Third-world historians feel a need to refer to works in European history; historians of Europe do not feel any need to reciprocate. Needless to say, in philosophy the case is similar, if not worse. The study of philosophy often excludes anything outside of Western philosophy, and this is true even if one studies philosophy in Asia [11]....Often, scholars from India or China are proud of their own long tradition and philosophy and believe that they can make some contribution to philosophy in the West. However, much to their disappointment, they discover that their “inclusion” is not in itself a sign of engagement from outside their own group. They are ghettoized, with no apparent connection to the rest of the academic community. Often the only way the engagement might occur is if they conform to the methods of Western philosophy, using European or Anglo philosophy as a framework to explain their own ideas, thereby enforcing the Eurocentrism that discredits them in the first place. [18]" Yoko Arisaka (2000) "Asian Women: Invisibility, Locations, and Claims to Philosophy" [HT Audrey Yap & Tom Digby; see also this piece.]
If, in addition to self-knowledge, one of the main aims of philosophy is to conceptualize and articulate situations, feelings and experiences that would otherwise remain overlooked, even to ourselves,[1] -- and it is --, then in the passage above Arisaka is not doing arm-chair sociology of knowledge, but philosophy. Not everything needs to be made ‘available’ for discussion, but the need for our philosophical activity is especially important if something is made or remains overlooked because of existing injustice or oppression, ruling ideology, existing scientific commitments, bureaucratic practices, taxonomic categories, or even our ordinary psychological functioning (etc.). So, while I do not want to overvalue what words and concepts can do in the face of oppression -- and certainly do not mean to imply that freedom of expression resolves all problems or deny that it can generate its own problems --, words and concepts allow us to name problems or celebrate features of our lives that deserve more attention. We also ought not to underestimate the significance of this task; even the most powerful tyrants never feel so secure as to remove all censorship (explicit or tacit).
Arisaka's analysis is all the more poignant because she makes available for discussion professional philosophy's lack of receptivity and patterns of exclusion. Our present patterns of exclusion tend to reflect the conceptual sedimentations and professional choices of the past. But we should not assume that philosophy's patterns are merely local. Given the significance even generality of the enduring philosophical concepts -- past and present -- they are embedded in lots of other human activities. So, much conventional wisdom or tacit assumptions are the consequence of hard-won philosophical insight, and oversight, of the past.
Arisaka describes a very common phenomenon within professional philosophy:* if you work outside assumed-to-be-familiar ('core') areas it's your responsibility to supply the common framework that makes comprehension possible. Obviously this entails huge opportunity costs (one is busy re-packaging one's insights into mainstream vocabulary, say, rather than doing research, etc.) and, as Arisaka notes, philosophical (and psychological) distortions. Even when appointments in a non-core-field are made, they often go to folk that are very good at the re-packaging part, and then it's such folk -- hired to appease a Dean or to provide 'teaching coverage' -- that define professional excellence in the sub-field (and, in so doing, deflate whatever potential for insight that might emanate from outside the 'core'). This is one reason why often at many leading departments the specialist-non-core-hires often do work on themes that do not define a new cutting-edge for philosophy, but seem to reflect past fashions renforcing the sense of non-significance. (Exercise for the reader: trace out research on Plato, Spinoza or Hume (etc.), through the idealist, logical positivist, naturalist, and metaphysical phases. [And 'history of philosophy' is not marginal in Western philosophy!])
This is not to deny that as every splendid undergraduate teacher knows, it is a very good exercise to think about how one's philosophical project (tradition) sounds to others, how it needs to be explained to the non-initiated. And, indeed, if one's philosophy is conducted in an entirely solipsistic fashion there can be some reason for concern--some philosophical projects really do flirt with madness. I often tell PhD students that one needs to learn how to develop an audience for one's projects, especially if no pre-existing group of interlocutors can be taken for granted. (Not all of us have a personality that enjoys this.) Even papers on familiar topics and authors require stage-setting, after all. Such audience-development can be enriching philosophically and generate insight about what matters centrally about one's projects and commitments, but, ultimately, if an audience is unwilling to immerse in your projects, is fundamentally un-receptive, then one might as well be Locke's proverbial tree in that damn forest.
What I found especially moving about Arisaka's essay** was her bravery in articulating the features of Confucian cultural that make it especially difficult to inhabit the (partially) overlapping roles of Asian-(American)-female-philosopher. It can feel embarrassing, even shameful, to air the dirty-laundry of one's own tradition, especially if there is a non-negligible risk that some readers will take advantage and use it against you or 'your' community, which, in turn, as Arisaka notes, may already treat you as a (partial) outsider. I'll let Arisaka have the last word:
Women and minorities are “included” for the sake of diversity, but anyone who is a woman or a minority philosopher knows very well the experience that her ideas may not actually be taken all that seriously or that her merit appears already to be in question. Because of the racial sense in which the term “Asian” is used, if one is from Asia or is an Asian-American, almost without exception one is expected to know something about Asian thought and is thereby given some authority. An Asian woman may feel especially that she should indeed study Asian philosophy, so as to be able to offer some kind of a “bridge to the mainstream.” Or she may expect that her outsider status is only natural, that it is “her place” to be doing some “non-mainstream” philosophy, due to her colonized consciousness and her self-understanding that she should not be presumptuous. Yet at the same time she may feel disqualified because the whole field is marginalized. This is a case of triple-marginalization--being Asian, woman, and teaching or doing research in a field which remains invisible. Asians are in this way often tokenized to do Asian philosophy in the same way women are somehow expected to include feminism as one of their areas of competence, only to find themselves located outside the “mainstream.” (18)
[1] Some find it strange to imagine that we could be blind to our own experience, but I deny the transparency of the mental.
*In disciplines that are taught via hegemonic textbook traditions this issue may be even worse.
**My one criticism of Arisaka's approach is that she omits mention of Islam in Asian philosophy.
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