Philosophy

bell hooks’ theory of the "oppositional gaze" attempts to wrestle with the connection between aesthetics and epistemology: how does what and how we know shape how we evaluate and relate to art? Through a survey of visual, literary, and performance arts primarily by Black and Latina women (e.g., Lorraine O’Grady, Mickalene Thomas, Christina Sharpe, Ana Victoria Jiménez) this course seeks to theorize the many dimensions of the oppositional gaze, with a focus on the ways these thinker-artists challenge, critique and disrupt various binaries that they identify with the history of western philosophy. In our exploration, we will consider feminist standpoint epistemologies, Black feminist poethics, and decolonial theory, amongst other frames.

The term intersectionality originated in Kimberlé Crenshaw’s work in the legal field. Since that time, many disciplines have recognized the importance of the concept and sought to make use of the concept in their own fields. This course will attempt to determine how and to what extent intersectionality may fit into the discipline of philosophy. With a particular focus on the ethical dimensions of the concept, we will seek to determine the conceptual difficulties intersectionality brings to bear on philosophy. Likewise, we will ask the larger question: what does intersectionality bring to bear on the discipline of philosophy? And how are the answers to these questions linked to the fraught inclusion of Black feminisms, histories, and concepts into the discipline? As such, the course will focus on close readings of major treatments of what might generally be referred to as “intersectionality.” We will look at the theoretical foundations for intersectionality found in the history of Black feminist writing. After a deep reading of Kimberlé Crenshaw’s two foundational texts on intersectionality, we will then move on to reading and discussing takings-up and criticisms that highlight the tensions inherent in intersectional theorizing: Anna Carastathis’ Intersectionality: Origins, Contestations, Horizons, Vivian May’s Pursuing Intersectionality: Unsettling Dominant Imaginaries, Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge’s Intersectionality, and Jennifer Nash’s Black Feminism Reiminaged. In sum, the course hopes to answer the question: given intersectionality’s concerns with race, gender, class, sexuality, social location and ability, why is it important that philosophy respond to the challenges intersectionality has offered? In an attempt to address these questions, students in the course will conduct a project in conjunction with Haverford's archives of Africana philosophy that seeks to consider ways that the archives might become a site of intersectional praxis.