Lori Gruen

Lori Gruen is the William Griffin Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Science in Society at Wesleyan University. She also coordinates Wesleyan Animal Studies. By writing for general audiences and teaching (and learning) in prisons, she widens the impact of her work on carceral logics and entangled empathy.   

 

 

1. What type(s) of civically engaged or public philosophy (CE/PP) work do you do?

I’m really interested in writing philosophically informed short pieces for non-philosophers and the general public. I’ve written and published a dozen or so such pieces (you can read some of them at my website). As a member of the APA Committee on Public Philosophy, I have helped to organize events that help other philosophers write for public audiences. And in Fall 2018, I’ll teach a Philosophy Course that is part of the Calderwood Seminar series on public writing. The course is called “Writing for Social Justice” and I’m hoping that the students in the course will craft philosophically engaged op-eds to send out to be published.

One of the features of philosophy that I find so crucial is how it can help to clarify complex ideas. And this is a skill that is needed all the time, not just in classrooms, or in journal articles, or at philosophy conferences. Modeling that skill in public writing is useful.

The other way that I see my philosophical work as engaged is in my prison teaching. Since 2010 I have regularly taught philosophy courses in a maximum-security men’s prison. I’ve taught introductory ethics and political philosophy courses, I’ve taught intermediate courses, including a course on environmental ethics, and I’ve taught a couple of advanced seminars for students who had enough background by taking these intro and intermediate courses.

 

2. Give an example of a successful project.

Some of the incarcerated students that I work with have had their own philosophical work published. Five of the men co-wrote a chapter in my book The Ethics of Captivity. Two of the students and I co-wrote a chapter that will soon appear in an edited volume. Another has published a chapter in a book called Philosophy Imprisoned. I will be presenting some of the incarcerated students’ work at a conference on Care Ethics and Precarity this Fall.

 

3. What motivates you to do this work?

I’ve always believed that philosophical reflection has the power to change how we perceive the world and our relationships in it. In one of the very first philosophy courses I took as an undergraduate, we read Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation and I became a vegetarian and shortly after that stopped eating all animal products. The ethical universe expanded in that class, and I have continued to think about and work to change our relationships with the more than human world ever since. It was a profound shift in my moral perception—I began to see how some people and beings are assumed to be valuable and other people and beings are relegated to the background. My research, my engaged scholarship, and my teaching have been in the service of lifting up those background perspectives, moving them into the foreground. Often that requires studying and teaching the canon, in order to dig at the roots of racism, and sexism, and speciesism.

 

4. In what ways does the work inform your research (or vice-versa)?

There are a lot of ways that my commitment to those that are generally thought to be “disposable” has informed my research. I have developed a view that I call “Entangled Empathy” that attempts to reframe how we understand our ethical obligations by highlighting our entangled relationships with others. The book I wrote by that title is informed by feminist philosophy and is primarily concerned with our relationships with other animals. More recently I have been thinking about whether and how entangled empathy can help navigate the distortions of whiteness and work to end white racial supremacy.

 

5. How do you motivate yourself to do CE/PP work in times of political or personal struggle?

I have a rebellious nature, I guess, so when I feel personally or politically challenged, I am more motivated to carry on. Prison teaching, for example, is such an important thing to do. So many of the people who are incarcerated have been denied basic educational opportunities. But there are real obstacles, some people involved in organizing prison education think they have all the answers. There is more “speaking for others” than in other areas, I fear, because those who are in prison don’t often have access to conversations or aren’t in a position to correct assumptions that are made. And, of course, there are the difficulties navigating the Department of Correction. But seeing the pride students experience when they pursue their own philosophical interests with resourcefulness and passion is motivating and inspiring for me, and helps me continue on despite difficulties I face. Also, recognizing that the challenges I experience really pale in comparison to the challenges the students overcome humbles me.

 

6. How does your CE/PP work change your other teaching?

I would say that all of my teaching now is informed, to greater or lesser extents, by my public philosophical work. I try in every course I teach, whether it’s a course on Animal Minds or the History of Political Philosophy, to bring in topics that philosophical reflection can illuminate in unique ways. For example, when working through the philosophical literature and debates about whether chimpanzees have a theory of mind, I discuss the process that led to the end of research on chimpanzees—what the ethical, political, and scientific issues were and how the research that serves as a basis for the philosophical debates itself helped to end that very research. Because I have been involved in the policy process that led to the end of that research, I can bring a new perspective to the philosophical topic.

 

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