Offerings, Plans, Reflections

Mutual Aid and Solidarity; The Russian Soul; Philosophical Autoethnography

Dear all,

I wasn’t quite organised enough to prepare this week’s email a week ahead, so I am doing it while on my holiday. Or, to be more precise, during an interlude in my holiday. Specifically, I am sat in a shit-hole motel somewhere outside of Portland, Maine, while my wife is away doing a workshop. True to form, there is a blazing argument in the room next door. Sometimes the reviews on “BringFido” only tell half the story. Admittedly, the dogs seem happy.

Turning to news that may be of interest, our amazing assistant editor, Chi Rainer Bornfree, recently launched a newsletter called “The Covid Underground”. The opening essay Chi has written for it is one of the best pieces of public philosophy I have read in ages.

We have finally got the new issue to the printer and uploaded the new classes/groups to the website. More on these below, along with details of the latest episode in our podcast, “The Philosopher and the News”, Alec Grant’s reflection on the field of philosophical autoethnography, and a few other bits and bobs. Enjoy!

Offerings

Your Sunday Read
“Mutual Aid and a Pluralistic Account of Solidarity”. In this essay, Savannah L. Pearlman asks: What does solidarity consist of? And what does being in solidarity require? Looking to various accounts of solidarity as built around shared identity, fellow feeling, or collective action, Savannah looks to the Mutual Aid movement in order to defend her pluralistic account of solidarity.

The Philosopher and the News - New Episode
“The Myth of the Russian Soul”: February 24th marked the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In order to try and better understand the war and what led to it, host Alexis Papazoglou spoke to Josephine von Zitzewitz who recently wrote an article entitled The Uses and Abuses of the Russian Soul, in which she explores the limits of the idea that Russian culture and literature have a role to play in the war against Ukraine.

New Print Issue!
“Where is Philosophy Going?”: To celebrate our 100th anniversary, we thought we would look forward rather than back. Though I say so myself, this is a cracking issue. You can pre-order a copy now - it will be shipped early in w/c 27th March.

Courses/Groups
We have just uploaded details of four courses/groups we are running in the months ahead:
“What is Civil Disobedience?”: Eraldo Souza dos Santos will help you explore the global history of civil disobedience through some of the major writings of the past century.
“Writing for the Public”: I will attempt to use whatever editorial skills I may have built up these past years to help you develop your skills at writing philosophy for the public.
“Night Vision Book Club”: Mariana Alessandri will be your guide as you navigate your way through difficult moods including anger, sadness, grief, depression, and anxiety.
“The Value of Objectivity”: Amogh Sahu will use some classic readings on the value of objectivity to guide you through the many thorny philosophical questions it raises.

Plans

This has been the week when plans finally became offerings, so there’s not much to say here. Here is the line-up for the March and April events in our “On Philosophy” series (currently only the opening event is online and open for registration - all April events will be online by this time next week). Full line-up and poster in next Sunday’s newsletter:

• Tuesday 28th March: “The Political Theory of Algorithms” - Josh Simons with Lily Hu (co-hosted with Boston Review)

• Monday 3rd April: “Nihilistic Times” - Wendy Brown with Jana Bacevic

• Tuesday 11th April: “How to Think Like a Woman” - Regan Penaluna with Rebecca Buxton and Lisa Whiting

• Monday 17th April: “What is Mental Illness?” - Justin Garson, Nev Jones and Marco Ramos with Anthony Morgan

• Tuesday 18th April: “Frantz Fanon & The Wretched of the Earth” - Lewis R. Gordon with Brad Evans

• Monday 24th April: “On Being a Loser”: Josh Cohen with Anthony Morgan

Reflections

Alec Grant is a self-identified “philosophical autoethnographer”. To find out more about what this means, read on:

A few years back I completed an Open University MA in Philosophy. While working on it, I came across the website for The Philosopher and took out a subscription to the print issue. I’m so pleased I did! The magazine is informative, challenging, and always enjoyable, and is equalled by the excellent events series [Alec wrote this of his own free will - ed.]. As a result of both the essays and events, I’ve developed new ideas and questions, and have bought quite a few of the texts referenced to add to my ever-growing philosophy library. 

All of this in turn has helped me enormously in my work as a self-identified “philosophical autoethnographer”, especially in developing my forthcoming edited collection, Writing Philosophical Autoethnography (to be published in late 2023 or early 2024 by Routledge). I should explain the meaning of “autoethnography” at this point. It’s a form of narrative inquiry that values subjectivity, emotions, relationships with others, and epiphanic and other personal experiences as research resources. Connecting the autobiographical with the sociocultural, autoethnography combines the creative aesthetic sensibilities of the humanities (languages and literatures, the arts, history, and philosophy) with respect for the theory and empirical data of the social sciences.

The aim of my forthcoming volume is to promote the idea of philosophical autoethnography as a basis for life writing, across the autoethnographic and related communities. Accordingly, this is the first collection of narrative autoethnographic work in which, to quote from its opening chapter:

Authors autoethnographically explore their issues, concerns and topics about human society, cultures, and the nonhuman and material worlds through an explicitly philosophical lens. In specific terms, this means that each chapter – while written as first person autoethnography (not precluding the use of second- and third-person narrative, as relevant) – will showcase sustained engagement with philosophical arguments, ideas, concepts, theories, and corresponding ethical positions. This philosophical basis will be fundamental to the content, topic, focus and context of each autoethnography chapter, rather than supplementary.

I have The Philosopher to thank for some of the direction of my new volume, particularly in the areas of subjectivity, philosophical autobiography, the meaning of “culture” and related ethical issues. For example, the recent conversation with Lee A. McBride on “Insurrectionist Ethics” has proven salient for my own writing [you can read it in this issue - ed]. McBride’s position on critiquing and clarifying cultural concepts such as “racism” and “oppression”, and articulating his commitment to “critical pragmatism”, resonates with my scholarly concerns. McBride’s insurrectionist ethics directly chimes with the critical dimension of my work as a philosophical autoethnographer.

Critically exploring culture through autobiography is fundamental to autoethnography, and subjectivity stands out as especially significant in this regard. Until relatively recently in the social sciences and – it seems to me – in the discipline of philosophy, little attention has been given to subjectivity. Many scholars have felt threatened, even repelled, by the unruly content of subjective experiences. They have shied away from the investigation of subjectivity in much the same way that people in general avoid unpleasant or dangerous activities. Subjectivity can be both unpleasant and dangerous: unpleasant because subjective emotional, cognitive, and physical experiences frequently relate to events which – despite the importance of such experiences and events – are deemed inappropriate topics for polite society; dangerous because the workings of subjectivity seem to contradict so much of the rational-actor worldview which has for a long time been dominant in the social sciences and philosophy.

In a recent autoethnographic article, for example, co-written by myself and Susan Young, Susan writes in the first person about her sexual abuse at the hands of British psychiatrists. The article, “Troubling Tolichism in Several Voices”, was inspired by Serene Khader’s 2020 essay, “What Should Feminists Want from a Conception of Autonomy?” [we recently uploaded Serene’s essay to our website - ed.], and directly challenges advice mainly aimed at female autoethnographers to stay silent about such experiences. Susan’s work embodies a feature I consider central to all autoethnographic work, philosophical or otherwise: if it doesn’t change your life, it’s not worth doing.

Alec Grant is Visiting Professor in the Department of Education and Psychology at the University of Bolton. He is the recipient of the first International Conference of Autoethnography (ICAE) Lifetime Contribution Award, “in recognition of making a significant contribution to the development and nurturance of the field of autoethnography and those working within it”.

Ending

For now, The Philosopher remains unfunded and relies on your support to keep going, pay our contributors, and so on. Please consider becoming a supporter via Patreon or offering a one-off/monthly/annual donation.

All being well, by the time you are reading this I hope to be in a slightly more salubrious dwelling place. Wishing you all a lovely Sunday, wherever you are.

Anthony Morgan
Editor