Hello, I’m Shelley Tremain and I’d like to welcome you to the tenth installment of Dialogues on Disability, a series of interviews that I am conducting with disabled philosophers and post here on the third Wednesday of each month. The series is designed to provide a public venue for discussion with disabled philosophers about a range of topics, including their philosophical work on disability; the place of philosophy of disability vis-à-vis the discipline and profession; their experiences of institutional discrimination and personal prejudice in philosophy, in particular, and in academia, more generally; resistance to ableism; accessibility; and anti-oppressive pedagogy.
My guest today is Andrea Nicki. Andrea specializes in feminist philosophy, philosophy of psychological disability, and mental health ethics. She has published two collections of her poetry with Toronto presses. Her poetry explores social issues, including philosophy of disability and her other research interests. She received her Ph.D. in philosophy from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.
Welcome to Dialogues on Disability, Andrea! You did your B.A. in philosophy with a minor in English literature at The University of New Brunswick, Canada. Then you did your graduate work in philosophy at Queen’s University. What brought you to philosophy and, in particular, feminist philosophy?
Early in my life, that is, as a child, I was preoccupied with the “big questions” and very interested in religion, spirituality, critical thinking, and moral justification. I was raised Catholic and asked my catechism teachers a lot questions that related to God and the world. But I didn’t find any of their answers satisfactory. I wanted to find other answers to these questions; and I wanted certainty. When I took my first courses in philosophy at The University of New Brunswick I felt right at home, felt a resonance with my philosophy professors.
The Department of Philosophy at Queen’s, where I did my graduate degrees, has a number of professors who specialize in feminist philosophy and applied ethics. I have always been concerned about social issues, especially the domination of women, children, and animals. I come from a conservative, patriarchal, and abusive home. The abuse extended to our pets.
How does your research in feminist philosophy relate to your queer identity?
My Ph.D. supervisor, Michael Fox, is a feminist philosopher and animal ethicist. He and another feminist philosopher at Queen’s, Christine Overall, also teach courses on feminist philosophical theories of sexuality. These courses made me feel that it was normal and positive to be pansexual and to feel that gender and sex are insignificant and irrelevant in the choice of a partner. This validation and support fueled my interest in feminist philosophy which, in challenging discrimination related to sex and gender, argues for the irrelevance of sex and gender in many contexts.
You maintain that you have experienced significant difficulties in securing a job in philosophy because of your work in feminist philosophy and your queer identity. Please explain these difficulties.
A decade ago, when I first went on the job market, I had many short job interviews at APA conferences for positions in ethics. In most cases, the interviewers were not very knowledgeable about feminist ethics or were not sympathetic to feminism. In a number of cases, they were overly hostile. It seemed that I was interviewed so that the departments could meet some kind of a quota—such as a gender quota—or, that the interview process was just a formality and that I had already been eliminated as a candidate before the interview. To my surprise, many of the on-campus interviews were just as unsupportive. Although it’s common for search committees to disagree about candidates, it seemed as if I had been eliminated from serious consideration for many of the jobs even before the campus interviews had taken place. The talks that I gave to these departments received no supportive questions or comments.
In one case, I accepted a one-year replacement position because two members of the department had made enthusiastic comments about feminist ethics and said that there was the possibility of a long-term position developing from the temporary position. When I arrived, however, these two professors were very cold and unfriendly and were in the process of interviewing candidates for a tenure-track position. When I asked one of them—the department chair—about the tenure-track search and why I wasn’t considered for that position, he told me explicitly that they didn’t want a feminist philosopher for the position and that my position would remain a limited-term appointment of one year. I found out later that a feminist philosopher had been forced out of the department because of harassment.
In another case, a philosophy chair wanted a course in applied health ethics to be designed and offered to nursing students. He approached me about the design of this course because he knew that I had held a postdoctoral fellowship in bioethics at the University of Minnesota. He also knew that I had been very successfully teaching such a course to students in health sciences at another university and had, in fact, been promoted from a part-time sessional position to a part-time faculty position on this basis. I corresponded with the nursing director at the university and she was very enthusiastic about my involvement. The philosophy chair wasn’t comfortable with my course design, however, because the course included units on feminist ethics and disability ethics. Even though I was the most qualified philosophy instructor to design and teach a course in applied ethics, he got other instructors, with no specialization in the area, to do so.
When there is a job search for someone with specialization in ethics or applied ethics, the department is usually looking for someone who is committed to teaching only mainstream ethical frameworks; in other words, Kantianism, utilitarianism, and virtue ethics. Typically, mainstream philosophers regard the application of feminist theory, post-colonial theory, and disability theory to ethical issues as “doing sociology.” Essentially, in the deeply conservative discipline of philosophy, the more that you challenge the status quo and dominant social values, the less that you are regarded as “doing philosophy.” Notably, philosophers doing other kinds of interdisciplinary work—such as philosophers of science and philosophers of psychiatry—are regarded as doing “real” philosophy, so long as their challenges to the status quo are minimal. So, for example, as long as they don’t call for a radical transformation of psychiatry.
In a tenure-track job search, committees are essentially looking for someone who will fit in well with the other permanent members of their department, someone whose perspectives, values, and lifestyle are harmonious with their own. If candidates do not have conventional lifestyles, for example, are not in heterosexual marriages raising children, hiring committees may not see them as good fits. As I am unmarried, queer, without children, and with painful memories of family life, I have found it hard to socialize and network with people who talk a lot about family and assume that this is a comfortable topic for everyone. In one work environment where I had a contract teaching position, an administrative manager would sometimes refer to my reproductive potential, telling me that my time was running out to have biological offspring, even though I had not indicated an interest in childbearing. In another workplace, whenever a parent of a faculty member died, or a child was born, there would be cards for everyone to sign. On the surface this practice seems like a positive, community-building practice; but, the absence of cards to mark other kinds of events valued by faculty, events not related to family life, make it an exclusionary practice. Singling out events related to family life reinforces the dominant cultural view that family life is of the utmost importance and serves to marginalize members of a workplace who do not share this view.
The controversial nature of your research has also posed difficulties in your job search. Please explain your research and how its controversial character has affected your job prospects.
My research focuses on the ethical treatment in health care and society in general of survivors of chronic childhood abuse. By “chronic childhood abuse,” I mean behaviour toward children, and treatment of them, which is criminal according to laws in North America and many other countries. In my articles, I have been particularly concerned with the psychiatric diagnosis of “borderline personality disorder”—BPD—as this diagnosis is most often applied to female survivors of chronic childhood trauma. For example, in my article “‘Borderline Personality Disorder,’ Discrimination, and Survivors of Chronic Childhood Trauma,” which is forthcoming in the International Journal of Feminist Bioethics, I argue, echoing feminist psychologists, that BPD pathologizes the life experiences, behaviour, and survival strategies of female survivors. My philosophical arguments incorporate autobiographical narratives, including my own. I claim that the diagnostic and clinical practices related to BPD are significantly informed by gender bias and a lack of understanding of the lived experiences, social situations, and moral virtues of survivors. Many survivors of chronic childhood trauma display traditional moral virtues such as empathy, compassion, courage, and truthfulness; often, however, their behaviour is misunderstood and interpreted as exhibiting moral vices. For example, a survivor might be heavily dependent on a therapist and may seem to want too much of the therapist’s attention. Such a survivor’s behaviour might be misunderstood and interpreted as selfishness. But, in fact, she may simply be expressing a deep need for connection. The reality is that a survivor may be experiencing a lot of psychological pain and the therapist may be the only one who gives her emotional support; she may lack family support and be very isolated in society. Survivors can be very socially isolated, in part, because of the cultural insistence on positive reference to family and family life. A survivor may avoid social contact because, in the past, others have invalidated and rejected her when she disclosed the truth about her family situation and her severe emotional pain. A survivor may be very dependent on the therapist in other important ways. For example, in order to collect disability insurance because she is unable to work, she may depend on the therapist to report that she is suffering from a major mental illness.
It is generally considered unscholarly to include life narratives in academic philosophical writing. However, writings in the area of philosophy of psychiatry and psychology can lack analytical rigour and depth when they simply assume the scientific validity and objectivity of psychiatric diagnoses, ignoring autobiographical writings about social sources of distress. Autobiographical writings often get dismissed as purely anecdotal, while social scientists who want to conduct studies on the negative effects of psychiatry at the levels of population health and individual health may not be able to obtain grant money.
Because of the dominant cultural view that mental health problems are primarily neurological or biomedical problems, as well as the cultural denial of the pervasiveness of crimes against children, many people find it difficult to appreciate and value my research. Once when I gave a talk on the ethical treatment of survivors of child sexual abuse as part of an on-campus interview, a member of the search committee raised the topic of “false memory syndrome” and questioned the validity of survivors’ claims about sexual abuse. Other people in the audience supported her view, promoting doubt about the value of my research. In another instance, I tried to network with a health scientist who does research in the area of mental health. Multi-disciplinary health sciences departments post jobs for bioethicists. For these jobs, it is important to show that you can collaborate with health scientists and apply for research grants with them. The health scientist with whom I tried to work wasn’t interested in my research and said that she placed greater value on research that was less critical of biopsychiatry. Health scientists are trained to generally value psychiatry.
Sharing the nature of my research with health scientists focussed on mental health can be awkward and uncomfortable. Even though they are well informed about the social reality of domestic abuse, their training has directed them to focus on the psychological effects of trauma and perceive survivors through a lens of psychopathology and as psychologically damaged. As I argue in my forthcoming article on BPD, survivors of chronic childhood trauma can feel exhausted by the effort that it takes to constantly hide their respective histories of chronic childhood trauma and pass as people who come from relatively functional families in order to avoid medicalization, rejection, and exclusion from important networks. These survivors can have a lot of daily emotional distress because they live with horrible memories and are without the crucial emotional support that relatively functional families provide for their members throughout their childhood and adult lives. Nevertheless, a large burden of emotional pain does not make people more psychologically or morally deficient than others. The perception that survivors are more deficient than non-survivors promotes mistreatment and discrimination against survivors. Although discrimination based on family of origin—that is, on one’s experience in one’s family of origin—is not listed in or prohibited by human rights legislation, it should be. Neither the category of “family status” nor the category of “disability” that currently exists in the legislation captures this form of discrimination.
The interview process can be especially treacherous for disabled job candidates, given the uncertainty about the amount of information that it is prudent to convey to potential employers who may harbor ableist biases. Andrea, how have biases and prejudices against psychological disability disadvantaged you in the interview process?
I appreciate that you have asked me this question because even among disability studies scholars there can be the assumption that a psychologically disabled job candidate would not need any interview adjustment or accommodation. Often this assumption follows from a biopsychiatric view according to which the person’s disability is primarily a biochemical or neurological problem, not related to their life experiences and social exclusion. As I mentioned earlier, during my time on the job market, I encountered hostile comments related to my research on chronic childhood trauma and psychological disability. One interviewer, in commenting on my research, said that she thought that people exaggerate the harms that they suffered in childhood and, essentially, that they aren’t “survivors.” She referred to Susan Brison’s book, Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of Self, which is about a woman surviving stranger rape, and said that this experience was a real horror, not an imagined one. Other philosophers at the interview did not challenge this philosopher’s comment. Although in my job application and related materials, I had not revealed myself as a survivor of chronic childhood trauma or as psychologically challenged, given the nature of my research, she should have at least considered the possibility that I am a survivor. Her comment was very hostile and unaccommodating toward survivors of chronic childhood trauma in general and toward me as a survivor in particular. I felt demoralized and unwelcomed. Imagine if I had told her that I did research on homophobia and hate crimes against queer people and she had said in response that she thought queer people make up or exaggerate their experiences of hate crimes. I think that most people would agree that such a comment reflected a hostile and unwelcoming attitude toward queer people.
During one on-campus interview, I gave a talk on the ethical treatment of survivors of chronic childhood rape that incorporated narratives of survivors on the subject of coming to terms with the crimes. A friend of mine had warned me against giving this talk, saying that it was too controversial, that it wouldn’t be well received. However, I wanted to give this presentation because I had put a lot time and energy into researching and thinking about the topic; furthermore, no other topics interested me as much. My friend was right. As I advanced further into the talk, most of the audience looked stunned and increasingly ill at ease. My delivery of this talk and the question and answer period stimulated me a lot emotionally, prompting flashbacks and uncomfortable feelings. It was hard for me to be at my best in the interview that immediately followed the talk. I didn’t feel that it would be prudent to say in advance of the campus visit that I was a survivor of chronic childhood rape and that I would need to take a break for a couple of hours after my presentation in order to refresh. I had worried that, if I did, I would be psychiatrized, judged mentally incompetent, and that my talk would be taken to indicate that I was “not over” my childhood trauma. At dinner that evening, a member of the interview committee loudly commented to a person sitting nearby that my topic was not a good one for a job talk, though she then proceeded to share with the table details of severe harms that she had experienced in her own childhood. On a later date, a member of the interview committee told me that he had really appreciated my talk and had wanted me to be hired for the position, but that the committee had chosen to give the job to someone who was more enthusiastic about getting it. It was true that I hadn’t demonstrated that I really wanted the job. I was ambivalent about getting the job, which was in a very unfamiliar and intimidating city, given that only this person had been friendly and supportive toward me.
The recent discussions about so-called “trigger warnings” in philosophy and academia more generally have revolved almost exclusively around the creation of accessible environments for students. There has been very little attention given to the needs of faculty and other staff who have experienced trauma. Have you experienced disadvantage in your workplaces due to lack of accessibility for psychological disability?
The psychological challenges that I have include anxiety, troubled sleep and nightmares, and fear of authority figures. Although my fear of authority figures has greatly decreased, when I first started looking for academic jobs, it was a significant barrier to socializing and networking; I would be tense and anxious when I tried to do so, making my speech very dysfluent. I have less troubled sleep now, but I still have nightmares and sometimes feel a bit distraught and preoccupied for a few hours after waking from a nightmare. So, when I teach, I request that I not be assigned early morning classes, though I have indicated only that my requests were due to a health challenge. In a few cases, my requests were not granted, in which cases I didn’t think it was prudent to push for them, at the risk of seeming incompetent, difficult, or ungrateful for my job.
Disclosure of psychological disability related to chronic childhood trauma can be very difficult: it might not be given any uptake or it might be treated with disbelief and derision, especially by people who assume that serious family problems do not occur in certain families. Many people hold racist and classist stereotypes about childhood abuse according to which survivors of chronic childhood abuse do not come from white, middle-class families. According to dominant ideology, white, middle-class life is comfortable, orderly, and protective of children. It can be hard for some people to imagine a white, middle-class family in which comfort is greatly lacking. This idealized picture of the white middle-class family assumes that, for example, all parents have good parenting skills, that they are able to manage and balance different responsibilities and seek support when needed, and that they use their economic resources in a way that serves their children’s best interests. Several times when I have revealed that I come from a white, middle-class family with serious problems, people have expressed disbelief. One person said, “But it couldn’t have been that bad, you got your Ph.D., right?” Any home in which chronic trauma of children occurs is far from comfortable for the children in it.
Other difficulties that I have experienced in the workplace relate to my poetic thought and speech patterns. When I taught bioethics to students in health sciences courses, my teaching evaluations were quite good overall. I even won a departmental award for undergraduate teaching. But, every term, some students in these courses complained that I talked too fast, that my train of thought was hard to follow, and that I often went off topic. I talk quickly when I feel energized by a topic or a discussion. I tend to experience a rapid flight of ideas; however, these ideas do relate to the topic. Importantly, the students’ complaints could be taken as revealing unconscious ableism or sanism. Given that speech with a rapid flight of ideas and associations is a criterion of the psychiatric diagnosis “manic-depression,” such speech could be interpreted as “manic” or as a symptom of “manic-depression” and thus viewed negatively.
Disability theorists on speech argue, however, that notions of good and bad speech are socially constructed. According to dominant speech norms, there are several different kinds of negative speech, including dysfluent speech, slow speech, fast speech, speech on seemingly random topics and unconnected thoughts—that is, creative speech—speech with grammatical errors, and speech with an unfamiliar, “foreign” accent. Dominant speech norms privilege literal, sequential, predictable thought, and the organization of information in a linear, step-by-step progression. For people with this dominant thinking style, or people who are accustomed to this thinking style—such as students in health sciences—creative connections can seem illogical and meaningless. Some students are harsh critics of instructors who deviate from dominant speech norms and the disrespectful behaviour of such students can cause problems in the classroom. For this reason, instructors whose linguistic practices deviate from dominant speech norms ought to have the option to teach their courses online.
What resources—books, articles, videos, and so on—would you recommend to readers and listeners who want to learn more about psychological disability and the biases that psychologically disabled people confront?
Typically, psychologically disabled people are reductively interpreted as having “a mental illness.” I believe that the concept of “mental illness” harms individuals and society, more than it benefits. Many psychologically disabled people believe that framing their problems as “mental illness” stigmatizes them. These people also believe that the aspects of them that psychiatry medicalizes and pathologizes are not in fact inherently undesirable—for example, “autism” and “mania.” Many people who embrace psychiatry and present their problems in social living as “battling with,” “living with,” or “overcoming” mental illness have written memoirs about their experiences. I do not recommend these books. Typically, these books do not explore in any depth the social-political causes of severe chronic emotional suffering. Rather, these books direct readers to think that “psychiatric conditions” are serious medical conditions and that the people “afflicted” with these so-called “conditions” deserve empathy and support. The advice that these books offer has a very different aim than the aim of books that both help readers understand the complex causes of severe chronic distress and move them toward greater concern about social problems, such as domestic violence, sexism, queerphobia, racism, and classism, all of which contribute to considerable emotional suffering and psychological disability.
I recommend autobiographical works that are critical of psychiatry and present alternative approaches to mental health, such as: Girl Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen; The Last Time I Wore A Dress by Daphne Scholinski; and She Who is Lost Is Remembered: Healing from Incest Through Creativity edited by Louise Wisechild. Life writings that explore trauma, abuse, and social discrimination can help readers better understand the kinds of severe chronic stress that psychologically disabled people have typically experienced more than the books influenced by psychiatry can.
To further help readers unlearn a tendency to psychiatrize and stigmatize psychologically disabled people, I recommend works that challenge the psychiatrization of distress and the huge social investment in professional mental health services. The othering and relegation of distressed individuals to the private offices of mental health professionals has not lessened the presence of psychological disability, but rather, it has increased psychological distress by deflecting attention away from social problems. In the past—that is, when I first started writing about psychological disability—I thought that some diagnostic categories of mental illness could be helpful for people who experience chronic emotional suffering. After reading books by authors such as Robert Whitaker, Paula Caplan, Bonnie Burstow, and Joanna Moncrief, however, I changed my mind. These writers document the dangers of psychiatric diagnoses, associated drug treatment, and the role of the pharmaceutical industry in the creation and promotion of psychiatric diagnoses. Thus, I recommend: Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America by Robert Whitaker; When Johnny and Jane Come Marching Home: How All of Us Can Help Veterans and They Say You're Crazy: How the World's Most Powerful Psychiatrists Decide Who's Normal by Paula Caplan; Psychiatry and the Business of Madness: An Ethical and Epistemological Accounting by Bonnie Burstow; Psychiatry Disrupted: Theorizing Resistance and Crafting the (R)evolution edited by Bonnie Burstow, Brenda LeFrançois, and Shaindl Diamond; and De-Medicalizing Misery: Psychiatry, Psychology and the Human Condition, edited by Joanna Moncrieff, Mark Rapley, and Jacqui Dillon.
I also think that people can better appreciate the problem of psychiatrizing psychologically disabled people by reading authors who criticize the exportation of Western psychiatry to developing nations. I really like China Mills’ book Decolonizing Global Mental Health and a special issue of the journal Disability and the Global South on the theme Globalising Mental Health and Pathologising the Global South? Mapping the Ethics, Theory and Practice of Global Mental Health, edited by China Mills and Suman Fernando. As authors in this research area argue, the claim that people in developing countries need Western psychiatric treatment is ethnocentric and assumes that Western biomedical conceptions of distress and related practices are universally shared. Many cultures value treatment for distress that involves community engagement and focuses on the prevention of harms that promote distress. The imposition of Western psychiatry on new immigrants from nations that do not value psychiatry is a form of cultural imperialism.
Community engagement can enable the development of appropriate support structures. An example of such a structure is the Hearing Voices Network. This network promotes alternative, non-medical explanations of hearing voices, visions, tactile sensations, and other pathologized sensory experiences, conceiving these experiences as normal responses to chronic stress or trauma. Contrary to popular belief, hearing voices is not an uncommon experience. I recommend the website Madness Radio: Voices and Visions From Outside of Mental Health. The host, Will Hall, a voice hearer, was diagnosed with "schizophrenia" when he was young and was subsequently institutionalized. I recommend his interview with Jacqui Dillon, the director of the Hearing Voices Movement in the U.K. So-called “schizophrenia” is assumed to be a severe, chronic, untreatable, and life-destroying illness. However, people who have atypical sensory experiences and are diagnosed as “schizophrenic” because of these experiences can have enjoyable lives just like people with other types of differences associated with psychological disability. I know several disability studies scholars who have atypical sensory experiences and have been diagnosed with “schizophrenia.” A few of these scholars are in good academic positions; some of them have had trouble retaining academic employment, however, because they’ve been discriminated against and because their research is anti-psychiatry. To learn more about the new field of mad studies, I direct readers to the collection Mad Matters: A Critical Reader in Canadian Mad Studies, edited by Brenda A. LeFrancois, Robert Menzies, and Geoffrey Reaume.
Andrea, thank you very much for this extensive list of resources. Thank you also for your powerful and provocative remarks in this interview. Many of your remarks implicitly challenge a number of the claims that philosophers make in various areas of the discipline.
Readers and listeners are invited to use the Comments section below to respond to Andrea Nicki’s remarks, ask questions, and so on. Comments will be moderated. As always, although signed comments are encouraged and preferred, anonymous comments may be permitted. Enthusiastic thanks to Bryce Huebner who, once again, generously provided me with technical support as I prepared this interview.
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Please join me here again on Wednesday, February 17th at 8 a.m. EST for the eleventh installment of the Dialogues on Disability series and, indeed, on every third Wednesday of the months ahead. I have a fabulous line-up of interviews planned. If you would like to nominate someone to be interviewed (self-nominations are welcomed), please feel free to write me at s.tremain@yahoo.ca. I prioritize diversity with respect to disability, class, race, gender, institutional status, nationality, culture, age, and sexuality in my selection of interviewees and my scheduling of interviews.
Thanks very much for this very interesting piece. As with all the interviews in this series, it's both a fascinating and an uncomfortable read, and I'm grateful to you for sharing painful experiences. The references at the bottom look very useful.
A smaller question: with respect to the issue of cards and such, I had been wondering about this separately. Do you have any general suggestions of the sorts of things that a Department could mark in this way, which are non-family-oriented? In some ways, it would be nice if colleagues knew what mattered to each other and marked those events that are personally significant for each person. But not everyone shares a lot about their lives, so maybe this wouldn't work.
What you say here in the last part about Western psychiatry being imported to other contexts reminded me of this, which you have perhaps already seen?
"We had a lot of trouble with western mental health workers who came here immediately after the genocide and we had to ask some of them to leave.
They came and their practice did not involve being outside in the sun where you begin to feel better. There was no music or drumming to get your blood flowing again. There was no sense that everyone had taken the day off so that the entire community could come together to try to lift you up and bring you back to joy. There was no acknowledgement of the depression as something invasive and external that could actually be cast out again.
Instead they would take people one at a time into these dingy little rooms and have them sit around for an hour or so and talk about bad things that had happened to them. We had to ask them to leave."
~A Rwandan talking to a western writer, Andrew Solomon, about his experience with western mental health and depression.
From The Moth podcast, 'Notes on an Exorcism'.
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Posted by: Komarine | 01/21/2016 at 06:56 AM
Komarine, thanks for your terrific question about which life events should be marked in order to ensure more hospitable and inclusive workplaces, as well as your provocative question about ethnocentric psychiatric practices.
Since Andrea is on the west coast of North America (i.e., Pacific time), she may not respond for a few hours.
Posted by: Shelley Tremain | 01/21/2016 at 08:06 AM
This is another wonderful interview, Shelley. Thanks for putting them all together.
Thanks Andrea, for taking the time to do it, and for opening up to a profession that hasn't treated you well in the past.
I want to ask a few questions, as the interview has me thinking about a number of things since I first read it yesterday. I'm going to number them, and anyone is encouraged to weigh in.
1) I've been on the hiring side of the table at a number of universities, and I don't think I've ever seen someone shortlisted or brought on campus simply for the sake of the kind of quota you suggest. I wonder how widespread the use of such a quota is.
2) As someone who does have a family, and whose professional life and family are very regularly bleeding into each other, the comments about the bias against those without family is really interesting. My department (and uni) often open up events to families, but those without are allowed (even encouraged) to bring someone else if they want. But I'm wondering how you think it's best to know how to talk with others about non-academic things without knowing what the difficult topics are, or what other non-professional topics to discuss. I suspect that most of us naturally default to those things that we're most involved in, and for some of us that's family. For a colleague, it's her horse. (I mean this purely descriptively; I'm not necessarily endorsing the default.)
3) Are you familiar with Eleonore Stump's work on narrative and the value it gives to philosophy?
Your comments about psychological disability are particularly helpful Thank you.
Posted by: Kevin Timpe | 01/21/2016 at 11:49 AM
Thanks for the kind remarks about the interviews, Kevin. I'm deeply moved that the disabled philosophers whom I interview trust me to be the conduit of their stories and all that they involve.
Posted by: Shelley Tremain | 01/21/2016 at 12:38 PM
Komarine, thanks for your comments. In answer to your question about what a department could recognize through cards, a department could recognize a significant loss/gain/accomplishment that a faculty member shared about. As you say, not everyone shares about important events. But a department could say they want to strengthen community through cards of support and encourage people to share about important personal events. People can be involved in creative projects and have an important event like an art exhibition or a creative writing book launch. Or they may be undergoing training in something non-academic like dance or martial arts and getting certification. Also, people may be very disturbed by the loss of a close friend. I had a colleague who had a close friend who was murdered and she had to take some time off to grieve.
I appreciate the quote you shared about ethnocentric psychiatric practices. I worked in immigrant resource centers in Vancouver for a few years and heard stories from my adult students about psychiatry being imposed on their children. Some children were diagnosed as "autistic" when they were struggling to learn the new culture and language and also were from cultures with different norms related to social interaction and different body language.
Best, Andrea
Posted by: Andrea Nicki | 01/21/2016 at 01:30 PM
Kevin, thanks for your thoughts. Here are some responses:
I'm not sure how widespread the use of a quota is or if there are explicit gender quotas. I've been involved in some hiring work and my sense is that some departments strive for gender balance in their short list, especially ones that claim to value diversity.
I appreciate your question about how a department can be inclusive toward those who are not in families raising children and/or who don't have family support. It's very important for departmental managers to promote inclusive community and, if needed, take workshops on how to do this. If departmental managers bully or exclude someone, others in the department are also likely to do so this so as not to lose favour with managers. It can be a challenge to departmental community when there is a lot of faculty married to each other and hired through spousal hirings. I'm not saying here that spousal hirings should never occur, but that managers need to develop and enforce policies which protect the interests of faculty and students alike who can have difficulty navigating relationships with individual faculty members in departmental couples, whose interests are so closely tied. Managers need to direct departmental members to value each other as human beings first and not primarily in terms of rank, awards, accomplishments, or marital status (if married to a high-ranking faculty member). If there is mutual respect in a community, there will be more genuine interest in/curiosity about each other as whole human beings with varied values and life experiences.
You ask how I think people should talk to each other about non-academic things "without knowing what the difficult topics are." I agree it's natural to talk about things that one is most involved in. And there is nothing wrong with that as long as one doesn't impose one's values unto others or assume that others share one's life experiences. People who don't want children can enjoy talking about other people's children as long as there is no insinuation that they should be having children too. And people who have been traumatized by their parents can be empathetic and supportive when someone is seriously grieving the loss of a loving parent as long as there is no assumption that all parent-child relationships are overall positive and valuable. As I claim in my interview, assuming that others have had (overall) positive experiences in families of origin can reflect a very problematic form of bias. When the topic of family background/experience comes up, everyone should feel they have a right to share about their experiences, however negative, and not think "Oh oh, I better think of something pleasant and positive to say so I won't seem uncharitable or ungrateful and will seem like a good fit." People generally appreciate the opportunity to share their life experiences, however negative, in a context of mutual validation and support. This is why, for example, peer-run support groups for survivors of family violence are so popular.
Thanks for the reference to Eleonore Stump. I'm not familiar with her work and looked her up. Her work on the problem of evil seems interesting.
Thanks for the opportunity to think more about these issues.
Best, Andrea
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Posted by: Andrea Nicki | 01/21/2016 at 04:05 PM
Andrea,
Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions.
If you're interested in Stump's work on narrative, start with her book "Wandering in Darkness," particularly chapters 2-4.
Posted by: Kevin Timpe | 01/21/2016 at 10:15 PM
Thanks for your response, Andrea.
Something that came into my mind whilst reading your interview was sparked off by what you said about experiencing a rapid train of ideas. Something that has come up for me recently is how to work with a student whose mind works in way that run somewhat counter to some of the norms of our discipline. The person in question has ADHD and needs to think in big picture ways or they lose interest, so the detailed picking over a position that forms the mainstay of at least certain kinds of philosophy doesn't suit their style of thought at all. As someone who is supposed to be advising about their writing and then marking their work, I'm not sure how to approach it. I'm not sure this is exactly a question, as I'm not really expecting you to have an answer. But it struck me as a problematic and - from a detached perspective - interesting connundrum.
Posted by: Komarine | 01/22/2016 at 12:45 PM
Komarine,
Thanks for your comment.
Andrea has gone out of town for the weekend and may not be able to respond until Monday.
Posted by: Shelley Tremain | 01/23/2016 at 05:33 AM
Dr. Nicki,
Thank you for your insightful interview responses here. I admire so much of your personal narrative. A few quick comments and then two questions: Fanon was a trained psychiatrist, amongst other roles, and in his work and its subsequent development, there seem to be the conceptual and ideological resources to think through the possibility of a type of Global 'Southern' Psychiatry (a 'Third World' Psychiatry in his own idiom). My intuition is that in order to avoid the hazards of historical and structural oppressive aspects of false objectivity in psychiatry that part of the continuing polemical and philosophical project would, as you advocate, involve sensitivity to personal narrative, including the personal narrative of individuals who claim benefit, assistance, help, and empowerment by certain psychiatric practices. I imagine that such sensitivity must entail a recognition of an aspect of psychiatric science (as with any human 'science' or specialized technical knowledge) that is practically global, if not objectively universal. I think that the idea that all psychiatry is 'Western' psychiatry might not quite fair to the non-Western historical sources of contemporary orientations in some kinds of psychiatric practice. So questions 1) As you refer to post-colonial in close relation to the philosophy of psychological disability, have you had much opportunity to engage in Fanon's work on these issues? 2) May I ask your thoughts about the possibility or impossibility of an 'empowering 'Psychiatry' of affirmation of psychological disability or difference? Thank You and please respond only when convenient for you as I know that you must be very busy.
Posted by: Damion Kareem Scott | 01/23/2016 at 03:52 PM
Since there seems to be a lull in the discussion given that Andrea is unavailable at present, I want to take the opportunity to explain an expression that I used in the interview.
In the lead-up to one of my questions to Andrea, I referred to "so-called trigger warnings." This expression might have been taken to suggest that I wanted to ridicule the practices that get classified in that way. No. I aimed rather to suggest my discomfort with the term 'trigger warning' itself. I have been uncomfortable with the term for quite some time now because of the images that it conjures. My sentiment was recently reinforced by someone on my facebook page who noted that the term can itself be a "trigger" for victims of gun violence. I take this assertion seriously and think that a new term or terms should be sought. As I've indicated here before with respect to ableist metaphors, such harmful rhetorical devices could be avoided if authors were to use more descriptive and explanatory expressions rather than take recourse in language whose aim is to conjure vivid images that may be alarming for some people.
Posted by: Shelley Tremain | 01/23/2016 at 07:49 PM
Just got back from a plane trip... Thanks for the comments everyone.
In answer to Komarine:
Yes, interesting conundrum. I have also had these kinds of challenges with students. If the student has been diagnosed with ADHD, then they probably experience significant anxiety. Anxiety can interfere with concentration, and thus could be impeding their ability to carefully develop and defend an argument. But it could just be, as you say, that the student has a different style of thought, is stronger in another kind of thinking style. Perhaps the student would be better off majoring in something else, something they can more easily enjoy and excel at. On the other hand, thinking in big picture ways is valued/should be valued more in the more applied areas of philosophy, such as applied ethics, so perhaps the student is in the right place. When I teach applied ethics courses I tell students that they can apply moral theories very systematically and analytically to the issues or more loosely to them, drawing more on research in other disciplines to support their arguments. If the issue is more an anxiety problem, an instructor can take some measures to reduce anxiety, such as having students submit drafts for a small amount of points. I have done this. But beyond that, I wouldn't adjust my marking. A lot of students struggle with significant anxiety (from various sources) which can impede academic performance. Sometimes students need to take time off from school.
Best, Andrea
Posted by: Andrea Nicki | 01/25/2016 at 02:51 AM
Damion Kareem Scott,
Thanks for your interesting comments. I read some of Fanon’s work years ago. I would like to revisit his work and will, if time allows. I don’t think psychiatry can be empowering for psychologically disabled people since, by definition, it defines and treats “disorders.” If interested, I would be happy to email you a copy of my essay on BPD; you can email me at anicki@sfu.ca.
Shelley,
Excellent points about the term "trigger warning." I haven't experienced gun-shot violence but always picture a gun when I see this phrase.
Best, Andrea
Posted by: Andrea Nicki | 01/26/2016 at 12:33 AM
Thanks for another great interview, Shelley and Andrea--and for a terrific discussion as well.
I would like to say that I have seen exactly the situation that Andrea describes in the hiring process. In one place where I worked, we brought three candidates to campus for interviews, including one woman who was also a minority. It became very clear even during her on-campus interview, however, that many members of the department were not taking her seriously as a candidate at all. They started making up reasons for why she was an inferior candidate before she even left. For instance, when she gave a rather technical paper on Kant's philosophy--and the job was a Kant job, after all--instead of commenting on her thorough examination of Kant's philosophy, they started complaining--as I say, even before she had left--about how she was not able to talk to a general audience. When we finally got to the meeting about the candidates, in the very first comment made about any of the candidates, one department member argued that, while he was a big supporter of affirmative action (and he went on about this point at some length), the minority, woman candidate was obviously "unacceptable." A few of us (all of the women and the one minority in the department) complained to the Dean that the candidate had never been taken seriously by the department--which drew its own backlash--but, because we could not get one of the white guys in the department to support us (one later apologized for not supporting us), we were dismissed as "biased"--at least that's my theory for why our complaint was dismissed.
Andrea, your discussion of "dominant speech norms" also reminded me of an experience I had at a conference about philosophy and race/racism at Morgan State University. I was on a panel (of all white women, by the way, which says something too) and, after all the papers were over, a young, black man raised his hand, stood up, and said he had a question for me. Then he began making his point by delivering a fantastic, rhythmically and poetically/metaphorically sophisticated rap--with rhyming as well. I sat there panicking because I knew there was no way I could respond to the young man in a way that would properly honor his form of speech, as I am completely incapable of that sort of speech. He let me off the hook by ending his presentation with a question in standard prose. I complimented his skill, and answered his question in my usual, boring, prose style. That incident has always made me think a lot, however, about dominant speech norms--and about the inferiority of my own speech skills in many ways.
Thanks again, Shelley and Andrea!
Posted by: Julie Maybee | 01/26/2016 at 09:50 AM
Julie, thanks for sharing. I really appreciate your comments. I like the thought of "properly honouring another's form of speech."
Best, Andrea
Posted by: Andrea Nicki | 01/27/2016 at 03:02 AM
Thank you for this insightful piece. A small comment re alternatives for 'trigger warning': parts of the feminist blogosphere seem to have settled on 'content warning', for just the reasons you note (and I have taken to using it in my own teaching). Is there any reason not to adopt it?
Posted by: Steph | 03/08/2016 at 02:43 PM
Thanks for your comment, Steph. I have seen the term 'content warning' used. I think it's a good alternative to the term 'trigger warning.' I hope that its use becomes a more common practice.
I'm glad you liked the interview that I did with Andrea Nicki.
Posted by: Shelley Tremain | 03/08/2016 at 05:25 PM