On the state of philosophy of disability with Shelley Tremain
Show notes
This is the episode where Élaina interviews Shelley Tremain on her work in feminist philosophy of disability.
Follow Shelley on Twitter @biopoliticalph and www.biopoliticalphilosophy.com
You can find her publications on PhilPeople
Find the Dialogues on Disability here
Books and articles mentioned in this episode:
“Race and Method: The Tuvel Affair”, by Tina Fernandes Botts
The Biopolitics of Disability: Neoliberalism, Ablenationalism, and Peripheral Embodiment, by David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder
Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability, by Shelley Lynn Tremain
Justice and the politics of difference, by Iris Marion Young
You can buy these books (and support the podcast) at Bookshop.org UK
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
Follow Élaina on Instagram @spinoodler and Twitter @ElainaGMamaril
You can support the podcast by purchasing the books mentioned in this episode through my Bookshop.org link (I receive a small contribution for each click).
Transcript
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 0:19
Hi, welcome to philosophy casting call a podcast that features underrepresented philosophical talent. I'm Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril, your host and resident casting director. Since this is the very first episode of philosophy casting call, I thought I would introduce myself a little bit and talk about why I started this podcast. So I'm at the end of a PhD program. And so I believe I can confidently call myself a philosopher now, however, it's more than about having degrees. For me, it's about seeing philosophy as a practice, as something that is a part of my life. And as I grew as a person, as an academic, and as a philosopher, I've discovered, certain people I wanted to hang out with, and certain people I had affinities with. And what they have in common is that most of them do philosophy a bit differently, either because of who they are, what they're interested in, the different cultures that bring them to philosophy, or all of the above. And these people exist, they are out there, they are doing the work, they are a part of philosophy.
However, they're often under represented, either physically in philosophy departments, or in the texts that are circulated in the syllabi. But also, in the diversity or lack of diversity of approaches we have to academic philosophy. And so with this podcast, I wanted to cast a wide net, and gather some of these amazing people, I do not claim to have discovered them, I do not have the power to make them famous. But what I can do is reach out to people who I want to talk to, because I admire their work. And I think they're amazing. And share those conversations with you. Because we don't need to invent diversity, we are diversity. And we have unique ways of approaching philosophy and so many things in common at the same time.
So I'm very happy to be working on this project. Please be kind and understand that I'm here and I'm learning but I am so so excited to be sharing this with you. As a disabled philosopher myself, I am very excited to introduce our first guest: Shelley Tremain. A quick note before we begin, during the interview, Shelley mentions a Canadian bill, Bill C-7, that was passed on March 17, 2021, that allows people with non life-threatening disabilities and chronic illnesses to have easier access to medically assisted suicide. This bill has been widely criticized as giving a "biomedical out", whilst not simultaneously providing more support for disabled people to continue living, including the usual suicide prevention services that would be offered to non-disabled people. So a content note on that if you feel that this is not something you would like to listen to today. Now, without further ado, I give you my conversation with the wonderful Shelley Tremain.
Hi, Shelley welcome. Thank you for being here.
Shelley Tremain 4:27
Thank you for inviting me. It's very very kind of Yeah.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 4:31
I'm really excited to have you on! Some people may know of you, but I would just like for you to introduce yourself and to maybe say how you discovered philosophy as something that you wanted to study or integrate in your practice.
Shelley Tremain 4:47
Okay, well, I'm a disabled philosopher of disability, disabled feminist philosopher of disability. I have a PhD in philosophy from York University in Canada. So my areas of specialization in philosophy, or philosophy of disability, Foucault, feminist philosophy and social metaphysics and social epistemology, and bioethics and bio politics. I'm the author of a book entitled "Foucault and feminist philosophy of disability", and quite a number of publications, articles and reviews on philosophy of disability, which can be found online, most of them can be found online. And I'm also the and this is a very important part of what I do. I'm also the coordinator, a co-coordinator of the bio political philosophy blog, which is a blog that focuses on underrepresentation and philosophy and, you know, tries to bring marginalized philosophers and marginalized areas of philosophy to the center of discourse in philosophy.
I guess in response to your question about how I got into philosophy. You know, when you suggested that question to me last week, I really had to think about this because in the dialogues on disability interviews that I do in post a bio political philosophy, I usually start off my interviews by asking my interviewee you know, how they got into philosophy, what kept them in philosophy, etc. But I haven't really thought about it too much with respect to myself and my own career, such as it is, so but I guess I'd have to say that I got in for probably know, a couple of reasons, at least, one of them was I had one of my first philosophy professors in my undergraduate degree, one of the first philosophy professors that really had an impact upon me, hadn't had any impact upon me, because he was very difficult to work with, he was very demanding, who was very demanding. And so I which of course, motivated me to want to, you know, he would tell me that my writing was, you know, was very good. So, which motivated me to try, you know, really try to improve my writing philosophically. And he actually ended up being the philosopher that I worked with the most did took independent reading courses with did my MA thesis with because I stayed where I was, and did my MA thesis there, my MA there, and which was McMaster University in Hamilton.
And also, I guess what I had, I guess another reason I went on to do philosophy, or felt that there was a need for someone like me in philosophy was, was my experiences taking bioethics, as an undergrad. The professor for bioethics at McMaster, was quite well known in the area. And so his lectures were huge, you know, he had a big room full of students, and I just found that the topics and the way disability was being talked about so, so unsettling and so just so going in a direction that I, you know, just start was not the direction that should be followed, that I guess, I, I wanted to see, if there was something more, you know, more could be said about this, about these issues and how they could be, how it how it can be said. So that led me to, to continue doing doing work as an MA student, and then I went on to do a PhD and got into feminist philosophy and then started to research, research disability. And, and that's sums it up.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 8:58
Is it fair to say that your experience with academic philosophy has been one of finding points of resistance and then saying "I have something to say about this!"? So with your first professor, being like, "Your writing is not up to scratch" and then that motivated you to work harder, and then your bioethics class was saying things about disability that fundamentally bothered you? And that was the launching pad for you to pursue something like philosophy of disability?
Shelley Tremain 9:30
Well, yes, but also, first of all, that philosophy of disability is a subfield of philosophy that I actually initiated when I finished was finishing up my my doctoral dissertation, and I gave them gave it the name philosophy of disability the area of study, but it wasn't just resistance, because apart from what what was being sad about disability and bioethics, and also In, you know, ethics and political philosophy, there wasn't much to really go with in terms of there wasn't really much to resist because the the way that philosophers were talking about disability when they talked about it at all, was very much very much in medicalized terms. And so it was, it wasn't, it wasn't as if there was a lot to, you know, disagree with on, you know, a minor level, it was more like a systemic approach needed to be a systemic shift needed to be needed to be taken. So it wasn't even so much a resistance. Well, it was a resistance to what wasn't being said, as much as what was being said, or even more what wasn't being said.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 10:53
So now, you mentioned a couple of times the medicalized concept of disability. Could you speak more about what you find problematic with that way of discussing disability and what you and your work are trying to offer as an alternate?
Shelley Tremain 11:09
Well, the medicalised approached and, you know, I call it a medicalized approach rather than in a lot of work by philosophers who work on disability, the term medical model will be used in disability theorists tend to use that term, but I call it a medicalized approach, because the approach isn't static, it shifts to it shifts to accommodate resistances to it. So it's more like an approach than a static model. So the problem with the medicalized approach is that it will there are a number of problems. First of all, the medicalized approach leads to certain leads to certain responses that are also medicalized. If we talk about philosophy, for instance, a medicalized approach to disability within philosophy means that philosophy isn't rather disability isn't discussed in a number of domains. It's only it's really, it's been sequestered in bioethics, because it's, it's conceived in medicalized terms. So the responses that will be offered have to do with treatment cure, elimination, rather than changing a social structure. Because of course, if you're thinking in terms of America, you know, in terms of medicalized approaches it rather than political approaches, or, you know, social responses, then you're not going to be looking at Well, the social circumstances of disabled people's lives, you're going to be looking at them in very definite terms with respect to, you know, what they what they what is required, so you're, you're not going to be looking at things like housing, or education or employment or poverty, or any of these factors, because that isn't within the purview of what you think disability has to do with.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 13:25
Yeah, it's really interesting, because when we were discussing last week, and also reading your papers, I hadn't thought of it before, as "Oh, we sequestered talking philosophically about disability to bioethics". But it really maps my own journey. Like I never thought that I would end up working on bioethics, but my work on autonomy and relational agency, and all of these things led me to discover disability studies and philosophy of disability. And the way I "quote, unquote", legitimize that in on CVs and in presentations is by claiming that it's bioethics. But I've never felt super comfortable with that label. So I thought it was really interesting to hear you and read what you say about disability being sequestered into a discourse of bioethics, because when we think about it, philosophy looks at so many different aspects of what it is to live as a human being. And so the idea that we can't discuss disability in epistemology or disability and metaphysics is a bit preposterous, right?
Unknown Speaker 14:39
Right. And I have a I think that because disability is sequestered in bioethics, the consequences for disabled philosophers are grave and for disabled people are grave and you know, if you took notice of the debates or rather the the activism and discussions around Bill C-7, the Canadian legislation that was recently passed in the Canadian Parliament with respect to medical medically assisted suicide, if you notice philosophers, I was I was doing my best to make philosophers aware and aware of what's going on and energize them and to motivate them to to. Because, I mean, that legislation has, it is really a product of discussions within, you know, from Canadian bioethicists. I mean, that's, it's derived from their so called expertise. And so I really, I was really trying to get Canadian philosophers to acknowledge that this is something that your colleagues have, have developed, and it's going to have very detrimental impact upon a number of constituencies, not you're not just disabled people, but indigenous communities, you know, and the, the response, the community responses from groups like Black Lives Matter Toronto, disability organizations all across Canada, it's was quite significant. But philosophers seemed almost indifferent to it. And that's, that, I think, is an outcome of the fact that disability has been sequestered in, in the realm of bioethics. And by bioethicists have been enabled to basically go about their work, you know, without a lot of scrutiny from other philosophers, because, to some extent, bioethics has been seen, as you know, just a service course that, you know, not really central to the discipline itself, but sort of like something that people can take as an elective. But in Canada, as, as you may know, bioethics has really shaped the discipline in Canada, and some of the most powerful actors in Canadian philosophy are bioethicists.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 17:18
Yeah, that's really interesting. Also, in regards to how, in your papers, you describe how philosophy of disability or mention of disability is kind of a sub sub sub sub category, and already buried within the tree of applied ethics, which is also not always regarded as a higher plane,
Shelley Tremain 17:45
You're talking about the work that I've done examining the PhilPapers database, right? Okay. Yeah.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 17:54
Yeah. And so I wonder if that's an extra barrier.
Shelley Tremain 17:58
That is an extra barrier, the way that disability has been classified, or work on disability has been classified within the discipline. And the way the fact that you won't see there's never been, there has never been a job posted anywhere, internationally, in philosophy of disability. There's never been a job posted with the as a philosophy of disability on PhilPapers, or any of the other philosophy job lists. There have been two now that have had philosophy of disability as an area of competence, but not as an area of specialization. This is another barrier, right? Because it means that that someone like you, as you said, you have to characterize your work in medicalized terms as falling within the area of bioethics. Rather than if you wanted to put it in into, you know, the specialization and philosophy of disability, you can't do that. And because, you know, employers are going to look at your CV, and they're not going to recognize that area of specialization, because other departments are not hiring in that area. And hiring you know, is very much influenced by, you know, what is hot in the discipline at a certain time. You know, and if philosophy of disability isn't even on the radar, which it is not present, despite the fact that I mean, I've been raising these issues about the philpapers database, and the PhilJobs classifications for... Well, I first articulated these concerns in a paper entitled introducing feminist philosophy of disability, which was published in 2013. So, you know, it's been quite a number of years that I've even been making that criticism of PhilJobs and PhilPapers and philosophy of disability has been around for even longer than that. And it's still an uphill battle to get any kind of recognition of the subfield by other philosophers who want to describe it, as you know, as bioethics, and some, you know, a number of a number of disabled philosophers who are now doing disability philosophy of disability also identifies by author but you know, as bioethicists, which is an additional problem because they're not making it easier for philosophy of disabilities to be recognized, if they continue to identify as bioethicist when it's, you know, when it's when it works for them. Because for someone like me, who wants to push back against bioethics, it closes certain doors. And I know that you said last week that you hadn't read my book, but the fifth chapter of my book is a critique, not just the fifth chapter of my book is entitled bioethics as the technology of government. And in the chapter I developed a critique of bioethics, which has, which is not like other critiques of bioethics. When philosophers of disability and disability theorists critique bioethics bioethics are usually critiquing, you know, like a certain practice, or certain bioethicists or a certain technology and its use. But in that chapter, I say that the subfield of bioethics is the problem. And I suggest that it's it's not enough to, to simply bring more disabled, you know, disabled philosophers into bioethics, as bioethicists, who are working on disability, the entire subfield needs to be made obsolete.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 22:07
So, how, other than this the barrier of the field itself, what other barriers do you feel that disabled philosophers face within the discipline of philosophy and academia more broadly?
Shelley Tremain 22:24
So okay, so, so far, we've talked about how philosophy of disability, critical work on disability is classified in the discipline. There are also, you know, barriers with respect to disabled philosophers themselves being seen, because if you have, this is the argument, the central argument of my book is that the prevailing conception of disability in philosophy is medicalized and individualized, in the terms of which disability is regarded as a natural disadvantage or personal misfortune, a natural attribute or difference or property of individuals. And if you think that that's what disability is, you're going to think that someone who identifies as disabled is flawed in some way. So that's going to have an impact. And you know, it's going to affect perceptions and prospects of disabled philosophers because, and I show throughout, and I argue throughout the book that these two things are mutually constitutive, and and mutually reinforcing the conception of disability that's held, and the exclusion of disabled philosophers and marginalization of philosophy of disability, those are mutually constitutive and mutually reinforcing. So there's another barrier. And there's also sorry, there's also of course, the barriers that you know, any barriers that persist across the university to disabled people, you know, disabled people becoming student, university students, getting into student you know, getting into university as a student, and then, you know, continuing on as graduating as a graduate student. I mean, those disabled philosophers also encounter you know, all the barriers that disabled students in sociology encounter and barriers with respect to accessibility, getting back and forth to university, transportation's a problem, and professors who are unwilling to change their pedagogy and their practices to enable disabled students. So...
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 24:59
Yeah, and In my experience, it's it's difficult when no one has ever thought about accommodations before. And then you come up and be like, "This is a problem for me" and they're, like, "Well, sorry about that". And you're kind of left like, "okay, something is wrong with me" because you haven't even...
Shelley Tremain 25:20
Yes, exactly.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 25:23
So what are you working on at the moment? Like, what is your next project?
Shelley Tremain 25:28
What I'm working on right now is? Well, I've been working on a couple of research proposals I'm working on, I'm finishing up a paper for an Oxford Handbook of social ontology, which is edited by Sally haslinger, Brian Epstein, Stephanie Collins, and another person. And that's coming out next year, I'm also finishing up the special issue of the International Journal of critical diversity studies, a special issue on that I've put together on philosophy of disability philosophies of disability and the glow of endemic and that's coming out, hopefully, by May. So hopefully, by the end of next month, that will be out or by June anyway. So I'm working on those things, and working, of course, continuing to work on the dialogues on dialogues on disability series interview series that I do with disabled philosophers, and post to bio political philosophy once a month, and that in a couple of weeks, I'll be posting the sixth anniversary installment of that series. I'll have a guest, special guest on doing the installation installment with me. So that's exciting, and probably some other things that I can't think of right now.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 26:58
Yeah. I have two questions. So the first is in relation to your chapter for the Oxford Handbook. So from what I could read from Biopolitical blog, you were saying that you're kind of examining, you're critiquing the approach of analytical philosophy, right? To philosophy disability? Could you just give us the gist of your argument there?
Shelley Tremain 27:28
Well, I draw upon the work of Tina Fernandez Botts, who has written a paper, which I think has not received enough attention, called Race and Method and can be found on her PhilPapers page, and Tina makes a number of observations about how analytic philosophy proceeds, and why the way that it proceeds, the approach that it takes is not appropriate for work on race and racism and racialized people and, and generalize is it due to, you know, to make the claim that the analytic approach to philosophy to phenomena is is inappropriate or unsuitable for analyses, examination of marginalized groups, and she does mention disabled people in the paper. And so I, I've taken up a number of her her criticisms, one of them being that, well, I mean, you know, as you know, analytic philosophy is the dominant discourse in the field of philosophy. And this has implications for who gets hired, what they get hired for, and why they get hired, and why other philosophers who don't use analytical method methodology don't get hired. So I draw attention to how the work of Elizabeth Barnes who's written a book called the minority body which uses an analytic approach to philosophy of disability, I take Tina Fernandes Botts' criticisms, and apply them to, in one section of the paper, apply them to Barnes's book. So another criticism that Botts makes this that analytic philosophy decomposes, it's a decompositional approach, it breaks phenomena down into, you know, its simplest parts. And this, this, you know, is an approach that drives from logical positivists g more, and what that does is that it naturalizes and individualizes work on disability and really simplifies in a way that abstracts from complex phenomena, complex social phenomena with respect to disability. And so that's one of my main criticisms. The paper, the chapter begins by making a case, and the case needs to be made that disability work on disability belongs in the study of social ontology. For instance, if you look at the entry for social ontology in the Stanford Encyclopedia philosophy, there's no discussion there. There's one mention of work on disability. But you know, there's no discussion, there's discussion of gender, race, sexuality, but there's no discussion. That's and that's, again, that's because disability has not been seen as a social phenomenon, right? It's been seen as a medical phenomenon. So the first section of the chapter is entitled, putting the social into ontology of disability. So you know, it's like bringing disability into social the field of social ontology. That's how the chapter begins. And I end up the chapter by recommending a historicized, genealogical approach to social ontology of disability.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 31:13
Yeah, I'm really looking forward to reading that. That sounds fascinating. My second question is kind of, to wrap all of what you've said so far up, it sounds like your practice is very much linked also to activism. And that's not uncommon with feminist philosophy in general: it's porous, where we acknowledge thinkers that don't necessarily publish academically, but are either authors or speakers or activists, and how do you see your, your work in relation to disability studies?
Shelley Tremain 31:47
Thank you for that question. I think I want my work to be engaged with those... with with people working in both those domains. And not only be engaged with but also being engaged by and I've done a lot of activism over the years in Canada, you know, with various organizations and in various domains, various venues, various spheres. And I think that it's very important, especially in light of the fact that, you know, most disabled people live below the poverty line in Canada, and they're not going to be the disabled people in academia. And those people are people I want to... those disabled people are people that I want to work with work for, and be in solidarity with, I think that is true of most disability theorists in Canada, I was going to say, philosophy of disability in Canada, but really, I'm the only disabled philosopher in Canada. But disability theorists, there are some in Canada, and I don't think I can think of one that is not actively involved in some way with disabled activists who are not academics, I think it's very important. I tried to be actively involved, for instance, in the recent disability filibuster and other activities around Bill C-7 that disabled activists were initiating, and I think it's really important. I'm also, you know, I also tried to stay in touch with and engaged with and work with disability theorists who are not philosophers, because I think that's necessary, because I mean, just the way that philosophy of disability is really siloed in the discipline, it would be easy to disregard aspects that have work on disability that the discipline itself as it is, does not recognized. And so and that needs to be that needs to be resisted.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 34:02
Well, thank you. And so I like to ask all my guests as we close: what are you reading right now or recently that has really excited you are gives you joy, philosophy or not?
Shelley Tremain 34:15
What am I reading right now? Well, actually, what I'm what I'm reading right now is I started I wanted to go back and take another look at I mean, a book that I read, like a number of years ago, because I saw something that had cited it and I thought well, that I would go back and look at it again, maybe and have a different perspective on it. And that is "Justice and the Politics of Difference" by Iris Marion Young. I started looking at that again yesterday. And what else have I been reading? Oh, I was I've been reading "The Biopolitics of Disability" by David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder. And I think that a lot of my time has been taking taken up reading the things online like Tina's paper or I mean, I find it Iso wonderful to have access to papers online that I do that quite often. So I think that maybe books don't get as much attention as articles do these days.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 35:18
I will link everything you've mentioned in the show notes so people can
Shelley Tremain 35:23
Okay, great, thanks very much.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 35:25
So is there anywhere online you would like people to find you and your work?
Shelley Tremain 35:28
Well, they could, they can check out bio political philosophy, our blog, definitely do that and check out the dialogues on disability series. I mean, the series I haven't said very much about the series in this podcast, but the series is such a rich trove of, of insight from disabled philosophers, both faculty and students that I encourage people to check that out. They can also check out my PhilPapers, my PhilPeople page on my page, I fill people and you know, most of my publications are there. Not all of them, but most of them are there so they can take advantage of that. And yeah, if people wanted to pick up my book, I'd love that: "Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability", which is published by University of Michigan press in its discourses on disability series. Thanks so much for asking me to join you.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 36:24
Oh, it's been my pleasure. I've really wanted you to be my first guest. So I'm really excited that we had this conversation.
Shelley Tremain 36:32
I was as honour, thanks very much!
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 36:35
Thank you. Bye!
And that's a wrap on the very first episode of philosophy casting call. Remember to follow and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen. This allows people to discover the show. You can also write to me at philosophycastingcallpod@gmail.com. If you have any suggestions for future guests, or if you want to be a future guests, I would love to hear from you. Also check out my Instagram and Twitter @philoccpod. That's pH i l o cc pod. So it's the letter C twice. And you can support the podcast by becoming a monthly supporter on my ko-fi.com page. So that's k o hyphen f fi com forward slash philo cc pod. It'll just help me get better and better at this and possibly produce a season two! So tell your philosopher friends about the pod! Tell your disabled friends about the pod! And I will see you in two weeks' time.
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