journal post-launch blog post
on thursday 29th october, opp launched the turn 1 of their online philosophy journal –over a year in the making– at the first lecture of pwip’s (people for womxn* in philosophy) series on ‘theories of (non)violent revolutions.’ lecture 1 was entitled ‘teaching revolutions.’ we here share Ashley Singh’s & Susmita Dave’s launch speech (written by Susmita Dave and alicehank winham) to give some background to the journal’s questionings, a recording of the lecture and discussion, and some further resources our speakers recommended –in reverse order!
explore the journal here
watch launch event here….
Further resources
Professor Lee McBride’s attached articles & upcoming book to be released in January 2021, Ethics & Insurrection: A Pragmatism for the Oppressed (flyer)
Professor Leonard Harris’s A Philosophy of Struggle: The Leonard Harris Reader
Prof Jack A Goldstone Revolutions: A Very Short Introduction from Oxford University Press. It addresses the issues of definition, violence and non-violence that we discussed on the day.
Leonard Harris’s outline, shared on the day
Lee A McBride III’s Anger and Approbation (pdf)
Lee A McBride III’s Insurrectionist Ethics and Racism (pdf)
Lee A McBride III’s New Descriptions, New Possibilities (pdf)
Launch speeches
Hi I am susmita, a second year philosophy and theology student at St Benets hall.
Hex I am Ashley, a second year comp sci and philosophy student at Hertford College.
We’ll be hosting this event that sets both opp turn 1 and pwip’s theories of (non)violent revolutions lecture series spinning. Indeed, their cooperation arises from their common purpose and activist institutional heritage – founded by students who needed a space beyond the classroom to question who is included in philosophy, support each other, and indeed to practice philosophy.
Both groups arose out of a need to make lives more livable and those frequently marginalised more recognised and respected, seriously considered and attended to, in philosophical and broader social discourse. As we searched through action and reflection, in activism and collective philosophizing beyond the classroom, we came to learn that the actioning of critical philosophizing we practiced, reflecting on our thoughts’ effects on practice and community, was critical pedagogy, and some philosophers who speak of critical pedagogy speak of and specify different types of and approaches to revolution. opp explicitly focuses on critical pedagogy. pwip, in this series, explicitly focuses on revolution. We shall briefly introduce both to locate the arising of this occasion, which is not itself unpolitical – because some lives are made less livable than others through our representations and allocations of knowledge, power, and possibility. Out of respect for you, our partners in discourse and living, we owe it to you to articulate elements of our action.
opp Introduction
opp arises from our positions as students at oxford searching for a space beyond the classroom to critically question and participate in philosophizing – from oxford, looking to the world and our location, our effects, in it. We move to cooperatively question, critically aware that we are students who want to learn but felt that the scope and form of our learning was severely inhibited – through the marginalisation of thinkers, devaluation of areas of discourse, exclusion of methods, packed work schedules, and lack of communal space for cross-joint-school or post-lecture discussion. From care, we question, act, and perform philosophy. We sought, as students, to create and invite others to create a space for this that also reflected on the institutional structures that created this problem as well as the other problems this history created. We do not claim to have answers; we are still very fresh students; we have a lot of questions. So, turning to the world, for many reasons, opp articulated in its title ‘public philosophy’ an intention, a balancing attention– to bring to light in our search the interrelations of academic philosophical thought and philosophy de facto to the way we live our lives and the world at large. ‘public philosophy.’ language is not private, some philosophers claim. We seek to question the boundaries of our discipline, in form and content. what we study is political. who speaks changes the possibilities available to social structures. if philosophers are concerned with the world, which includes their philosophizing, they must examine their own presuppositions and strive to challenge their own horizons. opp aims to create a space where not only students but a more comprehensive philosophical community can contribute to this methodological and ethical –political– philosophical reflection.
What is PWIP?
‘people for womxn* in philosophy’ also known as pwip is a non-hierarchical group of individuals who provide an inclusive space for all those who study philosophy as well as critically engage with broadening conceptions of philosophy. The group was created two years ago and has been gaining momentum ever since. This group aims to address long-term systemic issues within philosophy at Oxford and further a field. We have philosophy Essay writing workshops, mentorship schemes and we interview academics from marginalised groups. To find out more about what we do look at the about us page on the pwip blog.
opp journal
the title of this journal arose in a brainstorming session over a year ago in Professor Alice Crary’s kitchen one summer evening when she was back in town for less than 24 hours. She was the first professor here who told us to do more, to make our project bigger. we discovered the first article written for this journal before this even, when Dr Rachel Fraser gave a talk at a poetry-philosophy event pwip hosted with merton poetry society and oups. We were inspired to have strength in philosophy even before that by trailblazers like Dr. Dirk Meyer, who works on Chinese philosophy (note: these three are our amazing academic supervisors, thank you) and supervises another steadfast role model Lea Cantor. opp is rooted in communal care and a history of philosophers working hard. Their persistence and critical work gives us courage and makes available the work that gives us a glimpse of alternative methodologies and topics not covered widely in philosophy here. Soon, the journal will speak for itself. But so you are not unhelpfully lost in navigating, we shall note a few pointers.
Our three thematic questions are the underlying premise of today’s panel. opp is anything but oxford blue and even that (we have information online about the historical significance of the colour). We call each release a turn rather than an issue, for a range of reasons (if you’d like to know more, feel free to ask). We are non-hierarchical (more information likewise on our website) –in part, we just can’t find the grounds or justification for our community of critical inquirers. Our design theme plays on looking to the night sky to navigate, as found in many philosophical traditions around the world. We learn to navigate as we do it, purposefully looking away from land-bound maps. Images of oxford throughout the turn 1 look up to the night sky, from our city that educates us with its own mapping legacies, to reflect on where we are and how to proceed. There will be several ways to navigate the online issue – we tried to develop more choiceable routes of exploration in the online format, for accessibility, flexibility, and different combinations of thought. Through philosophical art, poetry, and prose we invite you to critically investigate the turn’s three thematic questions in intersection with today’s focus on ‘teaching revolution.’
The Lecture Series:
This series aims to address publicly and commonly entertained contradictions in the particular revolutionary topic of each panel – to unpack these contradictions, oversights, and problems to challenge the irresponsibilities of uncritical thought by engaging us in critical inquiry – our broader concern covers, the violence perpetuating uncritical thought inflicts, and how (non)violence is spoken about and enacted, surrounding revolutions and revolutionary thought.
Introducing the Speakers:
Prof Lee. A Mcbride III is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the College of Wooster, and D'Angelo Chair in the Humanities at St. John's University. McBride specializes in American philosophy, ethics, and political philosophy. His ongoing research project focuses on ethics and insurrection, attempting to articulate the character traits, modes of comportment, and reasoning strategies that marshal efforts to interrogate and disavow values and norms that perpetuate oppression. Currently, he and Erin McKenna (University of Oregon) have a book contract with Bloomsbury to produce an edited volume on pragmatist feminism, highlighting the work of Charlene( pron sharlean) Haddock Seigfried. McBride has additional research interests in philosophy of race, de colonial philosophy, philosophy of food, and environmental philosophy. A few of his works include
"Culture, Acquisitiveness, and Decolonial Philosophy," Decolonizing American Philosophy, eds. Corey McCall and Phillip McReynolds. Albany: SUNY Press, forthcoming;
"Anger and Approbation," The Moral Psychology of Anger, eds. Myisha Cherry and Owen Flanagan. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018, pp 1-13;
"Racial Imperialism and Food Traditions," The Oxford Handbook of Food Ethics, eds. Anne Barnhill, Mark Budolfson, and Tyler Doggett. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018, pp. 333-344;
"Leftist Democratic Politics," Jahrbuch Praktische Philosophie in globaler Perspektive / Yearbook Practical Philosophy in a Global Perspective, eds. Michael Reder, Dominik Finkelde, Alexander Filipovic, and Johannes Wallacher. Freiburg: Verlag Karl Alber, 2017, pp. 74-92; (v) "Insurrectionist Ethics and Racism," The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race, ed. Naomi Zack. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017, pp. 225-234.
Prof Jack Goldstone:Jack A. Goldstone is an American sociologist, political scientist, and historian, specializing in studies of social movements, revolutions, political demography, and the 'Rise of the West' in world history. He is an author or editor of 13 books and over 150 research articles. He is recognized as one of the leading authorities on the study of revolutions and long-term social change.His work has made foundational contributions to the fields of cliodynamics, economic history and political demography. Goldstone is the Virginia E. and John T. Hazel, Jr. Professor of Public Policy and Eminent Scholar in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia. His academic awards include the American Sociological Association Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award, for 'Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World,' and the Myron Weiner award for lifetime scholarly achievement from the International Studies Association.
His works include
Phases of global demographic transition correlate with phases of the Great Divergence and Great Convergence, Technological Forecasting and Social Change (2015)
Revolutions: A Very Short Introduction (2014)
Political Demography: How Population Changes are Reshaping International Security and National Politics co-edited with Eric P. Kaufmann and Monica Duffy Toft (2012)
Understanding the Revolutions of 2011: Weakness and Resilience in Middle Eastern Autocracies Foreign Affairs (2011)
The New Population Bomb, Foreign Affairs (2010)
Why Europe? The Rise of the West in World History 1500–1850 (2008)
States, Parties, and Social Movements (2003)
Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World (1991), 25th Anniversary edition (2016).
Revolutions of the Late Twentieth Century (1991)
Professor Leonard Harris is a professor of Philosophy at Purdue University. He also serves as director of the Philosophy and Literature Ph.D. program at the university. He has previously been a member of the graduate faculty, and former Director of African American Studies at Purdue University. He is a specialist in the philosophical work of Alain LeRoy Locke. He is one of the founding members behind Philosophy Born of Struggle (PBOS). Harris' writings on honour, insurrectionist ethics, tradition, and his work on Alain Locke have established him as a leading figure in critical philosophy. His timely and urgent responses to structural racism and structural violence mark him out as a bold cultural commentator and a deft theoretician. A Philosophy of Struggle provides new insights into how we ought conceptualize philosophy, race, tradition, and insurrection in the 21st century. His works include:
Alain LeRoy Locke: The Biography of a Philosophy, Philosophy Born of Struggle: Afro-American Philosophy from 1917, Iowa: Kendall Hunt Publishing Company, 1984, 316 pp.
The Critical Pragmatism of Alain Locke, New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1999, 357 pp.
The Philosophy of Alain Locke, Harlem Renaissance and Beyond, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989, 332 pp.
American Philosophies, (Co-editor with Anne S. Waters, Scott Pratt), Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Company, 2002, 456 pp.
Racism, New York: Humanity Press, 1999, 484 pp.
Their talks will address the three thematic questions of the journal in relation to teaching (non-violent/violent) revolutions.
The three thematic questions are:
‘how ought we to be doing philosophy?’
‘what could ‘public philosophy’ do for philosophy today?’
‘how do you envision the role of a university?’
