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    Everyone Here Speaks for Themselves

    It seems apropos to introduce a small point of order: New APPS is a group blog, which means that there are many authors here and we all speak for ourselves–and only ourselves. 

    A case in point would be my strong disagreement with Jon Cogburn's post below. I find it to trade in a series of unfortunate false dichotomies: 1) between valuing or appreciating ability and seeking to avoid speaking in a way that may be hurtful offensive to people with disabilities, or which marginalizes them; 2) between recognizing that illnesses (mental or physical), injuries, or other afflictions are real sources of suffering and seeking to avoid speaking about people suffering from such conditions in a way that marginalizes, delegitimates, hurts or excludes them; and more generally, 3) between being able to express oneself adequately or take joy in life and seeking to avoid harming others carelessly or thoughtlessly, especially where they may also be subject to various systems of marginalization, delegitimation, or exclusion. 

    I also disagree with Jon's suggestion that some of our former bloggers were wrong to push as hard as possible for the development in the profession and among those who engaged with us here of a much greater degree of sensitivity and care with respect to how we speak about folks who have historically been marginalized, delegitimated, and excluded by the profession and by the history of 'Western' philosophy.  


    If that push has made some people entering the profession—as well as some of its longstanding members—uncomfortable, too damn bad. I'm quite sure that the discomfort those folks are feeling due to being challenged on some of their unreflected assumptions and casual turns of phrase remains utterly minimal by comparison to the discomfort felt by those who find themselves on the wrong side of the norms of our still tremendously exclusionary profession. The fact that Jon seems to have lost perspective on the larger fact of those systems of exclusion and the need to work to ameliorate them is disappointing, to say the least.  

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    3 responses to “Everyone Here Speaks for Themselves”

    1. Eric Winsberg Avatar
      Eric Winsberg

      Thanks for posting this, Ed. I agree with this you on most of this.

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    2. Stephen Kuusisto Avatar
      Stephen Kuusisto

      You can read my post in response to “In Defense of Ableism” here:
      http://www.stephenkuusisto.com/uncategorized/ableism-pink-men-and-grandfather-clocks

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    3. Mohan Matthen Avatar
      Mohan Matthen

      As a former New APPS blogger, I must say that I find this post obtuse. Jon did not in the least suggest that one should not push hard against speaking sensitively, carefully, and respectfully about everybody, and in particular about the disadvantaged and excluded. I don’t see at all how he has “lost perspective” on systems of exclusion. His worry, as I understand it, is about how productive it is to disallow even a slight amount of give in the use of language. I share that concern. I don’t think, for example, that it is wrong to use ‘blind’ when it is clear that it does not suggest stupidity. (By the way, Mark Lance’s extraordinarily priggish comment on Jon’s thread—he is “shocked”, he says, literally shocked—accuses him of being “blind”. You come very close to committing the same offence with your talk of “losing perspective”—such an affliction, if it literally exists, would count as a visual agnosia.) I don’t think that the metaphor of justice being blind is objectionable, because unlike your “lost perspective,” it suggests a virtue, rather than a failing. Putting the precise example to one side, I don’t think it’s productive to ratchet up this kind of rhetoric to the point where you feel that you can use terms like ‘disappointing’ to describe a colleague. I mean really, what gives you the right?

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