Mich Ciurria | University of Missouri - St. Louis (original) (raw)

Papers by Mich Ciurria

This post argues that Weinstein is blameworthy for sexually harassing women whether he's responsi... more This post argues that Weinstein is blameworthy for sexually harassing women whether he's responsive to guilt or not. This position refutes the 'guilt model,' which says that guilt-susceptibility is required for blameworthiness.

BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, 2024

Daily Nous has reported that a new editorial team has resurrected the journal Philosophy & Public... more Daily Nous has reported that a new editorial team has resurrected the journal Philosophy & Public Affairs (PPA), owned by Wiley. This news comes barely a month after I published a call to action on BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY urging philosophers to boycott Wiley and other predatory publishers. Here, I will review some of Wiley’s offenses against PPA’s former editorial board, and their affronts to epistemic responsibility in general. Then, I will respond to the new editor Jason Brennan’s sophistical justification for his decision. Finally, I will argue that journals should publish a higher volume of content, albeit in a diamond open-access format, not for a fee from readers and authors. We need accessibility as well as volume if we want to counteract the pervasive ableism in professional philosophy.

Critical Humanities, Dec 25, 2023

Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT have set in motion a series of crises. These include di... more Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT have set in motion a series of crises. These include disruptions to the labor force, education, and democracy. Some people believe that rich technocratic 'saviors' should solve these crises. Naomi Klein, in contrast, argues that this is a neoliberal fantasy. Tech CEOs will not solve AI-related crises because they have a vested interest in perpetuating disaster techno-capitalism and the social inequalities that keep wages low. Who, then, can solve the AI crisis? I submit that the answer is: oppressed groups with experiential and intergenerational knowledge of crises. To oppressed people, technological crises are not new, but merely an extension of hundreds of years of uninterrupted subjugation. The popular misconception that AI-related crises are unprecedented is an example of what Kyle Whyte calls 'crisis epistemology,' a pretext of newness used to dismiss the intergenerational wisdom of oppressed groups. If AI-related crises are new, then what can we learn about them from oppressed people's histories? Nothing. I argue that oppressed groups (rather than billionaire technocrats) should be at the forefront of AI discourse, research, and policymaking. Mich Ciurria is a queer, gender-variant, disabled philosopher who works mainly on Marxist feminism and critical disability theory. She completed her PhD at York University in Toronto and subsequently held postdoctoral fellowships at Washington University in St. Louis and the University of New South Wales, Sydney. They are the author of An Intersectional Feminist Theory of Moral Responsibility (Routledge, 2019) and a regular contributor to BIO-POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, the leading blog on critical disability theory.

In this chapter, I identify and explain some of the exclusions that I and other people with Myalg... more In this chapter, I identify and explain some of the exclusions that I and other people with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) confront, including limited access to government-issued disability benefits, rejected requests for accommodations, and conditional acceptance in the disabled community. I also argue that Marxist feminism lends insight into how we can best respond to these exclusions. Finally, I claim that ambiguously or "queerly" disabled people, who are largely excluded from disability services, trouble the capitalist definition of disability, as well as the ability-disability binary on which this definition depends.

Journal of Applied Philosophy, Jul 12, 2022

Historically, philosophers have tended to see moral responsibility as a matter of having a certai... more Historically, philosophers have tended to see moral responsibility as a matter of having a certain metaphysical status. Strawson shifted the debate by defining responsibility as part of an interpersonal practice, but he did not discuss the relationship between interpersonal relationships and the politics of oppression. His view, in other words, was an example of ideal theory. This paper adopts a non-ideal theoretic framework to explore how ordinary responsibility practices uphold intersecting logics of oppression. It argues that the reactive attitudes function to police double-binds, creating situations of oppression for marginalized groups.

Feminist Philosophy Quarterly , 2024

This special issue convenes philosophers from various intersections of feminist theory to analyze... more This special issue convenes philosophers from various intersections of feminist theory to analyze, critique, and transform the practice and analysis of moral responsibility.1 While philosophers have historically been interested in conceptual analysis, feminism is and has always been committed to political resistance and revolutionary change. Therefore, feminists will seek not only to interpret the world of responsibility but also to change it. A common theme in this volume is the need for transformative change in the “moral ecology of responsibility”: the conditions that define, discipline, and “scaffold” responsibility. This is a departure from earlier theories that attempted to preserve the core of responsibility as we know it. Such
theories missed responsibility’s embeddedness in structurally unjust conditions— conditions that impose double binds and punishments on oppressed groups. One of responsibility’s main functions, on feminist scrutiny, is to preserve systems of oppression such as heteropatriarchy, colonialism, and ableism. Responsibility, in other words, tends to operate as a disciplinary apparatus in the experiences of oppressed people. When activists resist oppression, responsibility is there to “put them in their
place.” The omission of this critical perspective on the policing role of responsibility can be seen as a form of epistemic oppression.

Syndicate, 2022

Ryan Lake: I want to begin by expressing how grateful and excited I am to be part of this discuss... more Ryan Lake: I want to begin by expressing how grateful and excited I am to be part of this discussion of Michelle Ciurria’s important recent book, An Intersectional Feminist Theory of Moral Responsibility. Ciurria’s book is an impressive and challenging contribution to the philosophical literature on moral responsibility. In this ambitious book, Ciurria pursues a number of goals. She lays out an account of intersectional feminism, and uses the principles in her account to develop a significant critique of the contemporary state of discussion over moral responsibility. One of her core critiques of modern theories of moral responsibility is that they run afoul of basic intersectional feminist moral commitments. An important insight of Ciurria’s is that any account of moral responsibility is inescapably political, in ways that contemporary theories tend to (to the detriment of oppressed groups) ignore. In the account that she develops, the primary function of the core elements of our moral responsibility practices (blame in particular) should be understood and utilized for their ameliorative power and the role they can (properly employed) play in resisting oppressive social and political structures. Her book is essential reading for anyone theorizing about moral responsibility to think about and engage with, whether they share her core philosophical commitments or not, and I hope that this symposium will help spark broader conversations about the way philosophers think about moral responsibility.
In the first essay of this symposium, John Doris calls attention to the revolutionary nature of Ciurria’s account. To characterize many of the contemporary theories of moral responsibility Ciurria is challenging, Doris coins the term “conservatively revisionary Strawsonians.” As Doris describes, Ciurria’s revolutionary framework probes underexplored assumptions of this kind of moral responsibility conservativism, showing that it is overly complacent. Doris lays out an account of what is appealing about the conservative Strawsonian framework, using the appropriateness of certain cases of moral anger as a paradigmatic example. In support of one of Ciurria’s core contentions, he shows how even a seemingly paradigmatic example quickly runs into political complications. And he raises some important questions for Ciurria’s theory given its revolutionary nature—including whether it should be considered a theory of moral responsibility at all, or whether it moves into the territory of eliminativism (a question Ciurria herself considers but rejects).
Our next contributor is Bruce Waller, a powerful advocate for eliminativism about moral responsibility. Interestingly, in some ways Waller (along with some other prominent moral responsibility eliminativists) is a closer ideological ally to Ciurria than most theorists who defend the existence of moral responsibility. In his work Waller, like Ciurria, makes a powerful case that traditional moral responsibility systems have served to bolster and justify a number of harmful and oppressive social practices. But while Ciurria argues that a moral responsibility system (with proper radical revision) can be a tool to serve oppressed groups, Waller argues that moral responsibility systems are beyond salvation and should be absolutely demolished. In his essay, Waller makes the case for necessity of eliminativism, arguing that the valuable elements of Ciurria’s radically revised ameliorative account of responsibility can be preserved, while avoiding some of the pitfalls that he argues remain in any moral responsibility system.
Another contribution to our symposium comes from Kathryn Norlock, who makes the case that Ciurria’s book is a timely and important contribution to the moral responsibility literature. In her essay, Norlock raises a number of important questions for Ciurria’s consideration. In particular, Norlock presses for more clarity about the role of individual moral character to Ciurria’s intersectional feminist account—is it just unimportant, or in fact nonexistent? Norlock draws comparisons to Kate Manne’s ameliorative account of misogyny, in which Manne similarly shifts the focus from evaluation of individuals as misogynist and instead directs us to focus on the effects of misogyny. Norlock argues that there is more of a role for assessment and blame of individuals and individual character in pursuit of intersectional feminist goals than Ciurria’s account allows for.
Sofia Jeppsson focuses on how best to situate Ciurria’s project in relation to the hugely influential framework for understanding moral responsibility given to us by P. F. Strawson. Ciurria’s book is in many ways a critique of this project, but Jeppsson argues that the divide between Ciurria and the Strawsonians is even deeper than Ciurria may realize. As Jeppsson describes, on Strawson’s theory the reactive attitudes of praise and blame go hand-in-hand with taking a person seriously as a person. Ciurria argues that the reality is quite different—that members of marginalized groups, who tend to be seen as less rational than members of privileged groups, are nonetheless treated as being more blameworthy, not less. Jeppsson argues that this is a profound difference between Ciurria and Strawson that deserves more emphasis.
Finally we have Manuel Vargas, who in some ways might seem to be a kind of ally to Ciurria’s approach to moral responsibility. In particular, Vargas is well known for his advocacy for a revisionist view of free will and responsibility. In spite of this commonality, Vargas raises a several challenging questions about the details Ciurria’s account in his essay. He probes what it would mean to say that the responsibility system itself is broken (as opposed to simply saying that there are deep problems with the way it is implemented), and questions whether responsibility itself is even amenable to ameliorative theorizing. And Vargas raises the possibility that Ciurria’s account is actually shifting topics away from moral responsibility and proposing a theory of something alternative to replace our moral responsibility practices, perhaps something like an account of how blame might be detached from its ordinary uses appropriated for intersectional feminist ends.
As a final note, I want to take a moment to express my deep gratitude to Michelle and to all of the panelists for their insightful and wonderful contributions to this symposium, for their incredible generosity with their time, and for their incredible patience with this entire process. I had the great pleasure of working with both Ciurria and Waller on a previous symposium about Waller’s work, and so when the opportunity arose to put together a symposium working with both of them and the rest of the fantastic panelists on Ciurria’s book, I was very excited. Then the pandemic happened, and all of the craziness in the world that came with it, which led to a number of understandable but unavoidable delays. This symposium has been a long time coming, but I am thrilled at the way it has come together, and hope that everyone will share my view that it has been well worth the wait.

URL: https://syndicate.network/symposia/philosophy/an-intersectional-feminist-theory-of-moral-responsibility/

Journal of Applied Philosophy

Verifiche, 2021

Sally Haslanger identifies three standard philosophical approaches – conceptual, descriptive, and... more Sally Haslanger identifies three standard philosophical approaches – conceptual, descriptive, and ameliorative – and defends an ameliorative analysis of race and gender as the most effective at addressing social injustice. In this paper, I assign three influential theories of moral responsibility to these categories, and I defend the ameliorative approach as the most justice-conducive. But I argue that existing ameliorative accounts of responsibility are not ameliorative enough – they do not adequately address social injustice. I propose a new ameliorative model that defines ordinary responsibility as part of a political apparatus of power that polices and enforces oppressive norms. And I argue that we should create new, counterhegemonic discourses about responsibility through collective political resistance.

International Encyclopedia of Ethics, 2022

Feminist philosophy provides unique insight into moral responsibility. The general consensus in p... more Feminist philosophy provides unique insight into moral responsibility. The general consensus in philosophy, including feminist theory, is that responsibility tracks or responds to features of a person’s self, such as attitudes and capacities. But feminists think of the self in a unique way: as relational and socially embedded. This raises new questions about how we should hold people responsible. Are people responsible for (the effects of) their relationships, social connections, and shared attitudes, or only their personal choices and thoughts? Are people responsible for ignorance and collective wrongdoing, even if these things are widely accepted in their culture? Do people participate in oppressive practices because they don’t have access to relevant moral information, or because they have a vested interest in ignoring the testimony of their victims?

Because feminist philosophy is so internally diverse, we find a range of answers to these questions. But there is growing consensus that we need to pay more attention to marginalized voices – voices that call into question the dominant standpoint of nondisabled White women.

The Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology, 2021

This chapter brings feminist moral psychology into conversation with dominant theories of blame. ... more This chapter brings feminist moral psychology into conversation with dominant theories of blame. There are three main areas of concern in feminist moral psychology: the value of marginalized emotions like care and anger; the role of distorted states in moral reasoning; and the notion that agency is collective or relational. Feminist debates in each of these areas have implications for the dominant theories of blame: cognitive theory; emotional theory; conative theory; and functional theory. These debates call into question some commonly held beliefs about blame, including that it is a personal (apolitical) response to a target agent; that blaming emotions do or should track individual agency; and that blaming norms are generally felicitous and not in need of significant revision.

Feminist Philosophy Quarterly, 2020

When we focus on asymmetries of power in our society, we find that blame and praise are unfairly ... more When we focus on asymmetries of power in our society, we find that blame and praise are unfairly distributed, partly due to cultural narratives that favour and exonerate the privileged. This paper provides a partial explanation for this skewed distribution of blame and praise. I draw on three analyses of disappearance narratives that erase and exonerate privileged perpetrators and therefore skew the responsibility system in their favour. Then I defend an emancipatory theory of responsibility that treats blame and praise as communicative entities that can, and should, be used to debunk and dismantle these disappearance narratives, along with other oppressive ideologies. Blame and praise, on my emancipatory proposal, serve to identify and take a stand against agents of oppression and to recognize and celebrate resisters.

Analyze

I argue that our tendency to self-attribute or 'take responsibility for' positive rather than neg... more I argue that our tendency to self-attribute or 'take responsibility for' positive rather than negative events explains why we tend to experience romantic love as responsibility-preserving and painful break-ups as responsibility-undermining (in many cases). This seems to be the case even though both experiences share similar phenomenological qualities, particularly lack of control and loss of psychological continuity. I contend that our asymmetrical perceptions of responsibility in positive versus negative cases (in general) can be explained as an effect of a normally functioning attribution-self-representation system, which generates differential attributions in the two cases. I suggest that the subjective perception of responsibility - supported by our attribution biases - might be relevant to theorizing about how we ought to attribute responsibility to others. I say that, on an agency-enhancement model, we should withhold blame from people with a pessimistic attribution style, and withhold praise from people with a narcissistic attribution style, as a way of bringing them closer to the normal attributional range (under favorable circumstances). This is because the average degree of optimistic bias tends to have adaptive value. So, the subjective perception of responsibility and the objective reality of responsibility are intimately related. Finally, I show that gender constructs influence self-attribution style, and this has implications for how we should hold men and women responsible. In general, we should hold men more responsible than the current cultural norms dictate, as those norms reflect and express male bias.

Feminist Philosophy Quarterly

This paper argues that diversity and uptake are required for objectivity. In philosophy, women ar... more This paper argues that diversity and uptake are required for objectivity. In philosophy, women are underrepresented with respect to teaching, publishing, and citations. This undermines the objectivity of our research output. To improve women's representation and objectivity in philosophy, we should take steps to increase women's numbers and institute uptake-conducive conditions. In concrete terms, this means fostering an appreciation for diversity, diversifying evaluators, integrating women's contributions into mainstream discourse, and reducing implicit bias.

https://michellesreviewsblog.wordpress.com

Michelle Ciurria is a visiting scholar and part-time instructor at the University of Missouri-St.... more Michelle Ciurria is a visiting scholar and part-time instructor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She previously held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of New South Wales as part of the Practical Justice Initiative (2016-2017), and at Washington University in St. Louis as part of the Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology Program (2014-2016). She completed her PhD at York University in Toronto in 2014.

She is the author of "An Intersectional Feminist Theory of Moral Responsibility" (Routledge, 2019).

Her research has appeared in such venues as the Journal of the American Philosophical Association, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, and Feminist Philosophy Quarterly.

You can reach her at mich.ciurria@gmail.com

BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, 2024

Critical Humanities, Dec 25, 2023

Journal of Applied Philosophy, Jul 12, 2022

Feminist Philosophy Quarterly , 2024

Syndicate, 2022

URL: https://syndicate.network/symposia/philosophy/an-intersectional-feminist-theory-of-moral-responsibility/

Journal of Applied Philosophy

Verifiche, 2021

International Encyclopedia of Ethics, 2022

The Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology, 2021

Feminist Philosophy Quarterly, 2020

Analyze

Feminist Philosophy Quarterly

https://michellesreviewsblog.wordpress.com

She is the author of "An Intersectional Feminist Theory of Moral Responsibility" (Routledge, 2019).

Her research has appeared in such venues as the Journal of the American Philosophical Association, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, and Feminist Philosophy Quarterly.

You can reach her at mich.ciurria@gmail.com

In this paper, I assess three popular approaches to responsibility from a critical perspective: r... more In this paper, I assess three popular approaches to responsibility from a critical perspective: retributivism, rehabilitativism, and eliminativism. I argue that none of these theories adequately addresses the relationship between responsibility as a social practice and structural injustice. Theorists tend to ignore that retribution and rehabilitation serve oppressive purposes in mainstream society. Eliminativists do not offer an adequate solution. I say that, in contrast to the dominant proposals, marginalized people like myself should reclaim responsibility and use it to promote social justice. I argue further that depoliticizing narratives in responsibility theory are the result of the failure of the discipline to observe the principle of "nothing about us without us." Disabled, queer people like me are underrepresented and harmfully stereotyped (as incompetent, out of control, harmful to society) in dominant narratives about responsibility.

Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT have set in motion a series of crises that are seen as ... more Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT have set in motion a series of crises that are seen as imminent and unprecedented. These crises include disruptions to (i) the labor force, (ii) education, and (iii) democracy. Naomi Klein (2023) points out that we cannot trust tech CEOs to solve these crises because they have a vested interest in perpetuating them as beneficiaries of disaster capitalism, i.e., a political economy that exploits instability to entrench oppression. Who, then, can solve the AI crisis? I submit that the answer is: oppressed people with intergenerational knowledge of crises. To oppressed folks, tech-related crises are not new, but merely an extension of hundreds of years of uninterrupted subjugation. The popular misconception of the AI crisis as without precedent is an example of what Kyle Whyte calls "crisis epistemology," a pretext of newness used to dismiss the accumulated wisdom of intergenerationally oppressed peoples. If AI-related crises are new, then what do Indigenous people know about them? Nothing. In this paper, I explain how mainstream philosophy is using crisis epistemology to dismiss the testimony of racialized and disabled people* on AI. I then point to some solutions offered by oppressed peoples-solutions that take aim at neoliberalism. A common theme of anti-oppressive discourse is a rejection of neoliberal economics. This situated perspective is missing from dominant philosophical discourses on AI. *I am a white, queer, gender-fluid, disabled philosophers and I used my crib-queer experiences to inform my research.

In this chapter, I identify and explain some of the exclusions that I and other people with Myalg... more In this chapter, I identify and explain some of the exclusions that I and other people with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) confront, including limited access to government-issued disability benefits, rejected requests for accommodations, and conditional acceptance in the disabled community. I also argue that Marxist feminism lends insight into how we can best respond to these exclusions. Finally, I claim that ambiguously or “queerly” disabled people, who are largely excluded from disability services, trouble the capitalist definition of disability, as well as the ability-disability binary on which this definition depends.

In this paper, I refute "the inability thesis," which says that people who act unethically due to... more In this paper, I refute "the inability thesis," which says that people who act unethically due to social conditioning "suffer from some presumed culturally generated inability to avoid wrongdoing," and are therefore not responsible for their action.
Excerpts:
"I agree with Moody-Adams that the inability thesis is empirically and conceptually flawed, but I think that there is something else wrong with it as well. Namely, inability theorists tend to describe moral ‘inabilities’ by analogy with disabilities like blindness, blind-spots, and so-called ‘handicaps'... . Even if the inability thesis were not false, these comparisons would be ableist and harmful because they reinforce cultural associations between disability and moral depravity, which reinforces ableist prejudice.
...
I would suggest that we swap the concept of epistemic bad luck for the concept of structural oppression whenever possible. Instead of saying that men who silence women are “subject to ‘circumstantial’ epistemic bad luck” (Fricker: 33), say that they are perpetrators and beneficiaries of patriarchal oppression. Instead of saying that white people who deny the existence of racial inequality are epistemically “handicapped” (Mills: 51), say that they are acting on white group interests. Instead of saying that implicit sexists cannot “access” the “critical perspective on gender” needed to respect women as equals (Fricker: 101), say that they don’t want to listen to women. What may seem to be epistemic 'inability' may, on scrutiny, turn out to be epistemic privilege, being wielded by 'golden boys' to silence and smother the less privileged."

Recent debates about George Floyd’s murder raise questions about who is responsible. Derek Chavez... more Recent debates about George Floyd’s murder raise questions about who is responsible. Derek Chavez and the three officers who failed to intervene have been charged with crimes, but this doesn’t resolve the question of who is morally responsible. A (neo)liberal framework urges us to judge responsibility on a case-by-case (individual) basis, but a popular framework from the 1980s and 1990s suggests that entire groups may share responsibility for group-typical harms. This paradigm implies that most if not all police officers might share in the responsibility for Floyd’s murder, even if they didn’t all directly cause or endorse the actions that led to his tragic death. In this paper, I elucidate and defend the shared or ‘distributive’ model of responsibility, provide an explanation for its marginal status in philosophy, and apply that model to police brutality in general and Floyd’s murder in particular. I argue that the current political climate urges us to reappraise this approach to responsibility.

In 1971, Harry Frankfurt wrote about the relationship between free will and the concept of a pers... more In 1971, Harry Frankfurt wrote about the relationship between free will and the concept of a person. In this paper, I discuss the relationship between moral responsibility and the concept of a person. But unlike Frankfurt, I focus on how our society’s default concept of a person is informed by patriarchal, colonial, and ableist stereotypes. I argue that these stereotypes have two implications for the ascription of responsibility. First, oppressed people are often dehumanized and seen as lacking in both personhood and responsible agency, which results in denials of recognition respect. Second, oppressed people are often vilified as inherently evil, which makes them targets of blame, hostility, and punishment. These two attitudes – dehumanization and vilification – create a double-bind that upholds oppressive hierarchies. I urge philosophers to pay more attention to this bias in the responsibility system.

In March of 2020, Harvey Weinstein was found guilty of sexually assaulting two women. He has yet ... more In March of 2020, Harvey Weinstein was found guilty of sexually assaulting two women. He has yet to stand trial for sexual harassment charges made against him by over 100 women. Is Harvey Weinstein blameworthy? Some philosophical theories would say that he’s not, and others would say that he is, but for uncompelling reasons. I say that this is true of the reasons-responsiveness theory, and a specific version of that theory, the guilt theory. I critique these theories and then offer a feminist model of blame that gives uptake to the reasons offered by Weinstein’s victims, and other survivors of sexual violence. This theory rectifies the imbalance of epistemic power that enables people like Weinstein to oppress so many women.

Series of blog posts in progress.

BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, 2024

The term "predatory" was originally used to describe journals that charge authors high publicatio... more The term "predatory" was originally used to describe journals that charge authors high publication fees without providing genuine peer review or editorial services. Beal's list of "potential predatory journals and publishers" includes titles like British Open Research Publications, which charges $300 to publish research from authors in high-income countries. These journals are also thought to have low editorial standards, since they are driven by a profit motive. Rather than being repositories of knowledge, they function as paper mills. Journals owned by major academic publishers like Elsevier, Springer, and Wiley do not make the list, but are they any less predatory? On scrutiny, these journals are only marginally less financially and epistemically corrupt than those on Beal's list. In this post, I will focus mainly on Wiley, but my arguments generalize to other neoliberal, profit-driven publishing houses. I argue that we should boycott these publishers and seize control of knowledge production to protect the epistemic integrity, accessibility, and public accountability of academic research.

To quote Alice Wong from the Disability Visibility Project, “Palestinian liberation is disability... more To quote Alice Wong from the Disability Visibility Project, “Palestinian liberation is disability justice.”

Palestinians are experiencing genocide and “genocide is a mass disabling event and a form of eugenics.” According to the Gaza Health Ministry, “more than 34,535 Palestinians have been killed and 77,704 wounded in the Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7 last year.” Palestinians are being disabled by bombings, starvation, lack of water and sanitation, infectious diseases, PTSD, and other effects of genocide. The Israeli military has targeted hospitals and aid convoys that provide lifesaving care and relief to disabled Palestinians. The military is both targeting disabled Palestinians and producing disablement, creating a vicious cycle of disablement and death. The United Nations tracks official numbers of injured Palestinians, but the reality is that “everyone in Palestine is disabled right now.” Disability justice means liberating Palestinians from the disabling circumstances of genocide.

The Disability Visibility Project explains why genocide is a mass disabling event. But we should note that disablement cannot be separated from racism, sexism, capitalism, and other systems of oppression. The mass disablement of Palestinians is, at the same time, a form of colonization, a form of misogynistic violence, and a form of capital accumulation...

BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, 2024

The referee crisis is fundamentally connected to neoliberalism, including the conversion of full-... more The referee crisis is fundamentally connected to neoliberalism, including the conversion of full-time jobs that pay for professional service into fixed-term gigs that only pay for teaching; the concentration of oppressed minorities in the lowest ranks of the Ivory Tower; and discrimination against people who do not use fluent SE – the majority of people around the world. This has allowed academic elites to control the publishing racket and impose their preferences on everyone else, entrenching inequality and discrimination in the profession. As academic philosophy departments become increasingly broke and obsolete due to neoliberal austerity measures, tensions will only increase. The securitariat will become less secure as bureaucrats continue to axe ‘underperforming’ departments and seek out professors with connections to money and power. The referee crisis is a symptom of deep, structural problems that can only be fixed through collective action and structural change.

BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, 2024

This post is dedicated to the generous philosofriends who refereed papers for me for free. Last m... more This post is dedicated to the generous philosofriends who refereed papers for me for free. Last month, I finished editing a special issue of Feminist Philosophy Quarterly on feminist perspectives on moral responsibility, which is (miraculously) scheduled to be published in April. When I issued the call for papers two years ago, I had no idea what an arduous task it would be. To my chagrin, finding willing and suitable referees was nearly impossible. After soliciting referee reports from notable experts and failing to recruit enough volunteers, I reached out to friends, friends of friends, acquaintances, acquaintances of acquaintances, and finally, adjuncts and grad students who (like me) aren't paid a cent for professional servicenot even a theoretical fee built into their salary. Nonetheless, I stooped to using unpaid labor to publish the special issue, my reasoning being that if I didn't, the grad students and adjuncts and independent scholars who submitted papers wouldn't have their groundbreaking work published in the collected volume only because of the 'referee crisis.' Even with the use of unpaid 'interns,' it was still extremely difficult to find enough referees for the 20 submissions that I received, to the point that I considered giving up. And it's not just me. Everyone is complaining about the referee crisis. Even editors of top-tier, generalist journals are having trouble finding referees. But for 'niche' journals-and even more so, 'niche' special issues of 'niche' journals-it's even harder, because you have to find referees with marginalized disciplinary specializations, and very few people in the profession fit the bill. Think about it: if it's hard to find a willing referee in analytic epistemology or moral philosophy, imagine how hard it is to find one in Indigenous environmental feminisms, South Asian moral philosophy, or autoethnographic addict philosophy. Welcome to my world! ...

BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, 2023

Philosophers need to speak up about the capture of philosophy by capitalist elites, with the help... more Philosophers need to speak up about the capture of philosophy by capitalist elites, with the help of corporate shills in the profession. The term "elite capture" was coined by Olúfẹḿi O. Táíwò to describe "how political projects can be hijacked in principle or in effect by the well-positioned and resourced," as well as "how public resources such as knowledge, attention, and values become distorted and distributed by power structures" (2022: 10). Universities, which are supposed to serve the public interest, are being hijacked by billionaires and turned into propaganda machines, used to promote market deregulation, undermine democracy, and launder rich people's reputations (viz. Haslanger 2020). By funding universities, "academic plutocrats" can build quid pro quo relationships that allow them to decide what programs get funded, what theories get taught, and what names get sanctified...https://biopoliticalphilosophy.com/2023/12/04/capitalist-elites-are-capturing-higher-education-where-are-the-critics/?fbclid=IwAR1xNzy3B5pxPF6c6jpGRMkkUDAahds3DEvk2qvMuVum_p51TOQsailw_yA

Die Tageszeitung, 2023

The following is an edited translation of an interview that I gave to Die Tageszeitung, a coopera... more The following is an edited translation of an interview that I gave to Die Tageszeitung, a cooperative-owned German daily newspaper. The interviewer was Valérie Catil. Title: "A philosopher on children's right to vote: For the philosopher Mich Ciurria, not letting children vote is a form of discrimination. She demands voting rights from birth." Catil: Dr. Ciurria, the governing parties in Germany want to introduce youth suffrage from the age of 16. But your position is more radical. What are you requesting? Mich Ciurria: I think youths of all ages should have the right to vote, like everyone else. As soon as a child can vote, they should be allowed to...

BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, 2023

By now, most people are familiar with the slogan "nothing about us without us" (NAUWU). As a call... more By now, most people are familiar with the slogan "nothing about us without us" (NAUWU). As a call for disability justice, NAUWU was popularized by disabled activists in the 1990s. The slogan means that nondisabled people should not produce content about disabled people without involving disabled people. As James Charlton says, NAUWU is about controlling our own lives and narratives. Put differently, it is about taking responsibility for our choices and testimony, and demanding that others recognize our right to be responsible, to exercise control and agency. This fundamental human right is denied disabled people by ableist policies and practices. Charlton observes, "control has universal appeal for DRM [Disability Rights Movement] activists because the needs of people with disabilities and the potential for meeting these needs are everywhere conditioned by a dependency born of powerlessness, poverty, degradation, and institutionalization" (1998: 3). NAUWU is about reclaiming control over our bodies, minds, and culture. This includes having a controlling stake in narratives about disability....

BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, 2023

The dominant definition of disability in our society is the medical one. On the medical model, a ... more The dominant definition of disability in our society is the medical one. On the medical model, a disability is an impairment or functional limitation of an individual's body. The medical model sees disability as something that should be fixed, cured, or accommodated. It locates the problem in the individual rather than the built environment. The issue, on this model, is not that society is designed to accommodate nondisabled bodies while excluding disabled bodies. It is that disabled bodies are functionally impaired and need to be fixed or granted special privileges. Disabled people must play along with this definition in order to obtain the accommodations and services that presuppose it. To qualify for disability benefits in the United States, one must have "an impairment that results from anatomical, physiological, or psychological abnormalities that can be shown by medically acceptable clinical and laboratory diagnostic techniques." The Social Security Administration (SSA) adds, "a statement about the individual's symptoms is not enough." Nonetheless, applicants must also demonstrate symptoms of a medical condition. The SSA uses a rigid version of the medical model to separate the "deserving disabled" from the "grifters." If disabled people want services, they must perform their disability in the prescribed way. Yet even this will not suffice if they do not also have medical "proof" of underlying illness...

Blog of the APA, 2023

Philosophers have been discouraging the use of ChatGPT and sharing ideas about how to make it har... more 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 long run, silence disabled people. On the one hand, ChatGPT could be used as assistive technology by the millions of people with a communication disability or difficulty. On the other hand, the widespread use of this technology, and the perception of algorithmic objectivity, could create a standard of “correct English” that further marginalizes and stigmatizes alternative modes of communication. The pros and cons of ChatGPT for disabled people have been widely neglected by debates that center on the potential for this technology to be used for deceptive purposes. These debates not only sideline disabled people, but also promote carceral techniques, like stricter policing and punishment, that disproportionally harm disabled and disadvantaged students. Educators already excessively discipline and punish racialized and disabled students, and stricter policing will exacerbate these disparities. Little attention has been paid to why these disparities exist: namely, because of elitist academic standards that uphold intersections of power and privilege.
In this post, I object to carceral responses to ChatGPT, and defend a structural approach. I say that we should value, preserve, and protect the rich variety of communication styles that exist in the human population. If we do this, then students will not feel that they need to use a chatbot to code-switch and assimilate into academic English rather than using their own voice.

BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, 2023

I’ve been seeing a lot of progress reports on social media. In light of this, let me remind you t... more I’ve been seeing a lot of progress reports on social media. In light of this, let me remind you that linear time is a social construct. You do not need to live up to a productivity schedule that follows a linear timeline. Indigenous philosopher Kyle Whyte of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation writes that “linear measures of time have the capacity to generate a sense of imperilment and urgency. What I mean is similar to the difference between playing a game like chess with or without a timer.” In a linear-time culture, you feel like you are always under the clock, like you need to produce a certain amount of work in a certain amount of time, like you have to achieve certain milestones (such as getting married and having children and retiring with a 401K) at certain “life stages.” If you don’t follow this timeline, fulfil these expectations, tick these boxes, then you’re in crisis. (Linear time may be behind the so-called “midlife” and “quarterlife” crises that are so common in the west). Linear time is like “a ticking clock”; it creates “a sense of peril”; it causes stress, anxiety, social comparisons, social hierarchies, and conformity. It produces an efficiently bland and boring society.

Fit Is a Feminist Issue, 2023

I recently came across this article on Vice.com asking filmmakers to “stop making hot actors play... more I recently came across this article on Vice.com asking filmmakers to “stop making hot actors play normal people” (linked). I think that this is a real problem but not for the reasons most people assume. Instead, I think that mainstream beauty culture – which encompasses Hollywood cinema – is structured by beautyism, by which I mean a prejudice in favor of “beautiful” bodies and against “ugly” bodies. And beautyism overlaps with racism, heteronormativity, and, above all, ableism. More specifically, beautyism is part of a eugenics culture that favors white, gender-conforming, nondisabled bodies, the kinds of bodies preferred by eugenicists throughout history. Indeed, disability is partly defined as white and gender-conforming. Yet few people seem to notice this, even in feminist spaces where one would expect to find such critiques. I believe that this is largely because of the prevalence of “choice feminism,” an ideology that treats women’s choices as “[inherently] justified and always politically acceptable.” In other words, choice feminism holds that we should not critique women’s choices, no matter how problematic they may be.

Here, I want to debunk choice feminism and argue that beautyism promotes a eugenics society. I will do this in two parts. In the first part, I will explain why I think that beautyism is a component part of eugenics. This argument is supported by critical disability feminism. In the second part, I will unpack why choice feminism not only ignores these critiques, but actively silences them by presenting women’s choices as private matters that are beyond reproach.

BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, 2022

I recently came across this article on Vice.com asking filmmakers to “stop making hot actors pla... more I recently came across this article on Vice.com asking filmmakers to “stop making hot actors play normal people” (linked). The author indicts filmmakers for casting too few “normal” people. I think that this is a much-needed critique, but it lacks philosophical nuance, which I intend to provide here. My analysis will explore the harms of mainstream beauty culture and the related concept of beautyism (i.e., prejudice in favor of ‘beautiful’ people and against ‘ugly’ people), and then attempt to explain why so few philosophers, even in feminist philosophy where one would expect to find such critiques, seem to care about these harms. I argue that beauty culture is part of a broader eugenics regime that stigmatizes and seeks to eliminate disabilities and disabilized traits (queerness, Blackness, etc.), leading to an increasingly homogenous population of ‘normals.’ I invoke Rosemarie Garland’s concept of the “normate” – “the corporeal incarnation of [Western] culture's collective, unmarked, normative characteristics” – to illustrate how Blackness, queerness, gender-variance, disability, and ugliness are conflated and co-constructed as impairments to be ‘cured,’ eliminated, and managed under the modern eugenics regime. Finally, I claim that “choice feminism” – the view that women should “embrace the opportunities they have in life and to see the choices they make as justified and always politically acceptable” – normalizes beautyism by treating body-modification (particularly in service to a normate aesthetic) as a personal choice with no biopolitical ramifications. Choice feminism thus obfuscates the reality of compulsory able-bodied beauty.

BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, 2023

Neil Levy recently published an interesting take on impostor syndrome , explaining why it's so co... more Neil Levy recently published an interesting take on impostor syndrome , explaining why it's so common. He says that "pretense is an unavoidable element of coming to occupy a professional role." So, in a sense, we're all faking it. I agree with this sentiment, but I think there's something missing, especially (but not exclusively) when it comes to academic jobs. In academia, people feel like impostors because they're not "smart enough." Levy alludes to this in his essay: "You probably worked hard to get where you are, and you may be smarter than most, but for every person who succeeds (in landing that tenure-track job, say), there are dozens just as smart and who worked just as hard." This hits on a widely-held belief in academia, one that produces a climate of insecurity and self-doubt. To be a "real academic," you need to be smart, and smart in the only way that matters in higher education: "intelligent." Not insightful, not creative, not sensitive, not compassionate, not courageous. Not a good mentor or colleague or friend or ally. INTELLIGENT. None of those other qualities amounts to a hill of beans if you don't have the one thing that hiring committees and administrators care about. In fact, it's best not to have those other qualities, since they'll just make you angrier and more outspoken about the injustice, chicanery, and general fuckery going on all around you-political problems that the administration will go to great lengths to deny, obfuscate, and litigate against. The "best" academics are the ones who publish a lot of research and win a lot of grants, but don't make a fuss about how universities have been hijacked by the private sector and stacked with hacks and corporate shills due to policies stemming back to the Reagan administration. Do we need more intelligent people, the same people who have been running higher education into the ground for decades? (In comparison, how many jobs are going to crip theorists or Marxist feminists?)

BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

Vice just published an article on how "prominent AI philosopher and 'father' of longtermism," Nic... more Vice just published an article on how "prominent AI philosopher and 'father' of longtermism," Nick Bostrom, "sent very racist email to a 90s philosophy listserv." Bostrom "said that 'Blacks are more stupid than whites,' adding, 'I like that sentence and think it is true,' and used a racial slur." The article mentions that the listserv was a "gathering place for transhumanists online," but says nothing more about transhumanism and its connections with ableism and, as a result, white supremacy and heteropatriarchy. Yet these three things very much go together. In fact, it's impossible to understand any one of these terms without the others. But few people realize that transhumanism is a eugenic worldview that implicates ableism, racism, and cissexism.

Under capitalism, pharmaceutical companies will medicalise and medicate as many people as possibl... more Under capitalism, pharmaceutical companies will medicalise and medicate as many people as possible for profit. But because capitalism is an intersectional system of oppression that hyper-exploits and oppresses racialised minorities, women and gender minorities, and disabled people (amongst others), these groups are especially susceptible to coercive medicalisation and medication. Such medical practices function to sedate and silence those whose testimony is especially threatening to capitalism.

BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, 2022

This year, only one department lists “disability studies” amongst its desired areas of specializa... more This year, only one department lists “disability studies” amongst its desired areas of specialization; namely, California Polytechnic State University’s AOS is “Technology Ethics, as related to Feminist Ethics and/or Disability Studies.” No department is looking for a specialist in critical disability theory or crip theory. Based on a keywork search, the word “disability” appears in only one other listing; State University of New York’s AOC is described as “open, but desirable in social ontology, social epistemology, disability studies, gender and sexuality studies, and/or critical race theory.” Philosophers generally profess that they want to hire more disabled philosophers, but then decline to search in the one area of specialization in which disabled academics are most concentrated, and in which we contribute the most original scholarship, mentoring, and unpaid service work. Indeed, the amount of service work that we have contributed to conferences, workshops, and departmental operations without compensation or adequate recognition is a massively overlooked source of worker exploitation.

How did we get here?

https://biopoliticalphilosophy.com/2022/10/02/nondisabled-people-always-win-the-hunger-games-of-academic-publishing-and-tenure/?fbclid=IwAR0nnO_SleCBBISpOFfckkhTXOoM8xE4ACdDTA0NYRmubfn0muPCtAVDxiI

BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, 2022

• "In graduate school the classroom became a place I hated, yet a place where I struggled to clai... more • "In graduate school the classroom became a place I hated, yet a place where I struggled to claim and maintain the right to be an independent thinker. The university and the classroom began to feel more like a prison, a place of punishment and confinement rather than a place of promise and possibility" (bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, Routledge, 1994: 4).
I was invited to submit a book review to a respected journal, which I did, and it was submitted to a referee for review. The book I chose to review was Sara Ahmed's Complaint! about the gatekeeping of complaints in academia. The referee asked for substantive revisions, including (1) a sketch of the structure of the book that outlines each chapter; (2) a more "critical reading" of the book, including commentary on where Ahmed's arguments are "weak"; and (3) an explanation of the "overall philosophical relevance of the book" beyond what it can offer to victims of discrimination and harassment. I decided not to do any of that, and to post the review on this blog instead (find it below). I refuse to rewrite the review to conform to a hegemonic structure that adds nothing of epistemic value, to incorporate criticisms and complaints about the book that I do not believe in, or to betray the spirit of the book by catering to an audience of theorists with no lived experience of epistemic violence and institutional marginalization.

BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, 2020

Hello, I'm Shelley Tremain and I'd like to welcome you to the sixty-sixth installment of Dialogue... more Hello, I'm Shelley Tremain and I'd like to welcome you to the sixty-sixth installment of Dialogues on Disability, the series of interviews that I am conducting with disabled philosophers and post to BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 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, racism, sexism, and other apparatuses of power; accessibility; and anti-oppressive pedagogy.

Pea Soup, 2021

One of the focal points of critical disability theory is the inaccessibility of higher education.... more One of the focal points of critical disability theory is the inaccessibility of higher education. Many theorists believe that this inaccessibility is related to the principles of the private sector, which, on a Marxist analysis, have been designed to maximize efficiency and productivity by excluding disabled people. On the same analysis, the workplace, from which disabled people are largely excluded, is a regime of exploitation and alienation that subjugates and exhausts workers. The only solution to ableist exclusion is to combat the capitalist principles that create both ableist exclusion and exploitative labour conditions for the largely nondisabled workforce. In this post, I will elaborate on the problems outlined above, and then offer 5 proposals for how instructors can design more accessible and humanizing courses. Of course, this will not address the root problem-the close relationship between universities and private business-but it's something that many instructors can do, even within the confines of the capitalist university.
https://peasoup.deptcpanel.princeton.edu/2021/01/how-to-create-an-accessible-and-non-exploitative-classroom/

BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, 2021

Billionaire philanthropy: immoral, epistemically corrupt, and undemocratic. Recently, news broke ... more Billionaire philanthropy: immoral, epistemically corrupt, and undemocratic. Recently, news broke that the philosophy department at Bowling Green University has become a toxic environment due to infighting amongst faculty, following the controversial hiring of a new professor and the receipt of a $1.6 million grant from the Charles Koch Foundation. This infusion, notes the Chronicle of Higher Education, "could have meant a new era of stability for the department," but instead led to acrimony, investigations, and the loss of at least one professor. This situation raises awareness of the pitfalls of accepting dirty money from plutocratic donors. Charles Koch is the Chairperson and CEO of Koch Industries, which profits off of unethical, undemocratic, and epistemically corrupt practices. Anyone who accepts money from this organization is undermining the moral standing, epistemic integrity, and democratic legitimacy of the university, even if the person's research isn't influenced by Charles Koch's neoliberal agenda. This is because Koch money is dirty money, gained through illicit and undemocratic means, which is then used to fund disinformation campaigns to burnish the Kochs' reputation, and promote a neoliberal agenda that undermines the role of the university as a public service. Let me say a bit more about the moral, epistemic, and political pitfalls of accepting Koch money.

Ethical Society of St. Louis, 2023

In this presentation to Ethical Society of St. Louis, I explain bell hooks' theory of love, compa... more In this presentation to Ethical Society of St. Louis, I explain bell hooks' theory of love, compare it to other philosophical definitions, and provide two explanations for why love is so rare in the U.S. and other high-income countries: (1) structural injustice, and (2) unbridled greed. Injustice and greed are foundational features of the nuclear family, the workplace, the prison-industrial complex, the military-industrial complex, and the entertainment industry. How can we solve these problems? bell hooks points to community as a source of friendship, solidarity, safety, and political resistance to lovelessness. By fostering a loving community, we can can protect ourselves from political oppression and promote social change. The Ethical Society, a community of ethical humanists, can advance these goals by providing a safe space and a site of activism for marginalised populations including trans youths, abortion activists, and refugees.

In this presentation, I will describe Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS)... more In this presentation, I will describe Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS), which I have; I will explain some of the exclusions that people with ME/CFS face, including limited access to disability benefits, accommodations, and acceptance in the disabled community; and I will argue that Marxist feminism lends insight into how we can best respond to these exclusions. An adequate response will address the capitalistic, “scarce resources” mentality that leads to the gatekeeping and stigmatization of ME/CFS, and disability in general.

I look forward to meeting you and talking to you about your thoughts on existence, authenticity, ... more I look forward to meeting you and talking to you about your thoughts on existence, authenticity, bad faith, angst, responsibility, despair, relationships, the meaning of life, and other existentialist/phenomenological themes.

Welcome to bioethics! This course will cover the study of bioethics from the past to the present,... more Welcome to bioethics! This course will cover the study of bioethics from the past to the present, with a focus on eugenics, consent, animal experimentation, environmental health, medical sexism, racism, and ableism, psychiatry/psychology, and the pharmaceutical industry. You will be asked to reflect on such questions as: where does bioethics comes from? How much has the field changed over the last 150 years? How does our environment affect our health? How are health outcomes related to social justice? Is healthcare a human right or a consumer product?