On trigger warnings as epistemic virtues with Anna V.
Show notes
This is the one where Élaina interviews Anna V. about loving theory, feminist philosophy of language, and the importance of trigger warnings for epistemic quality.
You can follow Anna on Twitter @a_nonamename where they post about their research and new publications.
Books mentioned in this episode:
“The Coddling of the American Mind”, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt
“Re-Enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons”, by Silvia Federici
“The Feminist and the Sex Offender: Confronting Sexual Harm, Ending State Violence”, by Erica R. Meiners and Judith Levine
Article mentioned in this episode:
“Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts”, by Rae Langton
Rate and review the podcast wherever you listen to it!
Find Philosophy Casting Call on Twitter and Instagram @philoccpod. Find the transcripts at https://www.elainagauthiermamaril.com/philosophy-casting-call-podcast.
You can support the podcast on Ko-Fi.com/philoccpod.
Philosophy Casting Call is hosted, edited, and produced by Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril
Transcript (NOTE: due to technical issues, the last few minutes of the transcript are missing. This will be remedied ASAP.)
Unknown Speaker 0:00
(Music)
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 0:20
Hello, and welcome to Philosophy Casting Call, the podcast that features underrepresented philosophers. My name is Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril, and I'm your host and resident casting director. Today, I have the pleasure of sharing with you my conversation with Anna V. Anna is a PhD student in philosophy at the University of Sheffield, and today we talk about their work on trigger warnings and philosophy of language or specifically the epistemology of conversational silence. So just a content note: since we are discussing trigger warnings, there will be passing mentions to topics and themes like sexual assault or PTSD. So, do with that which you will; hopefully you will enjoy my conversation with them. I just want to mention that the article we discuss, Anna's article we discuss, in this interview has not been published yet. But I will link to it as soon as it exits the vortex of academic peer with you. I will of course link all the other mentioned books and articles in the show notes. And here it is. Welcome Anna V.
Hi, Anna!
Anna V. 1:50
Hi!
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 1:51
Thank you for being here.
Anna V. 1:53
Thanks for inviting me really excited! Really excited to be here.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 1:57
Yeah, I'm really excited to talk about your work. Would you like to introduce yourself for the listeners?
Anna V. 2:02
Yes. I'm Anna, I'm a PhD student in philosophy in Sheffield. I'm mostly working on feminist philosophy of language, what we might call political, social philosophy of language. I'm not just limiting myself to like, feminist issues, just in general, how we speak what we speak. That's what I'm interested in how to impact our political reality. And I'm also really interested in social epistemology. And yeah, that's kind of what I do.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 2:34
And how did you first come to philosophy and then to this particular area of philosophy?
Anna V. 2:41
So yeah, that's really interesting. So I kind of I think I first encountered the word philosophy in a very old book that was just lying around at home. And that was my mom's old history book. Because if I was like, a kid, who really liked to read as I guess, a lot of kids who end up through philosophy, I guess very, like much very much fit the stereotype there. And yeah, I kind of like saw that there was this page about Socrates and Plato and Aristotle. And I was just really curious what that was, and asked my mom, what is philosophy? And she was like, "No idea".
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 3:20
Who knows! Do we know now?
Anna V. 3:21
Exactly! Do we know now? Like, I don't think I can get a straight answer. No question even now. And then I mean, I guess, you know, I went to, to school, in Austria. And in Austria, I don't know... I know it's like different in different countries, but we have, in the kind of school type I went to, we had philosophy and psychology as subjects that we just kind of had on our core curriculum. And everybody had a couple of lessons a week, one year was psychology the other year was philosophy. And, yeah, I just absolutely fell in love with it. And that year, like when I was doing it, I also chose it as an extra subject. So it had it like four or five hours in school, but largely, I think that was because I had a really, really good teacher. Like, she was very engaging. She taught us like such a boat variety of beings of traditions, and it was just yet there was like, so much discussion in the class. And that was, I think, what actually kind of like, made me think about it as a subject to study. And I wrote my final project about Hannah Arendt, which was kind of like, yes, spark that interest in a kind of philosophical, political kind of stuff. I haven't looked at Hannah Arrendt at any point ever again, as a topic in in my studies, but yeah, that was like, started. And yeah, I don't actually know that much about about.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 4:50
Yeah, same I, I read some Hannah Arendt and I've used her commentary on anthropology and legal philosophy for my MA. But she's kind of always been kind of a flirtation. So it's kind of always been around there but never the main focus.
Anna V. 5:08
Yeah, yeah, I recently like came across something that was, no surprise there and not very prominent whenever she was mentioned in philosophy, that she wrote like a lot of really racist stuff, like some of her stuff was really, really horrible. Um, and yeah, I mean, I'm not competent to like speak about that, because I neither do I know her philosophy very well. It was just in school, I encountered it, and I really liked it. Nor do I know, well enough, what, what exactly the things were that were problematic. But yeah, I think it's fair to say that there's a lot of racist stuff in there.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 5:47
I mean, she hung out with Heidegger: nuff said.
Anna V. 5:53
Good point! But yeah, definitely. There's there's some interesting things.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 5:57
And I, it's worth while noting that when we think about women, philosophers in political philosophy, she's one of the only names that is mainstream now.
Anna V. 6:08
Yeah, absolutely.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 6:09
I think it's important that people read her and know about her. My personal experience is that some that some people I know who work on Arendt have troubling political views...
Anna V. 6:19
Oh, really?
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 6:21
Yeah. But, so that gave me pause. But yeah, so you never touched Arendt again and went into another direction?
Anna V. 6:31
Yeah, I started taking a different path. And I kind of did mostly practical philosophy, like, I think that's a very German way. And like, it's kind of moral philosophy kind of stuff. And I also studied sociology. So one of the things that was really like, nice studying back at home is that like, we, we don't pay high tuition fees. It's more or less free for a particular amount of time. So I study two subjects, instead of just one, I just did two courses. And the other course that I did was sociology. And I think in sociology, I encountered a lot of, kind of, you know, discuss if language, formative social theory kind of stuff, actually, much more than I encountered in philosophy, where I was like, more doing kind of stuff on I guess, I was very interested in like, historical injustice, and feminist philosophy just very broadly. But yeah, and then I kind of got a bit more interested in the whole speech act theory, kind of stuff. That was very interesting. And then I went on a exchange year, year abroad. And then I did a lot more feminist philosophy of language stuff, and propaganda and, and learned a lot about that. And then I decided to apply for a PhD in the UK.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 8:06
As all good ideas start! That that's really interesting. I mean, what would you say the philosophy curriculum was like that you felt that it was more discursive in sociology, because for my experience, I was I like to say raised continental, in a way that present I encountered the "Écriture feminine", and Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva, who, you know, are problematic also in their own right. But for me, that was the turning point of a different way of approaching knowledge and of approaching conceptualizations. The whole idea of like, the organic concept, the womb concept. And so for me, that was very much that's very much a part of French Francophone philosophical culture, but I'm aware of that, at least in English, you know, speech act theory is a completely different, it's like, a similar desire, but execute a completely different way. So I'm curious how it was in your classrooms.
Anna V. 9:06
When I think about my, my Masters like, so I did the two masters, I did a master's in philosophy and I also did a master's in sociology. And yeah, I was like, a complete nerd about all of it. I love it. I love studying. I really, really enjoyed it so much. And I think when I was doing philosophy in the philosophy department, that was much more analytical philosophy, you know, also, I'm still doing analytical philosophy now, but I think what I really like helped me to develop my interest was that exchange with the more social theory kind of stuff that was much more what you'd call continental philosophy that I encountered partly in the sociology department. That wasn't all that we did in the sociology department. But I took a lot of classes on gender and so on there and a friend and I, we did like a really big study. So like a project on the construction of gender in security discourses, and we just took a bunch of safety protocols and when they talked about security, and just look at how they're constructing gender, and I found that so interesting to kind of discuss if you've discussed the fact patterns that we found there, like, how, you know, you think about this in theory, and we were like, well, let's, let's, let's look what it's actually like. And it was, it was pretty astounding how much it fit with the theory that we were kind of reading at the time. And that was the one the one part. And then the other part was more yet the Austin Yun speech act stuff that I was doing in the philosophy department. And I approached as the Augustinian kind of framework from a political angle, because I first learned about it in a political philosophy of language course. And yeah, I guess that's, that's somehow how these interests like formed along each other in a way, in this kind of like, yeah, interactions, I wouldn't encounter Judith Butler, for example, in the philosophy department, but I wouldn't comment to her in the sociology department. And like, but then in the sociology department, I would also do, obviously, like empirical research and stuff like that. And that was, yeah, I guess, like, also gave me really like this perspective, in a way of like, well, let's look at these real political phenomena. But I can do that with philosophy as well with theory. And I, I prefer theory.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 11:37
Why do you prefer theory?
I don't know! I mean, there is something nice about researching empirically, And like, even, you know, the basics, like, can be super exciting, like, I had a great time during like, the advanced statistics courses, you have, like, really like big data sets, and you see these, these tendencies and that kind of stuff in a data set. So that's great. And yeah, you have like these, like, really interesting questions there as well. But I think I was just always more on this, like, kind of theoretical side, like thinking a lot about the theoretical aspects of all of that. That's just something that's always appealed to me a lot. And I think doing empirical research, like, I mean, obviously. So this theory has brings a lot of moral concerns with it in a lot of regards. Like, I think that a lot of sociological research is, you know, like, obviously, like, historically, we're coming from social anthropology and so on, has a lot of like, colonial undertones often. And I think that like the kind of research that we do now, in social, and sociology departments, like it's different from that, and it wasn't the social anthropology department, either. But yeah, so that said, like, researching in teams, that was great. I really enjoyed that. That was really cool. And as I said, we did like a lot of discourse studies like discourse research, which is very theoretical kind of empirical research. But on my own, I think I just prefer, yeah, thinking through issues and just sticking with theory and reading theory.
And so you're working on philosophy of language. Now, I found you on Twitter, actually, and you were working on your taglines as you're working on conversational silence. So can you explain what that means?
Anna V. 13:31
I'm not working on speech acts, Austenian speech acts, right now, actually. But that was kind of like, I think what interests started. So I came from that from this kind of political. I don't know perspective in this particular course, that was agenda and language. And then we'd like did the, we read like the speech act, on silencing the silencing paper by Rae Langton, which is like a paper that like a lot of people really don't know. And that's kind of how it got to speech act originally. And I was very interested in the whole silencing research and how silencing happens, different kinds of silencing, etc, etc. Now, I mean, there's like a lot of things like in that kind of literature, that is a big topic, like the whole pornography angle that a lot of that has, like, that's a separate issue. Because obviously, there's a tendency in these original works to be like, oh, pornography silences, women. There's like, more work that's going on now as well in terms of feminist pornography. And so on that that isn't just this, we can't decrypt this claim that all pornography does that. But anyways, like I think what I was just very interested in was this kind of silencing how people are prevented from speaking from doing things. But then at the same time, I was also just always very interested in Well, there's so much that remains unsaid. And we can we don't, we can't say everything always, like, that's the one thing. But like, I think I've just been in like a lot of interactions, where people just were siloed, like in the conversation, right? And just didn't react to what you said at all, or just in a very, like, limited way, in a very unconscious way, which is like, you know, a little more of the head or something. And yeah, I think I was just very interested in like, how do we make sense of that philosophy of language? It's all about speaking, or about, or about how people are prevented from speaking .
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 15:39
Exactly.
Anna V. 15:39
Sometimes we choose to do something with silence in conversations, like we remain silent, distinctively, in order to bring something across. And I was kind of like, a bit lost or like, does anybody explain that and I didn't find much. So I was kind of like, originally thinking, I want to connect that to like, ignorance, and, and so on. But that was getting way too big. Like the project was exploding. So I was just like, Well, no, I'm just gonna look at like, you know, and my supervisor helped me a lot. Like, they can get smaller. And I'm just going to look at like these different aspects of how silence as an active conversational contribution comes up, and how that isn't like a neutral thing. How that has a role like it can be more or less neutral, you know, when we talk about something that it's like, doesn't have like, that isn't loaded a lot. There can be quite straightforward ways in which this is happening. But it can be really complicated to like, silence might sometimes you might remain silent because you think your counterpart will infer something from that silence. And then you you have deniability, like you can say, well, that's not what I meant. Or, you know, like, some we have this whole discussion about, silence can be violence, like remaining silent, in crucial, crucial point where you ought to speak up. And or where you ought to say something that is like, important that like rightfully soda is a really like important thing that we need to keep in mind. But other times, remaining silent can also make it clear that you don't agree with something. Like if somebody says, like a really like sexist joke, for example, and you just remain silent and look at them, like Dave will get probably your. So that's the kind of complexities that I'm interested in when it comes to that, because I don't think it's straightforward. I don't think there's one thing that we can do, and also, that we have to distinguish between this literal way of remaining silent, like, in an exchange, as like, which would be more acute, more like this kind of speech check thing. And then what remains unsaid, because I can say a lot and leave a lot of things unsaid. But that is a different kind of silence. I think it's different from this direct literal silence. Yeah. Yeah.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 18:15
So like me remaining silent, while you're speaking, gets pretty neutral. I mean, it's not entirely because I could speak speaking over you, or not respecting what you're saying. But yeah, it's responding with the silence and how, you know, if someone is confessing something traumatic, and you remain silent, that could be a silence of kind of sitting there with the person or it could be a silence of denial, it can really depend on a lot of things. And as you pointed out, some people have more privilege about when they can get to choose to remain silent, and other people choose to remain silent as an act of self preservation, as well.
Anna V. 19:00
Exactly. And that's all connected in really interesting ways, I think. And yeah, as you said, that's, that's another aspect of it that some people have a lot of privilege, and don't need to say much in order to be heard. Like, if somebody who's have like a lot of like, institutional power, for example, in a job interview, for example, is just sitting there very silently, like, you know, all the other people will just be a bit uneasy because of that. But if a person who they expect to be cited and who they expect not to say much doesn't say anything, well, they probably won't even notice. And in that way, there's like different different things. I think that silence can and cannot do. And as you say, there are like very often this is really like interesting, a paper by Christy Dotson about testimonials smothering where people just remain silent because yeah, as you said, self preservation is protection. And that's like, yeah, that's all comes into that, I think.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 20:00
And you've also worked on the epistemic connotations and consequences surrounding trigger warnings. So for thinking about silence and about what can be said, what should be said, what is acceptable, and I read your paper and it was very, very interesting. I like that you brought it akin to Jose Medina, his idea of epistemic virtues and vices, but for those who aren't familiar, could you explain what that means?
Anna V. 20:32
Yeah, sure. So, I mean, in Medina's book, it's like the epidemiology of resistance. He does a lot of things in a book, I think it's a very rich book. And he has this chapter where he talks about epistemic vices epistemic virtues, and the idea of kind of, Well, some people will have a certain tendency to have vise epistemic vices like arrogance, close mindedness, and so on that kind of prevent them from gaining more knowledge about certain things in the world, because they need that, in order to make sense of themselves. And he connects that a bit like, he doesn't go into that much detail with it, which is a bit of a shame, this notion of needing to not know and not needing to know, and there's a couple of like, aspects there, fine grained linguistic differences. But the idea is, well, you need in order to make sense of yourself as like, you know, a fine person, you need not to know certain things, if you have like a tremendous amount of privilege, or even just like, you know, smaller amounts of privilege, I don't think that it's just like, the richest of the rich or something like that, you know, who are, who are like affected by that. I guess it's not it doesn't come in absolutes, I think is the point. For example, if you're epistemically, close minded, you might, just the way in which you acquire knowledge, or at least that's how I read Medina, the way in which you acquire knowledge, you find ways consciously or unconsciously, to kind of close yourself off to certain kinds of information. And if you're like epistemically, arrogant, you might just assume that you know it better anyways. And you don't need to engage with some other sets of knowledge. And like, bringing that to like kind of trigger warning discussion. So I think it's very useful to explain this opposition to trigger warning that often comes from like some liberals, some free speech, warriors to describe that as well. They are concerned about epistemic vices. They think, if we use trigger warnings, people have a super easy time, to be epistemically, arrogant, to be epistemically, close minded and cut off and just be like, Oh, I don't need to encounter that. But I think they're obviously incredibly wrong. They got it backwards completely. That's exactly not what's happening. But what I was thinking about in a paper is like explaining this, what I call the "coddling argument", as a worry about trigger warnings, installing and fostering and bringing out epidemic vices. And then saying, guys, you're really wrong about that. Partly, you're wrong about that. Because you're afraid that trigger warnings will hinder the growing body of knowledge, they will hinder people to gain more knowledge about important things. But what they don't think about is that people who have had traumatic experiences, they need trigger warnings, because they already know, they already know these things. The argument that they're like closing themselves off from challenging new material is completely out of the window, once we consider that, like, there is a reason why they need trigger warning. And, and then like, of course, using a trigger warning doesn't mean to cut yourself off completely. It means to be warned, and that's something very different, right?
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 24:05
There are examples in the paper of trigger warnings at the beginning of a training course, saying, "feel free to step out and recollect yourself if you need to". And this actually encouraged people who are trauma survivors to continue the course and to actually engage.
Anna V. 24:23
Exactly, yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's what I think is kind of positive upshot of that that it will actually like, Medina has this concept of active ignorance, that epistemic vices kind of lead to active ignorance. We're trying to be actively ignorant about things and it reproduces itself and it broadens itself. When you read these critiques of trigger warnings, that's like a tone that they have a lot. But I think actually trigger warnings can I contribute to like what you just described, maybe something that we might call active knowledge. We try to actively engage And they help people to actively engage and to not be cut off. Because being like having a PTSD response triggered, that's not, that's no joke, that doesn't help you to encounter new material. If there's new material that relates somehow to your trauma, that doesn't help you at all. An example that I work with, is by Logan Ray, a paper where she describes that kind of scenario that it was like a training session. And in the beginning of the training session, they were like, well, we're going to discuss some material on sexual assault. And if people should feel free to step outside and collect themselves, but it would be good if you come back as soon as you're able to. And that actually enabled people to be just kind of, it's okay to do that. It's okay to just take a moment. And then but also, you can come back, and that's okay. You don't need to be embarrassed by that or anything.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 25:59
That's very important. My only question that I, I don't have an answer to is, how do we negotiate, doing practical things like that, like saying, "please feel free to leave the room, but please come back if you can", with then people having to self disclose by doing that, and I am coming from it from the stability point of view as well. Because, yeah, especially in universities, a lot of accommodations or things can only be gained when you self disclose, and sometimes only when you have a medical diagnosis. So I don't know if you've thought about this, I just thought I would ask you.
Anna V. 26:43
So yeah, I think that like that's really, really important point. And I fought a bit about this, because I do think that there's like a point to be made that trigger warnings are like kind of relevant in the context of disability, definitely, and are like in an issue of accessibility. Right. But yeah, I think that you're right that, of course, it can be really difficult to like kind of, when you like pick up that offer, and get up and go outside in front of the whole classroom, you do kind of have to disclose something about yourself that you might not want to disclose. And I think that that is really difficult. And I think that it's very, like, very difficult to like find an ideal way to do this, because people are complicated, it's not going to be the same for everybody. And there might be a lot of people that are completely fine with doing that. But there are others who might instead choose to stay because they don't want to go outside because they don't want people to think that they have like experience with that they don't want to out themselves, as you know, being a survivor, for example. And they might have good reasons for that. But then they might encounter like triggering material, which then is just a double bind, no, like, it's a really like difficult double bind, I don't have an answer.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 28:02
And it's a case of also, we have to start somewhere to change the culture and normalise that. And in a way that's maybe something that's positive about elearning is that you can turn your camera off, or you can walk away without really disrupting anyone and making a fuss. And I think that's something to also keep in mind and when things go back to being more on campus. And how we can integrate those access points. Because you're absolutely right. You know, when people who have post traumatic stress disorders, things may or may not identify as disabled, but those who do will say it is really useful. It is an accessibility issue for them to have content warnings and trigger warnings, so they can prepare themselves and get the support that they need. And everyone I've personally spoken to, they either intend to return to that material later when they're feeling more stable. Or they just want the heads up. So yeah, they're not sprung.
Anna V. 29:12
Exactly. And it's like, it's it should be like, even if like even their own, even if we stay in their own logic of this kind of argument that people should always engage in these discussions and should learn, strive to learn new things, if you have the information that like, well, some of your students, or some, you know, it doesn't just come up in educational contexts that can come up in all kinds of contexts, some of the people attending your event or whatever, might be really like that have incredibly negative reactions to that. And you could make that better by giving a little warning in their own logic of "always engage and always talk about these things" and "free speech and blah, blah blah", making sure that the people who know about these things already are able to contribute should be something that they should want to do. If we think about it that way, I mean, I think that shouldn't be the only way in which to think about it, because should be just in general like, like a bit of a. Yeah, accommodation that isn't hard for me.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 30:20
It goes to the heart of what we view as an epistemic virtue because I think the coddling argument is really saying I was noticing words like antifragility, and things which coming from a feminist perspective is very foreign, in the sense of like, why should we be anti-fragile? You're like, no, it's about how do we acknowledge vulnerability, and cultivate power within that. And so I think it's two very different ways of approaching either like, oh, exposure therapy, just hit you on the head until you don't feel the pain anymore. Or it's saying, I acknowledge that you have multiple stressors. And I think that's something you pointed out at the very end of the article, when you say, we have to acknowledge that the classroom is already not safe. For a lot of people, it's not safe for students of colour, it's not safe for trans trans students. So really having trigger warnings is acknowledging that not everyone shows up with the same permeability to all knowledge.
Anna V. 31:34
Like, that's, that's definitely it. And I think that you're right about this kind of, well, we need to kind of be anti fragile, and our systems are anti fragile. It's kind of the claim, with that book, "The Coddling of the American Mind" that I engaged with the like, "Well, our minds are anti fragile", as astock trader says. For example, they like draw on like that kind of theory. I mean, it's a bit more psychological than that. But it's like, well, "Sure, our economic systems are anti fragile. They need stressors. So do our minds"; like, well, great analogy. Really? Is that technology. Okay. And it's just like, well, that's just how it works. I feel and like, so many people will say, That's not how it works. And sure, it's good, probably for like the human mind, or whatever to like, get input and get new kinds of information and stuff. But triggering trauma is not the kind of stressor that is required to like get yet to get forward to develop to gain new knowledge. No, I just think that's like, very clear for me. I know that a lot of people disagree with that. But yeah, and it's like, in a way, I think that if we want to talk about epistemic virtues, as well, like maybe openness, epistemic openness, that like trigger warnings can help us in a way to get there, because they kind of, you know, also show to like, if I give a trigger warning in a class, for example, I need to think about that, like, I need to think about who, who could be affected by this, how and like, I might get it wrong. I might need to like, you know, be addressed by students. That wasn't great. And I have to learn from that. And you need to be open to do that. But you do have to, like, kind of do that work, I think. And also, I mean, if there's a trigger warning, for example, it also shows to like other students, well, not everybody starts from the same kind of thing you might know less than others about these, some people might have very, like intimate experiences, these kinds of issues. And that kind of can help to just build a sense of that kind of epistemic community as a very diverse community. And I think that can do a lot of positive thing.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 34:03
Yeah, I've started saying at the beginning of my classes, especially when I teach the feminist philosophy course. But well, you know, and we're talking about sexual assault are things I say, "statistically, most people in this class today have some experience with that. And so let's just keep that in mind as we discuss these theoretical points, you know, I want us to have it is an academic space, we want to have an academic discussion about it. And I don't want you to be afraid to voice opinions that you're unsure of, because we're all still learning, but try and do it in a respectful way that keeps in mind that you have no idea of the person you're talking to as a personal experience of this", and I found that I'm curious to see if you've experienced this as well that I have to go through a whole process to teach something that triggers me. So sometimes as educators, we are presenting material and I might agree that this is material that should be presented, but I find that also triggering and I need to process that on my own before presenting that. Yeah. Have you experienced that at all?
Anna V. 35:13
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Like, absolutely. And especially, I think, when we teach topics, like, you know, like a lot of these topics that come up in feminist philosophy, to contain a lot of this material, and they can be triggering. And I haven't found a way to, like properly, like, deal with that. But I think kind of, as you just said, well, let's keep in mind in terms of things that like our lift reality, for a lot of people, it kind of helped in a way. And I definitely like, that's one of the things that like, also made me think about this in the first place was, well, I have all the time to prepare that material at home, I have the time to read that paper, I know that I'm going to give them this paper to read, I'm have the time to prepare the lecture. And still, some of this material can be really like tough. And like then some students who might have really like relevant experiences, just, you know, might not have read the paper might not have had the time to engage with the material in that much detail. And like how difficult most of them be, to do that just out of nowhere, when it just comes at you, you know, like, and that I think, is like one of the reasons why I was thinking about this as well. And this whole topic. And yeah, it's like, as like educators and like teachers, you definitely also part of that, of that whole thing. And that's not easy to handle either.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 36:45
It's, it takes some work it is it is part of the preparation work you do, you don't just create PowerPoint slides, you kind of have to go through it, and to get yourself in that mode where you're ready to present it. I've also started disclosing at the beginning if I have found anything particularly difficult, I don't know if that's a good practice or not, I'm just kind of testing it out. Because I do believe like if I present myself and be like, you know, "this was a very triggering paper for me", that might colour the kind of discussions that arise. However, it might be coloured by my tone anyway, of how I present things. And sometimes part of me feels that it's good to normalise that, you know, I'm not just a neutral purveyor of knowledge that spouting up them, but I also my philosophical practice is also embodied and I'm a human being.
Anna V. 37:45
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Absolutely. I think that's really important as well, especially like, yeah, teaching undergrads, they just come from school. And most kids in school, like teachers have, like a very, I don't know, it depends, I guess, how the their teachers teacher training. But I normally, as far as I remember, from school, it was often that like, teachers were presenting themselves to these objective like, neutral beings that could just like make the right decision, and have the right opinion about something, which obviously is rotten, and very, like, bad way to teach. But it's like, ingrained if you weren't for like a school system, like for eight or 10 years, however long. And then you come to uni, for one, as a teacher as like teaching at uni, you have to try to like actively not do that, I think. And also like the kids showed us (kids might be the wrong word) that like, this is like philosophy, this is something we have to figure out together. Like, I don't have the definite answers to a lot of these things. I might know a bit more about it, because I've done it for longer.
But yeah, as you say, it's like these kinds of disclosing things on different levels can be really helpful. I found that really helpful. I remember teachers doing that at uni, and I found them much more approachable from the beginning. And I was much more comfortable speaking in those classes than in some other classes where it was just really like, neutral in a way fake neutral. Yeah, no, that's I think it's something that should be taught more like it. This is something I came to on my own through frequenting feminist spaces and things. But it was definitely not in my house due to triggers class. seminar. So what are you working on right now? So right now I'm thinking specifically about so for one I'm redrafting like my dissertation. I'm just kind of doing a bit stuff on implicature. And you know, my thing is I'm saying I didn't say that in the beginning, that we can like implicate resigned conversation and implicate with silence implicative being that like, very analytical philosophy of language tool, which, you know, is criticised along various lines. And I'm like also expanding the framework to account for silence. And I'm trying to, like, allow to make room for more possibilities of implicature that are in like, less than ideal circumstances, where not everybody has the same background information, and so on and so forth. Because that's often the assumption, we're not everybody's 100% on the same page with stuff. And that's for one, something I'm just doing now. I'm like, kind of rewriting a chapter where I think a bit more about how about silence and very, like, unfortunate or, like, very unfortunate the wrong word in like, uneven situations in where different people have different, you know, preconceptions about what they're talking about. And the other thing that I'm thinking about is, so given that, like, I think that silence can be an active, conversational contribution, I think that people can, people, silence can be silence, which sounds really weird. But like, I think that it's true, like, as I said, before, some people might need very little to make themselves heard, and others who are expected to be silent, might not, you know, be able to be heard at all. So I have this one example where I kind of, so it's an example it comes up in your literature now. And again, it's like tactic acceptance procedure that like big groups use to kind of make decisions. So the person who chairperson calls like everybody in agreement, and unless you speak up your silence counters agreement. And I've constructed this example, but I'm sure it must have happened at some point to somebody. Because I think in some ways, in various forms, slightly different forms. It's happened to me.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Follow Élaina on Instagram @spinoodler and Twitter @ElainaGMamaril.