Black Radical Liberalism w/Kristin Waters
Show notes
In this episode, Élaina interview Kristin Waters, the author of Maria W. Stewart and the Roots of Black Political Thought about combatting epistemicide and choosing to write on philosophy of race as a white woman in the US.
Listen to the tie-in Gilmore Girls episode of Women of Questionable Morals: GG and Race and Politics, Oh My!
You can buy Kristin’s book and learn more about her work on her website: www.kristin-waters.com
Texts mentioned in the episode (All links are affiliated to Bookshop.org UK and any purchases made through them will generate a small commission that helps to support the podcast):
Maria W. Stewart and the Roots of Black Political Thought, by Kristin Waters
Black Women’s Intellectual Traditions: Speaking Their Minds, ed. Kristin Waters and Carol b. Conaway
The History of Black Studies, by Abdul Alkalimat
Maria W. Stewart, America's First Black Woman Political Writer: Essays and Speeches, ed. Marilyn Richardson
Black Feminist Thought, by Patricia Hill Collins
Radical Theory, Caribbean Reality, by Charles W. Mills
The Case for Rage: Why Anger is Essential to Anti-racist Struggle, by Myisha Cherry
Decolonizing Feminism: Transnational Feminism and Globalization, ed. Margaret A. McLaren
Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, by Robin D.G. Kelley
Barbaric Culture and Black Critique: Black Antislavery Writers, Religion, and the Slaveholding Atlantic, by Stefan M. Wheelock
Ethics and Insurrection: A Pragmatism for the Oppressed, by Lee A. McBride III
Association of Black Women Historians
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Read the full episode transcripts at www.elainagauthiermamaril.com
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Transcript
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 0:16
Welcome to Philosophy Casting Call, the podcast that features underrepresented philosophical talent! I’m Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril, your host and producer. Today, I’m excited to share my interview with Kristin Waters, the author of Maria W. Stewart and the Roots of Black Political Thought, which is part biography and part philosophical analysis of Stewart’s political writings and activism within the African American community in Boston in the 19th century. If this sounds new to you, you are not alone! I was completely unaware of who Maria Stewart was or what Black radical liberalism meant before I read this book. But now I can’t unknow it; I even used what I learned to inform the “Race and Politics in Stars Hollow” episode on my Gilmore Girls Podcast, Women of Questionable Morals. So check that out if Gilmore Girls is your jam. But as for the rest of you, remember the primer we got on non-ideal theory and Charles Mills in the last episode with Matthew Cull? Well, that will come in handy to understand what Kristin is talking about here. So strap in! Without further ado, here's my conversation with Kristin Waters.
Hello, Kristen, welcome.
Kristin Waters 1:43
Good morning, Élaina.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 1:44
Thank you so much for agreeing to meet with me. Would you like to introduce yourself to the listeners?
Kristin Waters 1:51
Sure. My name is Kristen Waters and I'm a scholar at the Brandeis University Women's Studies Centre, and a professor of philosophy emerita at Worcester State University. And lots of other things besides.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 2:10
And author of a book who was just nominated for the Pauli Murray prize!
Kristin Waters 2:15
I'm so thrilled about that! I just learned last week about this nomination and of course Pauli Murray, a Pauli Murray prize, what could be better than a prize named in honour of another almost forgotten woman who was so central to the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 60s and got kind of written out of history like Mariah Stewart? And from the African American Intellectual History Society, which is a great group, if you don't know it, I would encourage people to look it up. And they have a wonderful blog called Black Perspectives.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 2:50
Did you encounter a lot of black feminists thought in your philosophy degree? How did you get interested in that?
Kristin Waters 2:56
You know, in 10 years of undergraduate and graduate education, I did not read work by one woman, or person of colour. Think about that. We did not read anything by any woman or person of colour in all that period of time. But when I got my first job, it was right at the beginning of the Women's Studies movement. And I think we cannot underestimate how that movement absolutely changed, transformed the academy. We're still in the backlash against that. And it was simultaneously the Black Studies movement. I'm reading a great book right now called "The History of Black Studies" by Abdul Alkalimat, and I went to a session at conference talking about how important those movements were in sort of transforming what counts as knowledge. So I'm very much a part of that project.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 4:02
So when you decided to write this book eight years ago, why did... why Mariah Stewar? I had virtually never heard of her and I was just curious: why her political thought and in particular?
Kristin Waters 4:17
Well, most people have not heard of her. I'm hoping to change that. I was reading Patricia Hill Collins' "Black Feminist Thought", which, you know, is written in the 1990s, and is still a book that should be absolutely essential reading for anyone in any discipline or not even in the academy. It's such a profound book. And at the same time, I encountered a little book by Marilyn Richardson called "Maria W. Stewart, America's First Black Woman Political Writer" and I thought at the time, why didn't I know... how come I didn't know about this? Collins, in her book... And, you know, I was kind of struggling with what to do in my efforts toward transforming the curriculum, and Collins has a passage where she says, you know, a lot of white women say, "Oh, I can't do this work, it needs to be done by black women, et cetera, et cetera." And she says, "No, that's not all right! There's too much work to be done. Everybody needs to do it." And at the time, there were probably maybe six or seven black women who had PhDs in philosophy in the entire country, and the whole of the United States. One of them, of course, was Angela Y. Davis, most of the other women weren't even working on race and gender they were doing metaphysics, epistemology and logic, and, you know, and so what are they supposed to drop their fields of interest in order to do this work? You know, so I felt I took that to heart and I felt it was incumbent on me to do that work. So I was teaching political theory at the time. And, of course, you know, it was all the usual suspects,:Hobbes, Locke, Marx, Rousseau, you know, Mill, et cetera. And I felt like I could not in good conscience teach that course that way. So, you know, back in the day, we would make these course packs, it's probably a violation of copyright. But anyway, that's what we did. People will remember. And I started including people like Mary Estelle, who was a contemporary critic of John Locke. Mary Wollstonecraft, of course, who was a critic both of Edmund Burke and Rousseau, people like Mercy Otis Warren, who was a critic of James Madison, and Maria Stewart, and I paired Maria Stewart, with John Stuart Mill,Stewart's essay on African rights and liberty. And I thought it was such a sweet pairing with Mill's "On liberty", because there's no I mean, Mill's "On liberty" is still this sort of, you know, Bible of the libertarians, I don't quite know why, but that seems to be the case. And he was, you know, a colonial factotum oppressing people on the South Asian continent, all the while talking about liberty. And there's Maria Stewart talking about real liberty for African Americans, including worldwide, Black people worldwide. So that was a nice pairing. I also included Frederick Douglass and Anna Julia Cooper. And then I went on to write another book. I don't know if you want to hear about that!
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 7:37
No, of course!
Kristin Waters 7:37
Yeah. So a friend of mine at Holy Cross, a colleague of mine was doing the same kind of work, Carol Conaway. And we conceived the idea of putting together a book that we called "Black Women's Intellectual Traditions: Speaking their minds". Our notion was, you know, as we're finding all these women in the 19th century, who were doing great stuff, including Cooper, including Francis Ellen Watkins Harper, including Pauline Hopkins. And here's the thing, and this is true in philosophy especially: it doesn't matter what your original work looks like, if there is not a body of secondary literature. Right? You can have been brilliant, but if there's not a body of secondary literature, nobody cares.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 8:27
Yep. Right.
Kristin Waters 8:27
Yeah, it's so true, you know, and you do you look at those citation studies, especially in philosophy, where, you know, one person, you know, gets 57% of all the citations in. One, white male I'm not gonna name, gets data or something like 57% of all the citations in the journals, we wanted to change that. So this book, "Black Women's Intellectual Traditions", had five articles, five essays on Maria Stewart along with these other writers that I've mentioned. And the purpose was really to start creating or really contributing to a body of secondary literature on those 19th century Black women. And I just say, people still look to that book. It was published in 2007 and it did win the Leticia Woods Brown award from the Association of Black Women Historians. To some degree, I feel like that accomplished what we set out, but I couldn't get away from Maria Sewart. She just kind of coming back, I would go to other projects, and she would she kept coming back at me.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 9:35
I mean, I will dare to say that I think this book will also serve that purpose. Having read it myself, I can attest to the fact that you've done the work in the sense you've really dug into you have many, many references. You credit a lot of people; it's not about you saying, I have discovered this. It's really an act of reparations in the sense of this was going on it has been obscured or eliminated from our history of political thought. And let me just say, what all of these moving parts were doing, because yes, it is following the life of Maria Miller, Maria W Stewart. But you name so many actors that were going on, and everyone she was interacting with and who was kind of in the zeitgeist culturally, at that time. And so this is a book that does a lot of historical uncovering, if you will. And so I think it will be useful because so many people can read it for different reasons and go down different paths. And now you've kind of created the secondary literature that someone will be able to cite.
Kristin Waters 10:51
I hope so! I like citing as many people as possible. And I wanted to, you know, get the sense that she in Boston lived in a community that had it was really a thriving black community over quite a long period of time. Let me just say a few things about her background.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 11:12
Yeah, can you give a kind of brief bio of who Maria Stewart is?
Kristin Waters 11:17
Sure. So she was born Mariah Miller in Greenwich, Connecticut, in 1803 to a free Black woman named Lib, I found the birth record, who was formerly enslaved in Greenwich, Connecticut, and Caesar, he who may still have been enslaved at the time. And Greenwich, there were a lot of slaveholders in Greenwich, Connecticut, it was a wealthy community, then as it is now, including the Bush family, had a quite a few slaves. And in fact, the Bush ancestor was a notorious slaver, and so despised that his own crew shot him and threw him overboard. And interestingly, you know, his name is Thomas Walker, and the Bush family is so proud that they named their children George Herbert Walker Bush and George W. Bush, W: Walker, after this really despised slaver. So, yes, so she was born in Greenwich, although she says she was born in Hartford, I soul-searched a lot about this. She was orphaned, and then put into domestic service with a clergyman in Hartford, Connecticut. And she says "I was born in Hartford", but I think there's no reason to think that she just wasn't... she didn't have that knowledge of where she was born.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 12:40
Yeah. And to some degree that is more or less irrelevant. It was still the same region, it was still the same kind of social cultural realities.
Kristin Waters 12:49
Sure. You know, that was that was what she knew anyway. So she was indentured for 10 years to the clergyman and was fortunate in one way, and that it was a very literate family, but she hated it. She hated the domestic work. And she writes a lot about how much she despised domestic work. So she finagled to get out of Hartford and I speculate that the great African American Minister Thomas Hall, Reverend Thomas Paul, of the African Baptist Church, and Boston may have helped her and I have some, if you if you read the book, I have a kind of scenario about how that might have happened. So she went to Boston married a very wealthy black shipping magnate, right, James W. Stewart. And she also met David Walker, who wrote Walker's "Appeal to the coloured citizens of the world", one of the most, people always use the word incendiary, pamphlets, and we know was sort of welcomed into the community. But shortly after that, her husband died. Thomas Paul passed away, and David Walker also passed away. And she was left destitute, and was cheated out of her inheritance from her very wealthy husband, over a period of about three years. And it was at that moment that she went to William Lloyd Garrison, and handed him some essays she'd written. And he said, "All right, I'll publish them". 1831! She was still in her 20s. So that's how her work comes to us.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 14:28
And you describe how she interacted with people who are advocating for insurrectionist ethics and how she was very interested in the liberal tenements of Locke and the like, who are about you know, freedom and equality and liberty for all people and really think about what it would mean to give liberty to all what she calls Americans of African descent or these kinds of things are all Black people. And I was wondering if you could say a bit more about what insurrectionist ethics mean, and how Maria Stewart interacted with these theories of liberalism that, in effect at that time, and since then have been used to disenfranchise Black people and women in general as well.
Kristin Waters 15:17
Yeah, this is really a thorny issue. The book cover is a period really from about the 1770s to the 1830s. And that's important because, you know, black people in the United States heard all of that Revolutionary War rhetoric. In fact, the colonists were always saying, Oh, my God, we're being enslaved by the British, you know, and I think, you know, they were just like, Are you kidding me? Right? You want to know what slavery is? Look around you. This is what you're doing. And of course, there was slavery throughout the colonies. And so early on, they started using this rhetoric I'm talking about in the 1770s, someone like Prince Hall, for example, wrote a petition, and he was one of many asking the state to liberate him, they were asking for a reduction in police violence, some things never change. And people were reading the reading the Declaration of Independence, you know, they're talking about it, they're writing about it, it's in the newspapers. So they absorbed that language of liberalism. And they use it because they saw how critical it was. Fast forward to 2022. And, you know, I think we are legitimately wondering whether what I call black radical or revolutionary liberalism, is really a tenable theory for us. Now, it may have been strategic for them back in the day, and yet, especially because liberalism has such horrible connotations, you know, maybe we should just put it down.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 16:55
I tend to struggle with that a lot myself, as I work on feminist theories of relational autonomy, I've grown more and more dissatisfied with the liberal takes on that just because I find them quite reductive, or I find that they're still engaging in the same debates about individual rights about a very narrow way of constructing liberty, freedom, agency, etc. But at the same time, we've also seen what happens when people are denied rights and when we're not allowed to speak about that. So it is something that I think we have to deal with. But I did think it was interesting reading your book, this idea of black radical liberalism, and is that a theory that should be resurrected? Because if someone had said like, well, you know, we've seen what communism in the USSR has done, therefore, communism, and all socialism is bad, I would kind of put the brakes on that and be like, well, you know, that was one instantiation of that theory. So should I be looking at liberalism and, you know, its child Neo liberalism, as something that I'm like, Well, is there another way? Is it worth returning to the theory and saying, Can we enact it? In what you know, fanfiction will call alternate universe? Is there something left there?
Kristin Waters 18:20
Yes. Well, I mean, should it be revived, it has been revived, and it's been revived by the great Charles W. Mills, who's passing we all really mourn, we just miss Charles a lot. But you know, it Charles has such an interesting trajectory, because he started out as a Marxist and became a philosopher of radical liberalism. He used that term.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 18:48
Could you explain what you understand by that?
Kristin Waters 18:51
I wish I could explain it as well as Charles would have. You know, there's a book that came out in 2010 of his everybody's read the racial contract, right? If you haven't, well, don't admit it. There's a book that I've been reading book of his came out in 2010, called radical theory, Caribbean reality. And it's a collection of essays and interviews, sort of some older pieces and some newer ones. And he writes, what's the advantage of working within the liberal tradition to begin with the obvious immense advantage is that with the defeat of the socialist project, I take this is not controversial. Liberalism is now the globally hegemonic ideology. Well, I mean, I think that not everyone would take that as non controversial.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 19:42
I mean, it's not wrong, but one could argue than, you know, we must fight this hegemonic force as opposed to join it.
Kristin Waters 19:55
Well, two things here. One, the original liberalism was revolutionary. And it was the ideology that fueled the American Revolution. And some other revolutions as well, including perhaps even I would say the Haitian Revolution, which is another, you know, not sufficiently talked about, and hugely important event in history. And for people like Mariah Stewart, that revolution was not that old. They saw the revolutionary qualities of it. If you're talking about insurrectionist ethics, which is a term that derives from David Walker, but Leonard Harris, the philosopher Leonard Harris, is the one who's really made the most use of his and others, Lee McBride. They're looking at the revolutionary character. I would agree with you, however, that we need to look at this very problematic idea of individualism, of capitalism, and even maybe ask the question, is it the case that writes the language of rights is the best way to, you know, concept around which to formula for formalise a political and moral theory. I'm personally very torn about these issues. But I'm excited about looking at them. I'm so excited that people are talking about this, this is really, this is a conversation we need to have.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 21:19
Absolutely. And from what I understand the term radical in this context, is really about the idea of roots, about going back to the foundation of like, What were these principles of liberalism, and which are principles of liberty, and we take them seriously. And, you know, history and infrastructure and systems have not taken them seriously and have disenfranchised and oppressed people. But the principles, if you will, in the abstract, are good principles, then, for me, it's kind of discussing, can we ever consider principles only in the abstract? And also, you know, what would Muraya Stuart have to say about the importance of property and the selfless property in classical liberalism when she herself was an indentured servant?
Kristin Waters 22:12
Well, to go back to Mills, you know, he, he makes it very clear over and over again, he's talking about non ideal theory, right? He's, he, he's not interested in creating, you know, some pie in the sky philosophy. I think, also, because Mariah Stewart talks very much about sort of the concrete ways of instantiating her beliefs, and I think two primary features. One is education, that gets to this idea of epistemic violence that maybe we can talk a little bit, and the other is excessive labour. And she sees that that combination of knowledge deprivation, and excessive labour is a very effective set of tools to prevent people from becoming liberated. And so she won. And she says, you know, we need to build schools, she says, go to let's go to the American colonisation society, they want to ship us so called back to Africa, even though most of us were never there in the first place and say, Hey, can you use that money to build some schools for us? Right. And she also notes that, you know, that the excessive labour that she was subjected to and that African Americans are pretty much still subjected to today, make it almost impossible to put your political philosophy into action?
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 23:37
Which is almost a Marxist idea.
Kristin Waters 23:39
It is. Very Marxist. Good point!
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 23:44
Well, yeah, well, I want to talk about that. Because when, in your introduction to the book, you set out this idea that there has been an epistemicide, there has been this idea of consciously not continuing and perpetuating these intellectual histories from Black people and Black women like Maria Stewart. So can you talk a bit about your project of trying to redress this and what you hope will happen going forward?
Kristin Waters 24:12
One of the motivating forces behind our "Black Women's Intellectual Traditions" book is that, you know, you find that if there's a widely and commonly recognised tradition, people can just use code words, and here I'm talking about in school committee meetings or in local politics, right? I mean, everybody's always saying, Oh, well, you know, I have my constitutional rights, even though most of the time they say that, in fact, they might be misinformed. But to be able to say there's a tradition that's at least 250 years old, of black intellectual thought is really an important tool to have. You know, there's this mania over the Founding Fathers, it makes me just tear my hair out. You know, you go into a book store and there are books about Adams and Hamilton, Washington and on and on and on. And you think Where's Prince Hall? Where's Thomas Paul? You know, where's Phyllis Wheatley?, on and on. And so part of it is sort of creating that tradition. But also, this is a little tangential. It bugs me a little and has for a long time that those of us on the left want to be out on the streets protesting while the people on the right are infiltrating the school committees and the City Council's et cetera, et cetera. Right. So here we are in a situation now talking about epistemic side epistemic violence, where 100, more than 100 bills have been introduced in various state legislatures across the country to ban teaching about racism, they would ban my book, right to ban teaching critical race theory, which I taught for 20 years and my philosophy of law classes. Right. It's astonishing to me, that this is where we are, I have to say that seems rather contrary to liberal principles.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 26:10
I mean, as someone who is not from the United States of America, from the outside a lot of what's happening there seems very contrary to lots of liberalism. But yeah, I was going to ask you that exactly about the banning of critical race theory with more or less a lack of understanding of what critical race theory actually, is. This idea that using infrastructure to perpetuate a certain idea of history, do you think that means that we need to try and get back into these institutions? Or do you think we need to create a non traditional way of educating people by giving them access to resources or having kind of informal seminars and things?
Kristin Waters 26:56
Great question. You know, the classic formulation is reform or revolution. Yep, we need to do both.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 27:03
And Kant was right for this. That's the only time I will say this.
Kristin Waters 27:11
Yeah, we need to do both. I mean, we need to be on the school committees, where the perpetuation of racism in our public schools is pretty terrifying. And people who are in power are just looking away, you know, we need to be in the streets, we need to be making people uncomfortable. And so I think we need to do both. And the fact is that by being in the streets, by protesting loudly, you actually make more space for the people who are the reformist to do their work. And so it is, it's a symbiotic relationship.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 27:53
Yeah, so it's about really opening the possibilities to different kinds of activism, because not everyone will be suited for every kind. But as you said, in the very beginning, you know, as a white woman, yourself, you feel a responsibility to do some of the work so that it's not all on the shoulders of black women, and other black people to have to survive and also represent their communities and also be accepted within the inner circles of power, and also all of the other things.
Kristin Waters 28:25
We can use our privilege, you know, it is it's powerful. We shouldn't be using it, if we have.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 28:32
Absolutely. And I wanted to ask, there's a lot in Maria Stewart's writings that is explicitly religious. And there is a long history of Black thought, Black feminist thought in the United States of America that is linked to various religious traditions, primarily Christian and sometimes Islam. Do you see this as something that is useful when considering her thought today? Do you find that this is an obstacle we've been talking about, you know, right wing institutions banning this kind of discourse, but I also feel that in the left, there is a reticence for kind of anything that has to do with organised religion as well. So do you find this as an obstacle in bringing up her theories today or not?
Kristin Waters 29:21
I think, you know, insofar as religion can be liberating, we need to embrace it. And so far is it's going to shut down forms of thought, or racist. I mean, the Christian nationalism that we are confronting today in the US is very, very, very scary, actually. But there are lots of ways of being religious. She was extremely religious. But you know, if we look at her, it's Stuart's time. It was around what's called the Second Great Awakening. After those three deaths that I mentioned her husband Thomas Paul, David Walker, She had a born again experience. And she believed that the Judgement Day was coming, as a lot of people did. And her vision of the Judgement Day is fascinating hear you talking about radical, her vision, and she writes it out, is that what's going to happen is, is the heavens are going to open up and the earth is going to open up. And all the white people are going to fall into hell, for what they've done to black people. And she says, you know, you will want to hide under the rocks that are falling on you to save you from the wrath of the Lamb. And so she's encouraging black people to come into the religious fold, because she's worried about them. Right? And she's basically saying to white people, you know, what judgement is coming soon, and you don't have chance. So I mean, that's a very radical vision, but we can be, we can be religious or not, we can be tolerant. I don't see why not.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 31:08
And what are you working on at the moment?
Kristin Waters 31:10
I have an article on insurrectionist ethics, that's taken the back burner for a while. And I'd like to, you know, this tradition of insurrectionist ethics that comes out of the work of Leonard Harris, has been tied to the pragmatist tradition, and there is a lot of talk about whether or not belongs there. What are the features of pragmatism that either coincide or failed to coincide? So I have a paper that addresses those issues. I think they're actually I think they're important ones.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 31:43
And what are you reading at the moment that is giving you life?
Kristin Waters 31:46
So you know, I am reading that Charles Mills, "Radical Theory and Caribbean Reality", but also Myisha Cherry's "The Case for Rage." And, you know what, I want to say, because I don't think we've said too much about it: Maria Stewart talks about gender in every single essay, she has a gendered critique in every one of her essays. And she really is, in that sense, the founding sister of black feminist thought so you know, among the other things I'm reading, for example, Margaret McLaren's book on transnational feminism. That's really important work. We need to, you know, I think as philosophers we tend to become very US centred. I bet you'll agree with that. And sort of fearful of, you know, making cultural missteps. If we go beyond our own borders. We can't do that. We need to look at this very important material on transnational feminism. But I am also reading Robin Kelley's "Freedom Dreams". A great book that talks about Maria Stewart is Stefan Wheelock's "Barbaric Culture and Black Critique"; Lee McBride, "Ethics and Insurrection"...
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 33:00
So you're like me, you read 15 books at once?
Kristin Waters 33:03
Yeah, for sure. Is there another way to do it?
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 33:08
I mean, some people are reading monogamist and they stick to one...
Kristin Waters 33:13
That's not possible. And that doesn't say anything about the you know, the trash I read for for pleasure.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 33:21
Oh, I mean, I mean, I always hesitate to call things trash because you read them for a reason. And sometimes that reason is self care. And sometimes that reason is you can't always read things feminism and race that are important but sometimes make you very sad. Yes. Where can people find you and your work on the internet?
Kristin Waters 33:44
Ah, good question. If you do Kristin dash waters that should get you if you do that Google Search Kristin dash Waters or even Kristin B. Waters, even though I don't use that. And I really encourage you, it is Kristin dash waters.com. And I really encourage you to do that because I need some hits on my website. And also, if anybody wants to go on, you know, some of the ego evil mega bookstore sites and, and even just give me some stars or some reviews, it's really hard when you're writing these books to get noticed. And I think it's really important to notice each other, you know, there's the site, black authors, movement, um, not a Black author, but I am an author, about race, gender,
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 34:37
And I do want to say that this book is very accessible. So if people think it's an honestly philosophy books sometimes can be challenging because they use a lot of jargon and they address a specialist audience but because so much of this book is biographical, and you really bring us into the history and the place Were all of these concepts were born and activism was being done, it is immensely readable and you mercifully break them down to short chapters, which I love. So I really want to encourage, if you've never heard about this, or you're interested, this is definitely a book that will not make you frustrated, because you can't like understand the language, the language is very beautiful. And it's very clear, and you really get a sense of who all of these people were. So I definitely would say that this book has a broad appeal for even non philosophers as well.
Kristin Waters 35:40
Thank you so much! Yeah, I tried to do that I really, and I say in the introduction, look, if you hit these, you know, sort of heavy philosophical sections, skip over them, because the story goes on. You know, you don't have to read at all.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 35:55
That's it, you could read part of the book for the historical context, part of the book for an analysis of Stewart's writing. And or you could do all of it. So yeah. All right. Well, thank you so much for meeting with me. And I wish you all the best and possibly winning the prize!
Kristin Waters 36:15
Thank you so much. It's such a privilege to be here on Philosopher Casting Call. Yeah, it's it's just great. Great to meet you!
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 36:32
Thank you so much Kristin for your time and for writing a book that should be in every university and public library. In fact, I’m going to urge every listener to ask their library to purchase it because it deserves to be a staple in the history of political philosophy. I will link the book in the show notes as well as Kristin’s website if you want to learn more. If you want to support Philosophy Casting Call, the best way is to rate the podcast and to leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Also tell me if you use Philosophy Casting Call in your classrooms, cause I would love to know! If you are in a position to donate, you can also become a monthly supporter on Ko-Fi. You can follow the podcast @philoccpod on Twitter and Instagram and all the transcripts live at www.elainagauthiermamaril.com. Until next time, bye!
Transcribed by https://otter.ai