The Philosophical Pursuit of Pleasure

My title, "The Philosophical Pursuit of Pleasure" indicates an underlying strangeness about this piece for at least a couple of reasons. First, for a lecture series on Spirituality and Sexuality, the title already indicates that I am fudging with interpretations of the relationships between philosophy and spirituality on one hand, and pleasure and sexuality on the other.

One way to connect philosophy and spirituality is to follow Foucault when he says, "We will call 'philosophy' the form of thought that asks what it is that enables the subject to have access to the truth" and "we could call "spirituality" the search, practice, and experience through which the subject carries out the necessary transformations on himself in order to have access to the truth" (Hermeneutics of the Subject 15). Viewing spirituality as a set of practices and exercises entails that "for the subject to have access to the truth he must be changed, transformed, shifted, and become, to some extent and up to a certain point, other than himself" (HS 15). The process of becoming other than what one already is, of straying afield of oneself in a peculiar type of movement, of a subject working on herself to transform herself, precisely describes the labor of an ascesis. So while philosophy might be understood as merely the form of thought that asks questions of a subject's access to truth, Foucault elsewhere notes that the activity of reading and writing the philosophical text, which is "the living substance of philosophy," is also that by which "one undergoes changes" (The Use of Pleasures 9). That is, of course, if "we assume that philosophy is still what it was in times past, i.e., an "ascesis"... an exercise of oneself in the activity of thought" (The Use of Pleasures 9).

As for the other relationship upon which the title draws--between pleasure and sexuality--this might seem less strange of a connection. Pleasure and sex are often thought together, and although, of course, pleasure need not derive solely from sex, the type of pleasure that I am analyzing in this paper is sexual pleasure. Let it be quickly noted, though, that "sex" and "pleasure" are complexly related. For instance, not all of what might count as "sex" leads to pleasure--there are situations where sexual acts cause great pain, and not a kind of "pleasurable pain," but pain pain, bad pain, the kind that people don't want. Furthermore, even if pleasure is derived from sex, this does not mean that one's pleasures are automatically unproblematic. Some people view particular pleasures, such as homosexual pleasures, as taboo at best, immoral at worst. And other pleasures are part and parcel to forms of oppression. I'm not only referring to how some people get off by seeing really atrocious things in porn that reflect, reiterate, and concretize sexism, racism, and violence (among other things), but also to other ways in which domination and inequality are eroticized to the point where even those who are dominated claim to actually like it, want it, and enjoy it. Pleasure is a strange thing, then, and despite how badly we might want to think of pleasure as a "good," pleasure already appears to be deeply enmeshed in ethical and political grounds which require that it be constantly put it into critical question.

This unsteady ground of sexual pleasure sets the foundation for what follows, but first, there is another reason why I think that my title is strange. The way that I am putting philosophy and pleasure together implies more than simply engaging with philosophical texts about pleasure (though there will be lots of that). "The Philosophical Pursuit of Pleasure" gestures toward the possibility that pleasure itself might be an outcome of philosophical practice. In other words, I don't just want to philosophize about pleasure's pros and cons and the political implications of what we like. I also want to discuss how pleasures, including sexual pleasures, can come out of doing philosophy. The hope, of course, is that these will be ethically, politically, and even sensually "good" pleasures.

* * *

At present, the idea that sexual pleasure could be problematic is probably more evident in arguments over gay and lesbian rights than anywhere else. As Chris Cuomo argues, claiming the right to be queer, and thereby affirming one's queer sexual acts (which can also be done by many straight people, mind you), is an important part of the political agenda for LGBT rights.  More specifically, on issues like legal protection against homophobic discrimination and violence and the right to marry, attempts to undermine moral judgments that homosexual sexual pleasures are problematically wrong, unhealthy, or sinful are implicitly or explicitly at work. The goal, then, is to upset moral frameworks that tend to unjustly trump universal rights to sexual freedom, and an appropriate political slogan would be something like, "It's okay to be gay and to do gay things, so give me my rights!" Whereas this affirmation of homosexual pleasures as "okay" might be a step towards dismantling the normative structures of heterosexuality today (a question that I will get back to in a while), the predominant battle cry about sexual pleasures a couple of decades ago rang out in a different tune.

In the eighties and nineties some of the hottest debates about the problematic nature of sexual pleasure were emerging out of radical feminist circles. Contrary to Cuomo's political suggestion of asserting that it's okay to be who you are, the one who enjoys her sexual pleasures, there was an explosion of theorists who challenged the idea that our sexualities should be embraced for what they are.  That is because, at the very core of our bodies and our beings, even in our seemingly basic pleasures, inequality, injustice, and oppression construct our realities and our experiences.

Adrienne Rich's classic essay on compulsory heterosexuality and the erasure of lesbian existence argued that heterosexuality is not a natural orientation for women but rather the consequence of a "cluster of forces" that keep women in social, political, psychological, and economic, positions under the power of men. Thus, heterosexuality is compelled by patriarchy, and its comprehensive reinforcement occurs through practices, such as the romanticization of heterosexual marriage and limiting women's reproductive rights. These often serve to benefit men at the grave detriment of women. At about the same time, Andrea Dworkin relentlessly pointed out that the central theme of pornography is male power. The access, abuse, and violence that men hold over women and of their bodies is constructed, materialized, and reinforced through pornographic images.

Catherine Mackinnon picks up this argument to claim that both sexuality and gender are constructed only in reference to male power over women. Dominance, force, and violation are what make up masculine sexuality. They are, indeed, what make one a man at all. And women are thereby defined in terms of what men want from women, namely, to be the dominated, powerless, objects of sex for men. Regarding women's sexuality, then, it is assumed that "women really want what men want from women [which] makes male force against women in sex invisible. It makes rape sex" ("Sexuality" 213). Rich, Dworkin, and Mackinnon drive home the fact that our experience of sexuality is not natural.  Women's sexuality is not their own--it wreaks of male dominance. Indeed, it has been constructed by it. And this is because, as Mackinnon states, all of what sexuality means culturally is only understood in terms of "what gives a man an erection. Whatever it takes to make a penis shudder and stiffen with the experience of its potency" (210). That is, domination.  Hierarchy.  Inequality. With a stroke of insight, Mackinnon notes, "[P]erhaps gender must be maintained as a social hierarchy so that men will be able to get erections; or, part of the male interest in keeping women down lies in the fact that it gets men up. Maybe feminists are considered castrating because equality is not sexy" (214, my emphasis).

If, as Mackinnon argues, this gendered sexual system of hierarchy and inequality is the only model of sexuality that we've got then sexuality does seem...yeah, a little problematic. It's force, not love and affection, that frames sex. Furthermore, this means that heterosexual women are not the sole recipients of this model of sexuality.  The same model of inequality is expressed even in homosexual relationship and inverted sadomasochistic scenes where women dominate men. Oppressive structures in sexuality are ubiquitous.

Hierarchy and inequality are so ubiquitous throughout our experiences of sex that it has even become pleasurable for those who are subjected to it. According to Mackinnon, these structures make women live with objectification and domination like fish live in water--"With no alternatives, the strategy to acquire self-respect and pride is: I chose it" (215). But while Mackinnon suggests that women "choose" and accept their subjugated status and domination "only to make it through another day," thus only as victims, not everyone experiences their sexuality as a victim.

Celia Kitzinger responds to Mackinnon's argument by noting that "many women insist that they have voluntarily chosen to engage in sexual intercourse, and that they enjoy it, and have orgasms through it...When radical feminists argue that heterosexuality is an exercise of male power, that it is degrading and humiliating for women, many women feel that their own personal experience is being negated" ("Problematizing Pleasure: Radical Deconstruction of Sexuality and Pleasure" 200). Ultimately, Kitzinger agrees with the feminist arguments that sexuality is constructed and that it is constructed of and by male power, but she explains that these arguments must be sophisticated enough to account for the real, genuine pleasure that many women feel when they have sex with men. For such women, who robustly choose to engage in the kind of sex in question, it doesn't necessarily feel like rape. Lots of sex is actually great, and wanted, and enjoyed. It's pleasurable.

At this point, it's easy to see how women's pleasurable sexual experiences could support the rhetoric of the women's sexual liberation movement from a couple of decades ago, which suggested that an empowered woman should not feel ashamed of, but rather embrace, her sexuality. She can want it, go out and get it, and enjoy it! It would be inaccurate, though, to think that this was a thing of the past. This position seems to be increasingly popular among young, twenty-something-year-old, self-proclaimed lady "bachelorettes" who are just "living free and single." Thus, it's not just that women reluctantly "choose" to have sex because they have no other option. Nor is it that women despise all the sex that they have with men because it centers on men's desires for domination. Many women actively, and quite happily, pursue and enjoy having sex, even if it reflects a model of sexuality built on force and inequality.

But simply recognizing that some, or perhaps even many or most, women enjoy their subjugated sexual roles and find pleasure in powerlessness does not automatically mean that it is "okay," especially when that pleasure is contingent on oppression. A key task of the radical feminists was to question the very idea that "anything which gives pleasure is justifiable" (202). Without denying that many women do in fact enjoy hetero-sex, Kitzinger problematizes this pleasure by noting that women find it enjoyable and pleasurable precisely because domination and subordination have been eroticized. Power differences are sexy because they have been made to be sexy. Or, to echo Mackinnon, inequality is sexy—equality is not.

The political and moral implications cannot be under-emphasized. What these feminist analyses of problematic pleasure reveal is that something so apparently individual and personal and presumably "natural" as one's sexual pleasure is actually produced and developed within social, public, and cultural influences. Even our deepest pleasures are not untouched by politics and structures of inequality. These forces reside within our bodies throughout our muscles and bones. In terms of ethics, it seems important to argue that not all pleasure is good.  Participating in and supporting some sexual pleasures might even be ethically bad. In other words, just because it feels good and you want it does not mean that it should be the case or that we should not put effort into changing the circumstances the produce those pleasures. 

* * *

Not all pleasures are good?! Where else have we heard something like this before? Oh right, in plenty of anti-gay rhetoric. Or, as Marcus Bachmann said, "just because someone feels it or thinks it, doesn't mean that we're supposed to go down that road." That's why he dedicates so much of his time to facilitate "therapy" for gay-leaning kids. And this reminds us of Cuomo's previously mentioned arguments about the claim, "It's okay to be gay!” and how this claim entails doing queer things. For LGBT rights, some pleasures have to be defended as okay so that the people who do them can be legally protected.

At this juncture, I want to recognize that the strategy of "problematizing pleasure" can be twisted in such a way that it seems to be applicable to homophobic positions like that of Bachmann. This means that the arguments for challenging patriarchy and heterosexism can appear to be contradictory at the level of if, how, and which pleasures are problematic. However, there is a serious difference between a feminist attempt to problematize the pleasures that stem from the eroticization of power differences between men and women (which reiterate and reinforce male dominance) and Bachmann-esque attempts to problematize homosexual pleasures. Where the former seeks to critically address pleasure to resist gendered oppression, the latter actually participates in the oppression of sexual minorities. Suggesting that homosexual pleasure is a "problem" simply because it is homosexual only works to reinforce the heteronormative status quo—it doesn't do the ethical and political work of realizing equality. (Again, according to the feminist arguments above, it still could be problematized if the sort of homosexual pleasure in question comes from eroticized power differences.)

With that potential confusion thwarted, there is an important and interesting insight to be gleaned from viewing homosexual pleasure and pleasure from eroticized power differences alongside one another—both reveal that pleasure is subject to politics. I already described how politics are involved in women's heterosexual pleasures because they are based on inequality with specific reference only to male pleasures, i.e., male dominance. The politics involved in homosexual pleasure can be found, even very minimally, in the fact that insofar as homosexual pleasure is homosexual pleasure at all it has to first be named and produced within a cultural system that gives it meaning as such. In other words, to meaningfully talk about homosexual pleasure requires that there be a discourse that structures what it means to be homosexual in the first place. Why are we not just talking about pleasure without specification based on lines of social identities like sexual orientation, or gender for that matter? What makes something a specifically homosexual pleasure? To answer these questions is to invoke the influence of a dominant discourse about sexuality, one that already has established meanings, moralities, taboos, prohibitions, and political effects. Not to mention a hierarchy of inequality between heterosexuality and non-hetero-anything-else. Given our current time and place in history, then, sexual pleasure comes with political ramifications and is already imbued with political significance. However, none of this is necessarily set, as if things are the way they are because they always have been and always will be. It is rather the case that they have been contingently set through the historical development of the discourse on sex.

Which means that it could have been otherwise. And it could still become otherwise. How?

Ironically, in The History of Sexuality Volume I, Foucault famously suggests that the rallying points for resistance against dominant discourses on sexuality could actually be bodies and pleasures. If it's the case that our experiences of pleasure are not necessarily natural and innate but rather produced in part as effects of political discourses, whether that be of heteronormativity or male dominance (or both and more), then it's possible that they can be "constructed" or "produced" in new ways. People change and grow, and as they do, they may come to enjoy or like new things. Pleasures can be cultivated and developed. Consider learning to play the guitar or training to become a runner. Both tasks require practice and discipline, and both change our bodies' muscular structures and how the activities feel to us while we move from the pain and frustration of a novice to the skill, satisfaction, and grace of a musician or an athlete.

This leads to the thought that perhaps a similarly disciplined approach to other kinds of practices can be useful for creating new kinds of pleasures.  In addition to creating new pleasures, these practices might also be pleasurable in themselves.

In an attempt to elucidate what Foucault meant by "bodies and pleasures" as points for resistance to oppression, Ladelle McWhorter suggests that we use pleasure as a mode of discipline to re-create ourselves as new subjects, newly transformed, and perhaps even so new that our subjectivity and experiences exceed the limits that have been set before us by normalizing discourses of domination. She writes

Counterattack against sexual normalization in general and sexual identities in particular...depends on affirming the free, open playfulness of human possibility even within regimes of sexuality without getting stuck in or succumbing to any one sexual discourse formation. We need to find ways to continue to grow in capability, even in sexual capability, ways to be strengthened and enabled, that don't make us more docile, more disabled at the same time. Growth, development, change must be fostered, but it must not lead to a narrowing of behavioral possibilities (Bodies and Pleasures 181). 

McWhorter gives gardening and dancing as two examples of pleasurable practices that she has undertaken that have opened her up to new ways of understanding and being in her body. They also opened her up to new pleasures. Through the experiences afforded to her by taking up the disciplined practice of learning to dance, her relationship to her body changed. She felt it move through space in different ways, and saw that her body was capable of movements and feelings that she had not yet experienced. And it was enjoyable.

Where McWhorter turns to gardening and line dancing to cultivate new pleasures through disciplined practices, Foucault more provocatively suggests that we experiment with good drugs and sadomasochistic sex. Of course, intensifying our bodily experiences through the use of pleasure would ultimately seek “to open new possibilities for new pleasures and for new ways of being" (BP 185).  The arguments from the above feminists suggest that they would be skeptical about the promise of sadomasochism since it frequently involves power play, but Foucault's reasoning is still in line with their main concerns.  Rather than focusing on the eroticizing of power differences, he explains that people who practice S/M are not being aggressive but that "they are inventing new possibilities of pleasure with strange parts of their body—through the eroticization of the body" (BP 186). Rather than merely eroticizing power inequalities, the body is eroticized in new ways to produce new types of pleasures.

According to both Foucault and McWhorter, these are examples of promising bodily practices that we can undertake in order to disrupt the dominant, and dominating, structures that have constructed our experiences of pleasure. Drugs, S/M, line dancing, and gardening can be pleasurable practices on their own, and when they are approached in a particularly disciplined way, they can create new capacities in us for the new types of pleasures that they afford. But this paper is about the philosophical pursuit of pleasure. Where does philosophy fit in all of this? 

* * *

In addition to drugs and sadomasochism, Foucault suggests that the practice of philosophy—philosophical reflection, the exercises of reading and writing—holds promise for political resistance regarding how we experience ourselves and the world around us. As an ascesis, philosophy does not seek to definitively answer questions but rather to continually open onto new questions, and in so doing, open up new possibilities for thinking and being. Philosophy, then, is a great example of a practice that can be undertaken for change and transformation precisely because there is no end goal in sight but to be a continuously open-ended process. As McWhorter explains, "I disciplined myself to the dance, and I became something I never imagined I could become...And in the process I discovered and cultivated immense capacities for pleasures I'd never dreamed of before. The same is true in becoming a philosopher and has been true for me in the practice of writing this book. This discipline of thinking...has changed me in ways I didn't foresee when I started" (187).

But when compared to other practices like drugs, sex, gardening, and line dancing, there seem to be pretty important differences between these and philosophical practice. First, the sort of practices in question should not just open up new capacities for pleasure, such as how one can eventually learn to deeply enjoy dancing, but the process of undergoing that disciplined practice is itself often pleasurable. Like, for Foucault, the drugs and the sex are already pleasurable before (or because) they open up to other and new pleasurable experiences. Does the same apply to philosophy?

Not all people find philosophy to be a source of pleasure. Some find it boring, some find it frustrating, some find it futile. But there are some, even if they are few in number, who do find pleasure in philosophical practice.  We can acknowledge that it might take a certain kind of person to be drawn to philosophy and find the reading and the writing and the thinking intensely pleasurable. Nevertheless, not everyone likes gardening or line dancing either, so the idea isn't that the practice at hand has to be pleasurable to everyone.  Thus, probably depending on things like one’s own predispositions, who one reads, how one reads, how one writes and thinks, and how one engages with a question, philosophical practice can be enjoyable. It can be fun. It can be pleasurable.  But can philosophy really create capacities for new types of sexual pleasure?

Well, maybe. Thinking philosophically about our standard ideas of sex and the historical contexts for these notions is a good place to start. Critically evaluating notions such as that sexual intercourse is one thing and not another, that it is "natural" for some people to do certain acts, that some sexual pleasures are "bad," or that reproduction is the primary purpose for sex, can help open up our minds and bodies to new ideas and experiences that might otherwise be deemed too weird, inappropriate, taboo, futile, or even literally unimaginable. Simply asking, “Why and how has sex contingently become what it is for us today? And who does this serve?” are gateway questions that could lead to the creation of a new model of sexuality that seriously challenges the political limitations that have been imposed on sexual pleasures. It’s likely that such a model could involve different feelings, different kinds of bodies, different roles played by different individuals, different actions, different goals, and different motives.

Luce Irigaray’s early work provides an example of how sexual pleasure might not only be re-figured through philosophical reflection but also through different modes of writing. Her writing, especially her essay “When Our Lips Speak Together,” is sophisticated, playful, and multi-dimensional in terms of what it states and what it enacts, but for now, it’s enough to simply note how Irigaray’s philosophical points manifest through poetic, erotic language.  Challenging masculine, phallocentric metaphysics and economies, while emphasizing reciprocity and inseparability among women, Irigaray writes, “What need have I for husband or wife, for family, persona, role, function? Let’s leave all those to men’s reproductive laws. I love you, your body, here and now. I/you touch you/me that’s quite enough for us to feel alive” (This Sex Which Is Not One 209).  Because we—you/I—are indistinguishable, Irigaray asks, “how could one dominate the other?” And since Irigaray views women as the sex which is not one, but always more than one, she notes, “You touch me all over at the same time. In all senses. Why only one song, one speech, one text at a time? To seduce, to satisfy, to fill one of my “holes”? With you, I don’t have any” (209).  

Perhaps most importantly, though, is that when we push the questions of whether and how philosophical reflection might produce new sexual pleasures, we push toward the fruitful possibility of shifting what we first mean by "sex" so that "sexual pleasure" can refer to something that is not yet considered sexual. This is much like Foucault's example of sadomasochism's eroticization of different parts of the body. As McWhorter explains, Foucault understood that the process of erocitzing the body, and not merely the power relations between players, "eventually turns sexuality against itself, because it draws on sexual contexts, energy, and imagery to create forms of behavior that are not recognizably sexual at all" (186). This means that critical philosophical reflection can help us unhinge pleasure from what we have come to know as “sex” so that pleasure can stand more firmly on its own. As Foucault describes, "I think it's...a creative enterprise, which has as one of its features what I call the desexualization of pleasure" (BP 186).

And maybe separating pleasure from what we know of as sex so far is a really good thing. If the feminist arguments from people like Mackinnon are correct and the only model of sex that we have experienced so far is one grounded in domination and inequality, then maybe challenging this paradigm of what "counts" as sex is the most important first step for us to take. If our experiences of sexuality can only be understood in gendered terms where male dominance is masculine sexuality, and if the cultural meaning of sexuality is currently set up according to discriminating lines of normalization between heterosexuals and homosexuals, then maybe we should aim for cultivating new pleasures that are not "sexual" in the way that we currently think of them. If what we are aiming for is equality, or if what we hope for are interpersonal (and perhaps political) relations that are based on love and affection, there's a really good chance that "sex" as we know it can't get us there. But perhaps pleasure can, especially if we discipline ourselves to imagine, create, experiment, play, and also to philosophically think, write, and teach in ways that cultivate new pleasures.

 

This leaves me with one last thing to note.

If all of this talk about philosophy being able to produce new pleasures seems a little far out, this might have something to do with another seeming difference between philosophical practice and other types of suggested practices. One striking difference, at first glance, between philosophy and gardening, dancing, drugs, or S/M, is that the latter are all obviously bodily practices whereas philosophy has been typically understood as a mental, rational, thoughtful, intellectual enterprise that engages the mind and not the body. Even if one were tempted to agree with this split between mind and body and suggest that philosophy engages one and not the other, I want to suggest that philosophy itself can also be reconceived, and re-experienced, in ways so that it does directly involve and engage the body.

Due to the limit in time and space at present to make a sustained argument for philosophy as a bodily practice, my sincere gesture to this possibility will have to suffice for now (and this notion is part of a larger project). I think it is important to emphasize a theme that has been running throughout this paper, which is that philosophy could be approached through the reading of a text, or the writing of a text, or even the presentation of an idea in a way that reveals how undertaking philosophical practice is not just something that changes our minds, but changes who we are, including our embodied experience as subjects. Doing philosophy with this kind of attention to its potential as a bodily practice might make it more similar to the other mentioned bodily practices. It could make the doing of philosophy more pleasurable on its own. It might also more readily reveal how philosophy can produce new pleasures, such as the pleasure of ambiguity, of uncertainty, of not knowing the goal, or of knowing if there even is one...and not needing to get there. Not only do such pleasures resonate with the view of philosophy as an ascesis, one which continually opens onto new questions rather than cementing definitive answers, but I imagine that an openness to things like non-teleological uncertainty would also greatly influence and enhance our experiences of things like sexuality and pleasure.

Teaching for Transformation and the Transformation of Teaching

This is a presentation I did in August at the first Liberal Arts Scholarship and Technology Summit at Penn State University. I reflect on the work that I have been doing on YouTube and this blog. You can see the video I did just before this presentation on "Complex Human Interactions" here. (I'm reposting it now mostly for archiving purposes.)


Video streaming by Ustream

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: