On creative philosophical practices and the power of showing up w/Jen Scuro
Show notes
This is the one where Élaina asks Jen Scuro about her artistic practice’s place in all the stages of her academic career. Plus, there’s a bonus update at the end!
CN: Ableism and miscarriage
You can learn more about Jen on her website: https://jenniferscurophd.squarespace.com/home and find teaching resources on her Academia.edu page: https://molloy.academia.edu/JenniferScuro
Books mentioned in the episode:
Addressing Ableism, by Jennifer Scuro
The Pregnancy (does not equal) Childbearing Project: A Phenomenology of Miscarriage, by Jennifer Scuro
The Queer Art of Failure, by Judith Halberstam
Golem Girl, by Riva Lehrer
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Philosophy Casting Call is hosted, edited, and produced by Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril
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Transcript
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 0:19
Hello, and welcome to Philosophy Casting Call, the podcast that features underrepresented philosophical talent. My name is Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril, and I'm your host and resident casting director. Today, I'll be sharing with you the conversation I had with Professor Jenn Scuro, a few months ago, and some things have changed, but I will provide an update at the end of the episode. And I decided to keep the original interview because I think Jen shares some very important things about what it is like to practice philosophy throughout all stages of one's academic career and how she dealt with abruptly losing her tenure job because her college shut down. And I think those are still really valuable insights. And they may be capture a slice of Jen's life that has now evolved. But I still think it's really relevant, and a very important message for a lot of us to hear. So that's why I decided to keep this version of the interview and provide an update at the end.
Before we move on, I want to say that in this episode, there is discussion of ableism, but also of miscarriage. So if that is not for you, please come back in two weeks when we'll be discussing something else or return to this when you feel ready, but those of your content Notes for this episode. Without further ado, I give you Jen Scuro.
Hi, Jen, thank you for being here.
Jen Scuro 2:13
Thank you for inviting me.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 2:16
I'm so happy you could make it. I wanted to ask you how you came to see philosophy as something that you wanted to study that you wanted to integrate in your life?
Jen Scuro 2:28
Well, I think, you know, in hindsight, I was very curious. I was when I was young, I asked a lot of questions, I found myself always a little out of step with what was going on with her around me anyway, asking kind of the questions that most people weren't asking when I was young. But because I was a good student, because I did all the things I was supposed to do. By the time I got to college, I was thinking I was going to be a doctor and do pre med that was not successful that I thought, well, maybe I'll help people through psychology, I'd be a good therapist, and I was pretty generic in terms of, you know, the kinds of things I was expected to do. And then I was I found myself really doing artwork. And thank goodness, my family was very supportive for me to continue to pursue artwork professionally. And so they're like, go and go and study art formally. And so that's what I was doing. I was I was doing art, I was invested in being creative. And I took an ethics class. And it was at a point in my life where I felt very betrayed by a lot of people in my life they had set me up to, I was expected to be compliant. As a doctor, I suspected to be a compliant as a girlfriend. And the fortunately men in my life, I found were allowed to do things and allowed to coerce and manipulate for their own interests. And I was frustrated. And I was coming into my own and this ethics class. The professor comes in and goes, you know, our cell talks about the good itself. And there is something you know, Plato describes it, but that that there are good things. And we talk about goodness, in a practical sense, but there also is that concept of the good and I and I thought to myself, wait, Why didn't anybody tell me about this before. So it opens up this possibility that I could study something like this, and I just got better at it, the more I heard, the more hungry I got to hear this level of complex ideological problems, and starting to really bite into them and feeling competent in thinking about it. And I was one of the only few, you know, women doing philosophy and I decided to minor in it as an undergrad. So I wasn't majoring and so even as I got into grad school with the support of the faculty that were in my undergrad department, I was able to really go into a degree in philosophy and advanced degree in philosophy without A lot of preparation as a philosopher. So I didn't really identify as a philosopher. for a really long time, I was a student of philosophy. And my goal was to teach philosophy, I really wanted to not teach art. That was kind of my idea. I wanted to work at the college level, I wanted to be a college instructor. And that was very far away in my 20s until I just I was I just kept showing up. It's so I found myself, you know, very persistent in my in my efforts, and the nice thing that came around and what was, you know, validating and of course, typical philosophy was when I came back to teach as an adjunct in my original undergrad department, one of the professor's broke out a glass of whiskey for us to toast and he said, You know, there's some people in philosophy, they're talented, and some people who are persistent. And you, my dear are persistent. And I went the official induction into the field of philosophy for me. And then I went on and I, you know, hard fought my way, and finished my degree from the new school. And it took me a long time. And when I finished I was 33 years old. And I was teaching at Fordham University, Pace University, and St. John's University in New York. So I was an Uber adjunct. And, but when I finished, one of the women faculty at Fordham gave me a an article that said, on average, women finish humanities PhDs at 33 years old, and I'm, again, quite average.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 6:45
I'm persistently average, persistently average, just keeps showing up. But I'm curious that you started by saying you were interested in medicine, and then interested in becoming a psychotherapist. And then you sort of switch to me like, I want to teach philosophy. Do you see a link between those practices?
Jen Scuro 7:05
I think, because, again, my working class, and to some degree toward middle class ambitions, and my working class background, I think it really was kind of what you do with the smart kid, right? The smart kids, especially as as a as a young girl growing up in the suburbs, I think there was this expectation that you wouldn't do. You know, even being a college professor was still strange as a choice. So I think when I was coming up, I was really doing the things that were expected of me as a really smart, precocious already disposed toward intellectual intellectualising things. But again, in service, like, I really loved people I love I have the gift of gab, I love to think about problems. I love to an end, I would interact with people where the conversations would be something like, you know, after talking to you, I never thought about this before. So there was already a lot of that my experience. And the way I would professionalise it, I thought those were the one or two routes that were really open to me. And it was really because it was a required course in a liberal arts college that I think I think even the first if I remember correctly, even the first philosophy class I took when I was still a psychology major. It was like a philosophy of human nature course. And I kept thinking to myself what but psychology solve these issues. Like I don't really see the profession being very, you know, the field being very persuasive. But at the same time, once I got into that mode of applying it in terms of ethics, there was something that really spoke to me. And I think I always did have this really deep moral, you know, commitment in my mind, to being honest and craving honesty and want to be a truth teller. And I was like that since I was a little kid that I know for sure. And so when you are someone who craves truth, and someone who always wants to tell the truth and who wants to be dealing with people so that they are honest and and deal with them, honestly, and I still do that in my even parenting practice, was really honest with my kids and I try so hard to be up straight up with them about you know, what we're doing or why we're doing it or what they want to do. And to this day, I think that was really what made philosophy and attractive field. Once I realised what it really constituted, like what could be done with it or what my role might be.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 9:34
And how did that lead you to become invested in philosophy of disability and Disability Studies?
Jen Scuro 9:42
I definitely came the long way around to philosophy of disability because again, the field as you become part of that community, and it is really quite ablest in hindsight, a lot The work that gets done is on ablest premises, that there's a cleverness, there's a commitment to rationality. And, and without affectation without, without stylistic dispositions. So just being a woman doing philosophy, and being, you know, a quirky kind of woman doing philosophy, I don't think I came across as very neutral. When I came, I came across, sometimes call myself like a little Chihuahua, I'd be very excited about things. And a lot of what I had already been doing very anxious person that I was, was converting that anxiety into something that was not disabling, but was very productive. But as time went on, and as I established myself, you know, on a tenure track job and working my way, I wasn't really publishing, I was still teaching, what started to happen was I realised that even with those conditions being really voluntary and choice where they, I'm doing this job that I love, I have a family who loves me, and I love them. I've established myself that as I began to experience things, like the miscarriages that I write about, in my book, as I began to see that my anxiety as much as it was a really powerful instrument for me to do my job. Well, it was also then grinding me down into someone who is easily undone by those people around me who didn't want to see me succeed or was not nurturing and supportive, and you know, kind of cooperative, I wouldn't have found myself in competitive environments, I started to realise that I don't do well. And I think when I was younger, and I was still had a lot of ambition, competitive environments still worked.
But as I got older, and as I matured, and as I established my family and began to really invest in care strategies for myself, and for the others around me, I realised how easily I got wore down for being able to keep that level of productivity and stress levels, like sustainable. So the experience with miscarriage and the trauma and the grief, I think were part of me getting toward the process of seeing disability being something that I could specialise in, but I really got into it. Lydia Brown, who's in the addressing ableism book is one of my interlocutors in one of the chapters on intersectionality, I had met them when they were still an undergrad. And they said, I had them come to speak on a panel. And they said to me, You really need to go to the Society for Disability Studies. And when I went there, I realised that very different than the community of philosophers that I had been so familiar with, and identified with the community was its disposition. It's like, the participants, the expectations, were so inviting, and so, so much more where I needed to be that I was almost willing to give up the philosopher status, and, and double down on really pursuing disability studies. And moving on from that. And again, when the when the college that I worked for shut down, it really was not just that I was no longer unemployed, professional philosopher with, you know, institutional affiliation, because that's important in philosophy. But within the context of disability studies, and that, in that community of scholars and activists, academic affiliation was an important being able to identify as disabled was part of a process that was important in doing that work. Whereas in philosophy, identifying is disabled can be dangerous, I think can threaten your status in the field, as almost evidenced by the fact that many disabled philosophers are partially employed or underemployed in the field, despite maybe how productive and how important their contributions,
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 13:58
I definitely struggled at the beginning of my PhD programme, because it was a new school and a new faculty, a new department. And for four months, I didn't disclose my disability, because I was like, Well, I'm here on scholarship, they might pull it, or what if they think I can't do this, that they've invested in the wrong person. And it's, it was very, very scary.
Jen Scuro 14:21
I know. And I yeah, and I do think that that's where we're doing as a community damage, because that is the next generation, you know, of professional philosophers who might have things to contribute in ways that us old folk, really, we need to kind of let that expire as as an expectation that, you know, having a disability or being disabled or identifying as disabled can actually create a really important kind of aspect to the way in which one contributes to philosophy or philosophises. Just generally, that those experiences are instructive for how philosophy can be done and we don't have enough room within that community to really see that as an asset, but again, that the predisposition, particularly in philosophy is obviously not just that it's also gender, it's a lot of ways in which there is this kind of standard, that remains to be illusory in terms of like, who does it, and how it needs to be done.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 15:21
But I want to go back to your book, because it does strike me as one of the few books out there that specifically addresses questions of disability disability discourse, from a philosophical perspective. So what drove you to write Addressing Ableism?
Jen Scuro 15:38
Addressing Ableism was kind of an attempt at doing a scholarly work that and I should be clear, my style has always been a bit problematic within traditional philosophy anyway, which was, I always felt a bit like a patchwork artist, I, maybe this is the artist in me, that was part of the disposition, but piecing together and bringing together different things and kind of curating them into a line of ideas or a narrative in some way. And what I was finding was that I was collecting a lot of really new information about this issue of ableism, that when I was writing, it was still treated as a misspelling, it wasn't treated as like, a word. In and of itself, I had to correct my computer on that. But the concept I found was showing up in many different dimensions. And I wanted to capture that and because my older daughter is disabled, she's not neurotypical, I was one of those like, autism parents. And it wasn't comfortable with that, because, at the same time, already starting to really become a part of the disability community, and the Disability Studies field and really getting versed and literate in the literature that's very separate than the world of philosophy. who's who's who, if you will, in the disability world, as I began to get to know them, as I began to fan girl them. I realised that I wanted to build a better intellectual bridge between what I was trained to do.
And what I was fascinated by, which was the ways in which maybe even if I didn't identify as disabled at that time, but identified as an ally to someone who is disabled, but not in the way of a typical suburban, you know, autism mom, which Scott its own baggage attached, that began that process of really saying, could I write Could I write this and I realised, too, that the way in which I needed to write it had to do in the forms of a q&a, like I had to write questions that I think were important to me enough to try to begin to tentatively answer, and then just keep collecting the questions. And it started to really not only work around my experience, which is the first chapter so I felt like it was being very honest about my entryway into using disability studies with the toolkit of a philosopher and trying to see what I could identify in my own experience as insights or, or ways in which I could map out what is ablest or what is ableism? How does it manifest itself as a harm but then the diagnosis stuff started to get really apparent to me as our as our whole terrain, a minefield, if you will, of ablest encounters and ableism.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 18:32
I have a lot to say about the experience of diagnosis! Yeah.
Jen Scuro 18:36
And but once I started to tap into it, that what was nice was I had this I had done a workshop, Joel Michael Reynolds, who writes the preface for the book invited me down to Emory to talk to his med students at the time, and the grad programme. And I remember doing this exercise on diagnosis, stories and storytelling around diagnosis. And once I opened that door, because a lot of the students were also future diagnosticians, you know, they're going to go into a field in which you had to be expert in diagnosing. And once I did that, it seemed to be building on itself. It had such momentum anytime I put it out there. So I really wanted to capture some of that. And then once I started to work that out, I wanted to make sure that there was a deeper theory component that I was offering, which is the idea of precariousness and precarity. And then the idea of prosthetic so I wanted some of the concepts to be really useful, you know, on their face like that. If I say prosthetic, we have already some preconceived ideas about what that means. And I found that to be really useful, but I didn't want to just write the book myself. And so that intersectionality chapter where I'm in dialogue with Devonya Havis and Lydia Brown was up aspect of the book that I knew I was gonna talk about ableism I could not do myself was not a single author. And philosophers are tend to be single authors they like To think of themselves as the source of all of all wisdom,
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 20:04
That was something that really struck me as unique with your book within a catalogue of philosophy, monographs, not only was the style very different the style of writing that you have, but you have a concern dribble, chapter in the middle of the book where you discuss with to two people, I'm not sure if Devonya was disabled as well?
Jen Scuro 20:28
She does talk about her relationship to disability explicitly in that chapter. Yeah. And also its relationship for her as a black woman philosopher exam in ways that that experience and that identification is, it takes a bit to work out exactly how that is. It's not it is, again, the relationship one has to disability, especially when you're trained as a philosopher, needs narrative. We can't go into it just going. Sure I'm disabled or no, no, not like, because I think there's so many ways in which even getting to the point in which you are a professional philosopher requires a lot of ablest coping strategies.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 21:13
Yeah, that's why the the terminology of the super crip really speaks to me, I feel like that reflects a lot of what's expected of you in philosophy, especially if you don't have a visible disability. So yeah, absolutely. So I was really interested that you incorporated those, those perspective from both the Vanya and from Lydia, who is a neuro queer activist, that, as you said, was very engaged within the kind of grassroots part of activism. And for me, I was very happy to see a philosophical text, engage in dialogue with people like Lydia, and I was wondering if you could explain for the listeners. Briefly, what's the difference you draw in the book between precarity and precariousness?
Jen Scuro 22:05
The concept comes from Judith Butler's work. And she actually makes that distinction between precariousness being an existential quality, we all share the ways in which our embodiment and the way in which we are in the world is tentative and partial. And we're open to, you know, the mortality, the the the human frailty, but in a society, a political, economic, established society, the ways in which that manifests as precarity, as we are vulnerable, that we can be harmed that we find ourselves struggling with certain kinds of needs, that is something that is a construction that can be challenged, that can be reframed, that needs negotiation. And that was what the goal was, because I know a lot of the discourse in disability studies had revolved around the question of autonomy, what does autonomy look like, and I'm a Levinasian, you know, since since I was a wee pup in philosophy, and I never got away from that loving, ossian model of, you know, an infinite ethics toward the other end for the sake of the other. So that entanglement model, for me was the way in which I saw Butler giving me an opportunity to use the concept to springboard into how the intersubjectivity of identifying and dealing with one's basic needs or the vulnerabilities that one finds oneself and can struggle with. Again, no one goes alone. And in a society in which we have resources available to us, but yet we leave some to, to starve and to struggle. That is this kind of distribution of precarity. That is the injustice and it is built on. That connection between neoliberalism and ableism are kind of ableism. The United States style of ableism is very much on how much we are a capitalist society, we are beholden to a social Darwinism that is historically anti black racism and heteronormative. And so there's a lot of ways in which we've built our economy and our distribution of resources on protecting some from precarity and exposing others in ways that are deadly, if not just harmful to those that we deem not worthy of those resources. So yeah, I think the language and I do a little chart in the book I made a little like picture for myself. It's probably not that great a picture but it's like almost like a Venn diagram, but it's not a Venn diagram sidebar. I always loved the idea that you can have pictures and philosophy because they were so rare. Sure, I need to put a picture in here that the relationship is that everything is underwritten by this existential precariousness. But there's just a cruelty in the way in which we distribute those protections from precarity. That goes along these kinds of ideological and really, historically eugenic lines. There are some people we want to keep around, and there are some people that we're willing to dispose of. I do tell the story about how, again, Joe, Michael Reynolds does this TED Talk where he talked about his brother and how when his brother lived his life, and how joyful it was, to have him here, and despite the multiple disabilities, despite the way in which the world might see him, not, as, you know, productive or functional, or whatever burden worse, as long as he was here, it was a benefit. And the idea of him not being here would not be a benefit that there is there's always that grief that comes with the idea that despite disability, you always want that person here that every individual counts. Love enough says every death is a scandal and being and so for me the the precariousness of being is something that I think cannot continue to be decided by ablest neoliberal mechanisms.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 26:23
And it was telling that that chapter comes right before the chapter on prosthesis, where it's about agency more directly, and what does it mean to see disabled people as able to decide what their values are? What is valuable to them in their life? And so you have a story of a young boy refusing a prosthetic arm? So this kind of muddles the idea of charity model, if you like, of course, you want an arm, you're incomplete without the arm, and the boy has various reasons for why he's like, no, this is, I don't want to integrate this as part of myself. This is not how I want to interact with the world, I don't want my friends to be more engaged with the robotic arm than they are with me. And I'm asserting my decision there. And at the same time, you also discuss disabled people who find workarounds, or like find their prosthetic ways of adapting to their environment and of achieving their goals. I was wondering, what do you think of that chapter now that we've been one year into a global pandemic, linking back to the idea of precarity. And we've seen, you know, certain groups of people have been deemed disposable. By our various governments, it's been very apparent, maybe for the first time for the general public, that this is happening. And at the same time, people are experiencing the need for prosthetics, and prosthesis in general.
Jen Scuro 27:57
Well, and I think there's so many ways in which this can be regulatory, in terms of what you'd be doing in the future, and thinking about anti ablest strategies, and staying very far away from concepts of new normals, which I've literally had a cringe reaction to. But that the prosthesis concept, being a philosopher, I really did start fairly intellectual about it about this idea of the prosthetic being something that is manufactured in order to engage one with the world in a new way that otherwise they can't have access to. And for me, I wear eyeglasses that don't come across as prosthetic. But for all other purposes, another working prosthetic, we don't see cell phones as prosthetics, but the kind of you know, crisis that occurs when one loses their cell phone would should be similar in concern for all of us as to when a wheelchair breaks down for someone did, but we don't see it that way. Because the cell phone is a commercialised, manufactured tool that everybody has...
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 29:10
Also associated with productivity
Jen Scuro 29:12
Very much. So thank you neoliberalism, but that the wheelchair is not seen in that same kind of category of crisis, when one does not have access to it. And so, you know, even the way in which ableism as an opportunity for critique, we look at, you know, someone is wheelchair bound, they're a wheelchair user, because there are a lot more people who use wheelchairs, but might use it selectively, because that's what they need when they need it. And that ability to say, you know, there are days in which my mobility, I'm able to move in a certain kind of way, and it's comfortable for me, there are days in which I cannot move in the kind of way I would usually move so I'm going to use my wheelchair. I'm going to use some kind of prosthetic tool to be able to do that. That's something that I think is the worst Korea, right. So we all have that there are days in which those tools are useful. There are days on which we don't want to use those tools. But the wheelchair gets perceived as something you're riveted to that you're bound to. And I say that with diagnosis, when you're identify as disabled, that diagnosis is riveted to you in some kind of really problematic way. It's that lack of dialogical, or dialectical quality, that becomes really non negotiable in a way that then opens up a kind of harm that we can associate with ableism. But I don't think it's easy to identify in any other way. I think once we see ableism, we see it everywhere. But we have to know what we're looking for. And I think that's one of the ways we see it is that when we rivet the things in the world to people and individuals as if it's a non negotiable, as if you are assigned a category and a status with that, then it's a tool for others to manipulate and coerce. And so I wouldn't want anybody to have to identify so strongly with their cell phone that without it, they are nothing. But we do that. And I think when it comes to other kinds of things deemed prosthetic, that people who are disabled might use, I think it would be the same mistake that there are lots of ways in which the design, the manufacturer, the retooling, the fitting, and the retrofitting of those things needs to be the mantra of disability, which is nothing about us without us. So, again, we got a lot of white Saviour ism in that idea. And that prosthetic arm was an Iron Man arm delivered by Robert Downey Jr, himself. So why was grateful, that's the thing I love about that, is that he should have been grateful for that. And he and he, and he took a moment. And I think He only said it to his mom or something. And they were surprised, they did not expect that coming from him. But he was like, I'm cool. You know, I like I like myself enough. And I I'd like to hang out with my friends and not get stuck on this idea. So I argue that when a tool or a prosthetic no longer fits, we're no longer provides that kind of need, it becomes artefact it comes like a thing in a museum or a thing on the mantel or, you know, I think I call it like the chair in the museum with the rope on it. It's a chair, but a name only. You know, it's like a thing we look at that people used to sit in this.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 32:17
Oh, yeah, that's really interesting. Because in my own experience, there's a lot of performativity that needs to happen in regards to one's disability or condition that's analogous to perhaps performing gender reforming race in the sense that if I asked, for example, for an accommodation, and then I don't need it the next time that looks like I'm faking it, or it looks like oh, it's not bad enough, or I kind of like do I need to portray my pain in a visible way for people to take me seriously all the time? Or am I not allowed to have days where my pain is lesser, and I'm fine. And I was I really like your idea of the dialogical of being able to engage with this and be like, yes, it can be part of one's identity. But identity, by definition is something that is dynamic that is both from within and shaped by the encounters as you go through life. So we need to be able to approach a philosophy of disability in a similar way.
Jen Scuro 33:22
I think in the in the book on miscarriage, which came out at the same year as the same year as the ableism book 2017. I published the both books at the same time, not on purpose, never recommended. Don't ever do this other book, the graphic novel slash phenomenology book on miscarriage, I actually do a kind of analogy. And to be clear in the intersectionality, Chapter ableism, like misogyny or anti black racism, those might work temporarily as analogies. But the deeper problem is the way in which they are not analogous. Yes, but I think when I was putting that together, I was having an operative analogy with a miscarriage work in the sense that I called that idea that the pregnant person must produce a child, that imperative and that entanglement was actually a plot that set up pregnant people who don't produce babies. So the pregnancy loss, you get an abortion, that there is some kind of moral failing in the pregnant body that does not produce and that was a setup that was gendered and harmful. And I did everything I could in that work to capture that, you know, coercion of the pregnant body as a productive body, and that the only value of a pregnant body that the experience of pregnancy in and of itself was a phenomenon that had not been scoped out from the position of the pregnant person. It was always about expectation. And so there's a line in there. When you are pregnant, your babies everybody's baby, but when you miscarry, the loss is your own. Yeah. And that, you know, very individuating alienating quality of individualised idiomatic experiences. That's where a lot of that non narrative for me becomes the work of ethics is finding ways in which we can reclaim the narratives of those experiences that become the, you know, sacrificial lamb of those plots, those, those, you know, ruse kind of quality, you know, setups, that was what was supposed to happen, and you are now the tragic figure, I want to talk about something else, too, that you mentioned about the way in which people identify as disabled and the difficulty of that, that performative difficulty. So one of the books that was very influential on the addressing ableism book for me was Tobin siebers disability theory. And in there, and I find that my students in disability studies, or even my, you know, medical ethics students have found that he wrote about how there's a perception of narcissism by clinicians, about the disabled client, that they're about themselves, and they feel bad for themselves, and that they are always about their issues, and that they somehow are narcissistic, and he flips the script on them. And he says, it's really the narcissism of the paternalistic attitude of the person that's supposed to be caretaking, or supposed to be providing some kind of service of care that we really need to address. And that for me was so important and insightful, that once I opened that storyline up that flipped script to that possibility that it's not the disabled person. That's the problem. The clinicians that are the problem. They're the narcissist, there was a real narcissist here, there's like a lighting up effect very similar to what we do in philosophy, which is the aha moment. Oh, wait a minute. And how much have they been internalising? And performatively? engaged in a kind of compulsory able bodied ness? How much have they been just like put up and shut up? You know,
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 37:03
you mentioned earlier that the tenure job that you had ended abruptly because your college shut down. And so that's the kind of an end of a productive period, if you say like, how do you relate to philosophy now after exiting that job?
Jen Scuro 37:26
It's a good question. Because I think my experience with academia properly, because I was one of the only philosophers at the college that was full time and tenured. I was fully immersed in the idea of an academic life. And I think that I've worked since then really hard to separate out my philosophical sense of self, from the academic philosopher that I was. And in doing that, I associated what happened academically is a shipwreck that that was, that was me getting shipwrecked. And to some degree, I was really already on that ship that was, you know, sinking for a long time and struggling to maintain a level of productivity for myself. Anyway, I was still really good at teaching, I was still really good at producing and being visible in philosophy and being visible amongst more interdisciplinary communities like cultural studies. So I was, I was fully invested in participating as an academic philosopher. But, but with the advent of a shipwreck, I think it is that question, and I'm not 100% sure where I am with this, how much I'm rebuilding, I don't know how much I really want to start over. But I do know that because I had been training and researching in the direction of grief loss. I've done a lot of the heavy lifting, of finding strategies for myself, to allow myself to begin again. And I do attribute that to how I did it, how I did philosophy when I was tenured and privileged, and had status and how I do it now with some of those things. Not being there anymore. That that, that I think I'm trying to maintain a lot of the a lot of the strategies that I felt were most true to who I was anyway, so I'm still starting to write again, but I think the event of it is still kind of rippling. So I just recently gave a talk for my friend's class talking about the artwork that I was doing, that I was spending a lot of time with the friends of mine who have known me since I was in my 20s since I was that person cautious, you know, Chihuahua that kept showing up. So they kept me alive. And I call them my quad factor. There were other women philosophers that I have been friends with for a very long time that reminded me and myself, it kept that narrative going for me, which I am forever indebted to them for that. And I think there was something really mutual about that, too. This exchange was not just about me. But at the same time, then I just started sculpting. And the sculpting was the only thing that scratched the itch of what I had really lost in not teaching anymore. So wasn't just about the loss of my status, it was really about the loss of the opportunity to be in the classroom as a vehicle for me to be myself to really do what I do best. And I've been teaching this semester Disability Studies at Miami University just for the semester, and I have to say, I'm still really good at I still really love it. But when I was sculpting I found myself to be I think, really at peace with a lot of the things that were a form of self sabotage. And I felt aged by it, I felt I felt worn down. But then once I started the sculpting, which has been so fun, because I found an organisation, a nonprofit that does 3d printing. And they've already started to scan and 3d print little versions of my sculptures. So I have a little red head. And then I have a little me to Silver's sculpture. And it's it's so dull, I carry them around with me like, and I want them on a bookshelf. I want them like Beethoven on the piano. But yeah, I think that's where something really delightful about raising everything to the ground and having to start again, is suddenly you realise there are things you can do that you didn't have to not do before. Again, I don't know how I'm going to keep doing that. But that part of me that was the art student who craved honesty, and wanted to just be a truth teller, I think I'm working on what the new volume looks like, or what the new version looks like. I don't know, just yet. But I think I said something to the effect of, I'm just trying to rest with it for a little while, just sit with it. And let it like marinate. Yeah.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 42:05
And I mean, from what you're saying, it sounds like you've embodied a kind of praxis of philosophy, as you've gone through the years and did your studies, but also your work, and we're invested in the academic community. But even when you were in the academic community, you did branch out and immerse yourself in other spaces, and with other discourses. So would it be fair to say that, even when you did have tenure and status, your philosophical practice was still unconventional? Shall we say?
Jen Scuro 42:39
Yes, I can easily say that, I think because I realised that in competitive environments, because I did not feel well placed in a competitive environment where there would be others who could do what I do, and who could do it better. I think because I was a bit of a solo act where I was anyway, I was doing the best version of what I liked to do just in terms of like interest. And I have a notorious problem with doing something that I'm really bad at, until I'm good at it, and then putting it down. I'm like, Oh, my gosh, I'm really bad at this. One, I learn how to do it. Oh, my gosh, I'm really good at it. Okay, now I'm done. Alright, let's go on to the next thing. What else can I do? And I have that tendency. And I think I have to find that more. And so I'm finding that the more I've spent time with people, especially in pandemic conditions, finding and making little oasis experiences for myself, where I am feeling a little bit like I'm enjoying the company of others, even if we're doing it over, you know, digital spaces or things like that, that that idea that the philosopher at play, I think also is a stylistic disposition that I'm actively seeking out and recruiting people.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 43:56
I love that. So as we close, I wanted to ask, Is there a reading you've done recently, either in philosophy or not? That is exciting you, that is giving you that playful feeling?
Jen Scuro 44:12
There are... I thank you for this question, because I really I think when you are fascinated by something, you just want to talk about it. An opportunity to talk about the things that are like floating the boat right now. One is Riva Lehrer, a portrait painter, and just came out with a memoir called Golem Girl and tells a story about her experience in her life but is a magnificent narrative portrait painter. And the if l e h r e R is the last name first name R I VA, Riva Lehrer. I highly recommend everybody take a look at her work because I think that for me was allowing me to go back and forth between you know, the This kind of philosophical grieving process that I'm dealing with, but also like the reinvention part that that art as a way of building narrative was like, Oh, this is, this is I'm gonna keep going, I'm going to keep making my narratives, but through the visual rather than the philosophical. The other thing I think, that has been keeping me again afloat, as as imagining myself back up to a certain level of production that would be really satisfying is how bootstraps the queer art of failure. And I think it You and I talked a little bit about this earlier, that I took too long to get myself licenced, to do things I never gave myself from, I always thought I had to get permission. And I did that for most of my career, especially in academia, waiting for, you know, the rubber stamp that said, Okay, now you can do this, Jen. I think what's nice about the, the queer art of failure, is that it allows me to act out in ways that don't have to be well behaved, but also not open me up to a kind of, you know, risk that can then also lead to a kind of precarity. And I can remain joyful while failing. And I think that's what's allowing me to keep my humour and to be what I used to be and what I always felt I was, which was a magnet for fun, like a magnet for joyful, you know, time spent. And that's what I would do in the classroom, that when students come in a classroom, it was like an experience of enjoying being challenged and enjoying, you know, going off roading with some concept or idea or, you know, really kind of wrestling on the mat with some dilemma that no one can solve including me. And I think Halberstam is one of my one of the possible portrait sculptures that I still have yet to do so Oh, wonderful. You're on my list?
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 47:11
Well, definitely send me pictures of your sculptures, I'll be able to include them when I post the episode. Yeah, is there anywhere that you could direct people to find your work and or where they could find you.
Jen Scuro 47:26
So I have a website. I think if you look up Jennifer's girl, I'm on Squarespace. I have like a regular working website. But I have also like some public videos that I have done. I've had some of my other artwork that's up some of the sculpture and processes up. I have an academia.edu page where a lot of my like syllabi are there. Some of my unpublished work and presentations are there.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 47:51
Thank you so much, Jen, for being here. And thank you for being so vulnerable and open. And I can totally see how you want to be a truth teller. And I'm so glad that you told your truth here today. Thank you so much.
Jen Scuro 48:05
Thank you. Bye.
Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril 48:18
Thank you so much to Jen for this wonderful conversation. I had so much fun. Jen's energy is very contagious. It was really wonderful. And it's really great to talk to a philosopher that has a creative practice as well. I really enjoy knitting and crocheting and I found wonderful community through that throughout my PhD and talking to Jen about her sculptures. It's been really great. I will actually be posting pictures of her finished sculptures so make sure you follow follow cc pod on Instagram and you'll be able to see some of those pictures yourself. Jennifer's exciting news is that she is now an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Molloy College in New York. So she has successfully found a job and we wish her all the best.
Finally, Philosophy Casting Call is an independent podcast that depends on lovely listeners like yourself. So please text a friend who does pottery about this podcast or a friend that has a new job about this podcast. You can support philosophy casting call in many ways, you can become a monthly supporter on ko-fi.com/philoccpod. You can choose the amount you want to donate monthly and that will really help me develop this podcast further. But of course, it's also very useful helpful if you can follow the podcast on Spotify anchor Apple podcast, Stitcher or wherever you listen and please consider leaving a five star review and some comments. The more reviews I get, the more they will appear. I do want to shout out Lisa MK and Johnnyvalley91 who left lovely reviews that have been gobbled up by the Apple Podcast update. But as soon as they reappear, I will be reading them and thank you so much for your support. You can follow philosophy casting call on Instagram and Twitter @philoccpod. You can find all of the transcripts at my website www.elainagauthiermamaril.com. I will link that in the show notes as usual. And you can follow me on twitter @ElainaGMamaril and on Instagram @spinoodler. Until next time, bye!
Transcribed by https://otter.ai