthday wishes that I received from people on facebook alone. And over the summer, I've received numerous messages from strangers on the Internet, while others say when we formally meet, "I've seen you walking around campus before..." These are some of the ways that indicate when and how others think of you. Just think of all of the mini thoughts that we have of people which seem to leave no trace...

Sometimes it's heartening to hear from others. Sometimes it's humbling. Sometimes it's surprising, and yes, sometimes it's kind of weird to find out that people have "noticed" you before. But the vast majority of the time, I think it's important to know that you were on someone's mind, because it helps one to better appreciate how connected we actually are and recognize that even in times when we might feel isolated, disconnected, or alienated, it has to be trusted that you are significant enough to be remembered and recognized by someone, somewhere.  We see each other more than we let on, I think. We notice lots more than what others are probably aware. We remember so much, too. A lot of the time, I think it's because we really do care.

So I've been wondering what it might mean if other people could somehow know that someone else remembered, considered, and acknowledged them. Even if it was just for a second. I've imagined what it would be like if it was possible to keep a running tally of all the people who worked their way into my conscious awareness in one day and then share it in such a way that they would know that someone, somewhere, was (unexpectedly?) thinking of them. Sure, there might be something valuable on its own about appreciating "traceless thoughts" and letting them stay that way, but my sense is that there are lots of people who don't give themselves enough credit, who underestimate their significance in the world, who seem to think that no one cares about their existence. And I think that it would be really cool if, at least for just one instance, they could be shown otherwise.

Despite all of the frustrations that people might have about social media and the way that Facebook, Twitter, and other online-whatevers have degraded our ability to communicate, to know what "real" connection means, to maintain substantive relationships with others, and to participate in genuine human interaction, I am rolling with the changes that they bring. Sure, these parts of our lives have been dramatically transformed, but that doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing.

What if we weren't afraid to reveal that we were "stalking" someone on Facebook and actually went ahead and "Liked" something that they posted? Then they would know that we're following and paying attention.

What if we just sent a text that said, "Hi. Thought of you today. I really hope you're doing well." to one of those long-lost someones in our contact list?

What if we went back to writing letters? Because we can.

What if I finally stopped those two guys who I've seen for months and years (respectively) and told them that I love the style and attitude with which they walk around the streets of this fake little town--that they liven it up in a really wonderful way?

And then there are those people with whom we can't connect in tangible ways...

What if we could let those who have passed know that we are still thinking of them?

What if we could tell their family members that the loss of their loved one brought us to tears, too, and that we are heartbroken right along with them?
 
What if we could reach out in lots of ways and let others know?

In large part, it probably comes down to time. We may just not have have enough time to let others know that they crossed our mind. It's probably more so the case that we are too uncomfortable to break through whatever boundaries keep our thoughts traceless.

But just imagine. How cool would it be if.....

Yet even as I write, I am hesitant to put down specific names of those from just today. I know that the list would be necessarily incomplete. But even in acknowledging its partiality, it's almost too daunting to attempt. I want to. I really do. I just haven't figured out how yet. (And there's probably something important to be learned from that...) Or maybe one of these days it will become it's own project.


For now, suffice it to say that, someone, somewhere, has probably thought of you today.

On a more specific note from me, thank you to those who let me know that you were thinking of me, too. Thanks for the messages, the calls, the chats, the video messages, the texts, the meeting-ups for hugs and  "hello's." I've got mad love for you all.