CSWIP19: Speakers
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Suze Berkhout (University of Toronto)
“Embodiment, Psychosis, and Frictions in the First Episode Clinic: Divergent Bodyminds; the Implications for Bioethics in Psychiatry”
Short Abstract: Drawing on feminist philosophy of disability as well as feminist science and
technology studies, I suggest the experiences of first episode service users can be understood through the concept of bodymind: a socio-political and material entity that emerges through structural contexts and lived experience.
"Suppression, Carceral Appetites, and Food Refusal in Prisons" (no abstract)
Shannon Boss (University of Guelph),
“To Be Against Purity by Becoming Dirt”
Short Abstract: In this paper, I will attempt to develop this metaphysic of compost in order to then show how it can help us determine which relations ought to flourish.
Amanda Corris (University of Cincinnati),
“Ecofeminism in the Field: The Role of Women in Small-Scale Sustainable Agriculture”
Short Abstract: I argue that Feminist Agrifood Systems Theory accurately identifies the role of women in agriculture, but also provides evidence in support of the claim that the encouragement of small-scale sustainable farming practices will help to solidify and make more visible the role of women in agriculture, in line with an ecofeminist perspective on agriculture.
Shannon Dea (University of Waterloo),
“When Eating our Words Means Feeding the Trolls”
Short Abstract: When we (anti oppressive scholars) eat our words or urge others to do so, we end up feeding the trolls and playing into the narrative of intolerant campus snowflakes and the deleterious effects of that narrative. This talk considers that conundrum, and what if anything is to be done about it.
Molly Dea-Stephenson (University of Toronto),
“Eating Flesh and Fleshy Eaters.”
Short Abstract: This paper will mount a materialist criticism of the beliefs that humans are inedible and separate from non-human animals. Further, it will suggest real material changes that must be made for any improvement in our understanding to be sustainable
Megan Dean (Hamilton College),
“Vegetarianism and Eating Disorders: An Ethical Analysis of an Uncertain Hypothesis”
Short Abstract: The ways we understand and practice eating shape our agency, affects, self-understandings, capacities, and other important aspects of ourselves. Drawing on this account, I will articulate two ways that wrongly accepting what I call the Vegetarianism Eating Disorders Hypothesis could negatively affect the self.
Emilie Dionne (McGill University),
“Becoming-Mother/Becoming-Matter: The Agency of Food in Performances of the Good Mother, Good Person, Good Citizen”
Short Abstract: In this talk, I explore the particular agency of food through practices of food intake and interaction (intra-action) with food during pregnancy and early motherhood and explore what it brings to the transient non-/being that is-not/is the pregnant woman and her hope(s) or attempt(s) to realize the ideals of good mother/good person or citizen.
Jane Dryden (Mount Allison University),
“Relational Autonomy and the Messiness of Ethical Eating”
Short Abstract: All good eating guidelines to the contrary, once we take into consideration the range of relations and ethical quandaries involved in our food practices, it appears that very little is clear and that ethical purity is impossible. I will argue that it is still helpful to try to cultivate an autonomous relationship with the mess, given a suitably relational conception of autonomy and an appreciation of one's vulnerability and entanglement.
Barrett Emerick (St. Mary’s College of Maryland),
“One Problem with Apologizing for Who You Are”
Short Abstract: In this project I explore the ways in which appeals to unconscious bias, human nature, or even localized and more straightforward appeals to bad character create the conditions for that double bind. I challenge each on the grounds that they fail to account for moral responsibility, which gives us reason to return our focus not to how people are but what they actively do.
Carla Fehr (University of Waterloo),
“Who the computer sees: Visions of bias in artificial intelligence”
Short Abstract: In this paper, I explore how Buolamwini's work on bias in facial recognition systems provides an unfortunate extension the insights of scholars such as Lorde, Collins, Lugones, and Ortega on ways that women of colour are ignored, have their ideas denied uptake, and are sometimes, literally, unseen.
Charlotte Figueroa (University of Southern California),
“Do Feminists Have an Ethical Duty to be Vegans?”
Abstract: I will argue that, while egg and dairy consumption (EDC) may not always harm the relevant individuals, the wrongs inflicted by EDC are condemnable on a feminist ethical framework as EDC intrinsically involves the non-consensual violation of autonomy and bodily integrity, as well as the instrumentalization and objectification, of the female body.
Jasmine Gunkel (University of Southern California),
“Pleasures of the Flesh”
Short Abstract: This paper argues that if we examine the guiding principles behind why certain uses of animal bodies for human pleasure, animal fighting and bestiality, are very wrong, we can see that consistently applying these principles leads us to conclude that a practice we currently accept, animal product consumption, is also very wrong.
Fumina Hamasaki (Lancaster University),
“Feminist Artists’ Culinary Rebellion: Women as Discursive Food in the Philosophical Tradition”
Short Abstract: By reading Luce Irigaray’s early work along with Jacques Derridas’ critique of Emmanuel Levinas, this paper reveals the masculine process of forming the ontological being in the system of phallogocentrism through discursively eating women as food and explores how feminist artists in the 1960s and 70s challenge 'carno-phallogocentrism' by deploying 'feminised' foodstuffs.
Cressida Heyes (University of Alberta),
“From Fast Food to Sleep Deprivation: Toward a Feminist Political Philosophy of Time Poverty”
Short Abstract: This paper starts from contemporary social theory on temporality to argue that improving sleep quality will take more than carving out more time to sleep, although this is surely part of a worthwhile political project. Instead, I offer a more variegated analysis that shows how representations of sleep are at odds with the reality of diverse temporal experiences.
Sarah Hoffman (University of Saskatchewan),
“Kantian Self-Perfection and Drug Use.”
Short Abstract: Kant’s defence of alcohol and social intoxication can be understood as resting on his notion that we have a duty towards self-perfection. I argue, there is a class of drugs which might be a better candidate: psychedelic drugs.
Catherine Hundleby (University of Windsor),
“Arguing Over Dinner”
Short Abstract: I attend primarily to arguing during shared meals with some attention to the deliberation over the food consumed. This context for arguing has been largely unexamined by philosophers and interdisciplinary argumentation scholars, but some threads from the existing literature can be pulled together to provide some practical guidance about the traps and opportunities in arguing over dinner.
Tracy Isaacs (Western University),
“Is an Imperfect Vegan Just a Vegetarian?”
Short Abstract: My paper takes up the issue of a moderate approach to veganism, asking: Is someone who is imperfectly vegan still a vegan rather than a vegetarian? I am motivated to consider this question by the observation that vegans, like feminists, are often called to task for sometimes falling short of their ethical ideals with respect to veganism.
Ada Jaarsma (Mount Royal University),
“What is a Good Tomato? Pedagogy, Perspective, Praxis”
Short Abstract: Following Mol's suggestion that we infuse our theorizing with food metaphors, I make the case in this presentation that tomatoes are significant to the workings of institutionalized philosophy, and that tomatoes exemplify the perspectival import of practices like teaching.
Vanessa Lehan-Streisel (York University),
“Bread Engineering vs Intuitive Baking: Gender and the Resurgence of Sourdough”
Short Abstract: In this paper I'm going to examine media reports, personal interviews, and new cookbooks to tease apart what it is about this new sourdough method that makes these individuals deem it masculine.
Ann Levey (University of Calgary),
“Sharing Food, Creating Community”
Short Abstract: The context for this paper is an Outreach program in which I volunteer that serves hot lunches 3 days a week to people in our community who are food insecure. Despite the ways in which I believe that our program manages to subvert some traditional modes of social interaction, there are also ways in which we continue to exemplify (and in some cases reify) problematic social relations.
Alida Liberman (Southern Methodist University),
“Food Ethics, Obligation, and Non Hinderance.”
Short abstract: In this paper, I explore how a variety of practices surrounding food and eating are wrong because they violate NHOP (Non-Hindrance of Obligation Principle) and hinder the meeting of prudential, moral, and epistemic obligations.
Alice MacLachlan (York University),
“‘YOU GUYS, I AM SOOO SORRY!!!11’: Apologies on Social Media”
Short Abstract: Not only have the existence of Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, etc. multiplied the opportunities for public figures to commit acts in need of apology but, I will argue, the emergence of a quintessential social media apology has transformed the broader phenomenon of what we might call the public-personal apology altogether.
Patricia Marino (University of Waterloo),
“Moral Pluralism, Bioethics, and the Complexities of Informed Consent.”
Short Abstract: This paper explores conceptual issues in responses to moral pluralism and value-based disagreements in bioethics contexts. I articulate specific manifestations of pluralism; I then use these to critically analyze bioethics proposals of Donald Ainslie and H. Tristram Engelhardt.
Emma McClure (University of Toronto),
“Microaffirmations, Privilege, and a Duty to Redistribute”
Short Abstract: My account clarifies what microaggressions are in a way that illuminates how to combat their oppressive effects. Philosophers and psychologists have overlooked a key feature of microaggressions: variations in functioning that makes different types of microaggressions wrong in different ways.
Lisa McKeown (The New School),
“Invisible Intentions, Why Maitra’s Intentionalism Misses the Mark”
Short Abstract: I consider the ways in which phenomenological information, such as facial expression, tone, and body language, figure significantly into the interpretive context. In this paper, I develop an account that is sensitive to that kind of information
Jaclyn Meloche (Independent Scholar),
“Food, Feminism and Kitchen Culture”
Short Abstract: In three critical sections: Sites of Domestic Labour, Domestic Technologies, and Kitchen Culture and the Body, my argument that the kitchen embodies political agency within the home is coursed through seven unique interpretations of feminist art about food, the kitchen, and the politics of domesticity.
Letitia Meynell (Dalhousie University) and Andrew Lopez (Queen’s University),
“(En)gendering Animals”
Short Abstract: Using the lens of gendered norms of reaction, we will consider whether other animals might be gendered in a scientifically respectable sense that does not simply reduce gender to sex. We will argue that given the evidence of social and cultural capacities in particular species, it is plausible to suggest that some intensely social animals have genders.
Kelly Struthers Montford (University of British Columbia, Okanagan)
“Phreaked Foods Meet Colonial Ontologies” (no abstract)
“Carceral normalization: Agribusiness, incarcerated vegetarians, and pathologized activists”
Short Abstract: I will argue that the reinstatement of prison agribusiness programs in two Canadian federal penitentiaries is rooted in colonial and propertied relationships to land and animals.
Anna Mudde (Campion College at the University of Regina),
“The Real Food of Dreams: Cooking, Companions, and Lorde’s Poetic Practice”
Short Abstract: That so much of technological human food knowledge is, outside of commercial kitchens, not only feminized, but concretely embodied by women and those who are taken to be or are situated as women, is important for any thinking about technology. In this paper, I connect food craft, technology, and care, through the work of Audre Lorde, to argue for an enlivened feminist attention to craft.
Jovian Parry (York University),
“Human Cattle and Vegan Purity: Feminist Engagements with the Science Fiction of Meat Eating.”
Short abstract: I argue that veganism can be understood as an always insufficient but nevertheless transformative everyday ethics of anti-anthropocentric attentiveness that attempts to minimize harm within presently capitalistic and consumerist modes and means of production and consumption.
Lindsey Porter (University of Bristol),
“What to Drink: Is Intoxication Morally Wrong?”
Short Abstract: I will explore the moral status of intoxication through the lens of Paul Smith's
arguments in his 2002 paper “Drugs, Morality and the Law”. I will argue that Smith is correct, but that neither self-regarding duty intuitions nor virtue intuitions about drug use stand up to scrutiny, at least without further modification.
Whitney Ronshagen (Emory University),
“Disgusting Food, Disgusting People: The Social Significance of Affect and Eating”
Short Abstract: When examining disgust, we find that our visceral feelings in eating experiences often reveal information about our eating habits, what we view as edible, and with whom we tend to share food. This information likewise informs future habits, who we think should be allowed to eat good food, and what relations we form through eating together.
Jennifer M. Saul (University of Waterloo),
“Figleaves, Apologies, and Cancellations”
Short Abstract: This paper discusses what I call figleaves: utterances that function to raise doubts about whether a person who has made a racist utterance is actually racist. Diachronic figleaves, which occur at a time different from a racist utterance, are a key way in which people attempt to retreat from these utterances.
Naomi Scheman (University of Minnesota),
“How Thinking About Pork Can Help Us Think About Pigs”
Short Abstract: I want to turn to two resources: Jewish observance of Kasruth and Cora Diamond's discussions of eating and scientifically experimenting on animals. I suggest that these reflections can help illuminate a distinctive (and recognizably feminist) approach to questions of morality, one that moves away from abstract principles (whether deontic or consequentialist) and toward relationality.
David Scott (Open University),
"Food for Abolitionist Thought: Questioning the Penal Appetite and the Quenching Thirst for Justice”
Short Abstract: This paper will reflect upon the insights that can be drawn from Foucault, Feminism and Sex Crimes, as an intellectual intervention challenging punitive rhetoric and opening up space for a critical appraisal of carceral feminism.
Hasana Sharp (McGill University),
“Appetite for Abolition: Prisons and Genders”
Short Abstract: This paper draws on Chloë Taylor's analysis of criminal queers, sexual deviancy, and gender identity to make sense of the gender critical feminist discourse, which ultimately defends the necessity of a sex gender system by insisting that the prison reflect it. This paper considers whether there is a natural extension from gender proliferationist feminism (probably more common today than the abolitionism of the second wave) to prison abolitionism.
Heather Stewart (University of Western Ontario),
“The Concept of Microaggressions: A Family Resemblance Account”
Short Abstract: In this paper, I offer what I take to be the first comprehensive philosophical analysis of the concept of microaggression. I ultimately argue that microaggression as a concept gets its meaning not by decomposing into a set of necessary and sufficient conditions, but rather by means of what Wittgenstein has called family resemblance.
Alison Suen (Iona College),
“Cannibalism and Reproductive Freedom”
Short Abstract: One main goal of this paper is to examine how the consumption of fetuses functions as a fable in different cultural contexts, and how this fable is connected to discourses on reproductive freedom in different social political landscapes.
Jennifer Szende (McMaster University),
“Food Justice and Emancipatory Framing.”
Short Abstract: This paper uses a feminist relational analysis to understand the interconnected and systematic nature of injustices in our globalized world through the lens of food injustice.
Chloë Taylor (University of Alberta),
“Vegan Madness: Han Kang’s The Vegetarian”
Short Abstract: In an article published in 2012, I analyzed the manner in which female ethical veganism is described as a slippery slope into anorexia, (hetero)sexual dysfunction, and insanity in the novels of Margaret Atwood. In this presentation, I will expand on my earlier work to consider Korean author Han Kang’s 2007 novel, The Vegetarian.
Katharine Wolfe (St. Lawrence University),
“On Being Food: The Ecology and Ethics of Matrotopy”
Short Abstract: I intend to focus on the paradigms of purity that matrotopy challenges rather than represents, and on the powerful ways in which it can reconnect us with our vulnerable, animal selves. Beyond this, I also hope to motivate these questions towards a critical engagement with Levinas' ethics.