Black Existence in “Torto Arado” em Dez Dobraz

The collection of critical essays “Torto Arado” em Dez Dobras [“Torto Arado” in Ten Folds] will be released in 2023 in Brazil by Mercado de Letras. The anthology, organized by Francisco Neto Pereira Pinto, Rosemere Ferreira da Silva, Naiane Vieira dos Reis Silva, and Luiza Helena Oliveira da Silva, is divided into four sections entitled: […]

Toward a Feminist View of Harm

Oppression, Harm, and Feminist Philosophy In many ways, our understanding of oppression is closely tied to the concept of harm. This connection is especially clear in feminist philosophy—not only do feminist philosophers regularly analyze oppression’s physical, material, psychological, and social harms, but they often argue that harm is a constitutive feature of oppression. For instance, […]

Inside the APA: Applying for APA Grants

One of the many ways the APA supports philosophers and helps address issues in the field is through grants. If you’re an APA member, you’re eligible to apply for an APA grant, and in this post I’ll share a bit about each of the types of grants the APA offers and how they work. To […]

Witches and ‘Welfare Queens’: The Construction of Women as Threats in the Anti-Abortion Movement

While today’s anti-abortion movement has been empowered by the recent fall of Roe v. Wade, the original ‘right-to-life’ movement dates to the mid-nineteenth century. In the mid-1800s, physicians began to take over the practice of childbirth from midwives and the medical specialty of obstetrics developed. The movement to medicalize women’s reproductive health made use of […]

Ableism and ChatGPT: Why People Fear It Versus Why They Should Fear It

Philosophers have been discouraging the use of ChatGPT and sharing ideas about how to make it harder for students to use this software to “cheat.” A recent post on Daily Nous represents the mainstream perspective. Such critiques fail to engage with crip theory, which brings to light ChatGPT’s potential to both assist and, in the […]

The Virtuous Image: Femininity and Portraiture on the Internet

Images of bodies impact young people, especially young girls and women. The normative implications of those images—what a body ought to look like and what a body ought not to look like—affect their self-esteem. A 2021 exposé of internal research conducted by Facebook (now Meta) on its photo-sharing app Instagram revealed the company itself tracked […]

Navigating (Living) Philosophy: Playing in a Rigged Game

Dear Green BIPOC Philosophers, Thank you for having a mustard seed’s worth of faith that philosophy can diversify and for tenaciously continuing to show up. You’ve beaten the odds, and I’m guessing it’s not been easy. In the next twenty years, your staying-power will be tested, so I hope that some of what I have […]

Dis-alienating Theory: On François Tosquelles, Frantz Fanon, and Political Theory by way of Camille Robcis’s Disalienation

Camille Robcis’s Disalienation: Politics, Philosophy, and Radical Psychiatry in Postwar France is a lively and timely intervention into a variety of fields. The book takes its name from the concept of disalienation about which Frantz Fanon wrote his original medical dissertation that was rejected by his committee and later published as Black Skin, White Masks […]

Gender Changes: Genderfluidity and Trans Possibilities

In a recent interview with the New York Times, Bella Ramsey remarked, “I guess my gender has always been very fluid,” explaining that he always enjoyed being mistaken for a boy, and that “being gendered isn’t something that I particularly like.” The rising star of HBO’s The Last of Us wore a chest binder while filming […]

Meditations on Africatown, Part 1: Sensing Reality

Editor’s Note: What follows is the first in an intended series of reflections by the author on experiences in the undertaking of a research program undertaken in Africatown, Alabama, as detailed below. My first trip to Africatown, Alabama, came in mid-March, 2022. This was my first time ever traveling to there; up to that moment, […]

Navigating (Living) Philosophy:  An Unconventional Journey—My Ode to Transdisciplinary Philosophy

This series invites seasoned philosophers to share critical reflections on emergent and institutionalised shapes of and encounters within philosophy. The series collects experience-based explorations of philosophy’s personal, institutional, and disciplinary evolution that will also help young academics and students navigate philosophy today. I should start with a disclaimer: my scholarly journey as a philosopher has […]

Loving Commitment to Another: A Reflection by way of Howard Thurman

Do we, as human beings, need love? In The Creative Encounter, Howard Thurman affirms that we do. Thurman articulates this universal human need for love in terms of the development of personality. Thurman quotes the 1951 report A Healthy Personality for Every Child, which states that the “human being does not have a personality; he […]

Children’s Mental Health, Institutional Gaslighting, and Mother-Blame

There is a class action lawsuit against Iowa over failure to provide legally-required and medically necessary mental health services for Medicaid-eligible children. As a mother of an adult son with severe childhood-onset mental illness, I have mixed emotions. I am angry that it took so long and is too late for my son, relieved there […]

The Caribbean Philosophical Association’s 2023 Award Winners

The Caribbean Philosophical Association is pleased to announce the 2023 recipients of the association’s awards for contributions to philosophical thought, literature, mentorship, and best papers at the association’s 2022 international conference: Frantz Fanon Lifetime Achievement Award Gerald Horne  Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén Batista Lifetime Achievement Award Nkiru Nzegwu Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén Batista Outstanding Activist Intellectual and […]

Simone de Beauvoir and “Women’s Work”

1. Crisis of Reproduction In the short film, Loin du 16e (Far from the 16th), Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas evocatively portray what we might identify as a contradiction within social reproduction. Lasting less than five minutes, the film depicts an otherwise unremarkable day for the nameless young woman that is its central protagonist: she awakens […]

Drucilla Cornell, in Memoriam

The following is a revised reflection of a post on Drucilla Cornell for the Frantz Fanon Foundation. It is posted here because of the importance of Drucilla Cornell in the history of Africana and Feminist Philosophy. I awoke one morning in mid-December 2022 to Thelonious Monk’s performance of Duke Ellington’s “I Didn’t Know About You.” […]