Shelley Tremain

Shelley Tremain is a settler and disabled feminist philosopher of disability. She coordinates the blog BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, which includes the interview series Dialogues on Disability. She was awarded the 2016 Tobin Siebers Prize for Disability Studies in the Humanities for the manuscript of her book Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability, and she received the 2016 Tanis Doe Award for Disability Study and Culture in Canada.

What type(s) of civically engaged or public philosophy work do you do?

My research and activism take place in a variety of professional and disciplinary contexts. In January 2015, for instance, I began to blog at Discrimination and Disadvantage, a group blog which is no longer active. My posts at Discrimination and Disadvantage covered a wide range of topics on disability, including how the conception of disability that prevails in philosophy—according to which disability is a nonaccidental, natural disadvantage—and the reproduction of this conception through institutional mechanisms, such as PhilPapers, contribute to the exclusion of disabled philosophers, especially disabled philosophers of disability. In the PhilPapers database, for example, disability is medicalized, individualized, and hence depoliticized. The medicalization and individualization of disability in the terms of the database contribute to the perception of disabled philosophers as naturally flawed and thus not viable or reliable colleagues. In other words, my public philosophy, like my writing, has aimed to show that attention to the widespread architectural and other forms of inaccessibility that persist across the discipline and profession is necessary, but not sufficient, in order to make the profession inclusive of disabled philosophers. In January of 2019, I launched BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY with Melinda Hall. BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY is the new home of Dialogues on Disability, the acclaimed series of interviews with disabled philosophers that I initiated in April 2015 on Discrimination and Disadvantage.

Give an example of a successful project.

The Dialogues on Disability series has been quite successful. To date, I have interviewed sixty-five disabled philosophers that make up a diverse group with respect to race, sexuality, gender, nationality, philosophical approach, and institutional status. The Dialogues on Disability series talks back to the prevalent conception of disability, informing and educating the philosophical community about the emerging field of philosophy of disability, about ableism and its relation to and complicity with other apparatuses of power, about inaccessibility, about how the discipline and profession exclude disabled philosophers, and about what must change to ameliorate this grievous state of affairs. In addition, the series has significantly raised the institutional and professional profiles and self-confidence and self-esteem of many disabled philosophers, including undergraduate and graduate disabled students and untenured and tenured disabled faculty. The Dialogues on Disability interviews and BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY more generally repeatedly challenge the philosophical community to become accountable for its ableism and inaccessibility. BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY Facebook, which is the blog’s Facebook group that I administer, increasingly provides a sense of community to disabled and other marginalized philosophers.

How does this work benefit the public(s) you engage with?

The public philosophy that I do is witnessed by many disabled people both within philosophy and outside of the discipline and profession, as well as by many disabled people beyond the university. BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, both the blog and the Facebook group, are, in combination and separately, creating an international community of disabled philosophers and other disabled academics. Many of the posts at the blog are linked from other sites across the internet, on Twitter, on various pages of Facebook, and on Instagram. We are raising the social and political consciousness about disability internationally. We are enhancing the lives of disabled people, uplifting their self-esteem, and providing a venue for them to read about themselves and other disabled people, to learn about the range of experiences that disabled people have, and to witness that resistance and transformation are possible. I would also like to believe that my work in public philosophy is incrementally, yet steadily, changing some of the ways that nondisabled philosophers think about how the apparatus of disability operates in society, including how disabled people are treated in the educational system. My posts at BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY about nursing homes and COVID-19 helped to expose the horrible situation in Ontario nursing homes and influence the response of the national news media in Canada to this dire state of affairs.

In what ways does the work inform your philosophical reflection?

My public philosophy is usually the very articulation of my philosophical reflection and writing. I often post excerpts of my forthcoming or published articles to BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. I also often use BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY as a forum for the development of my ideas. In fact, many of the arguments that eventually found their way into Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability were initially written as posts on Discrimination and Disadvantage. I will likely continue this practice. In Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability and other publications, I have argued (as I explain above) that the exclusion of disabled philosophers is inextricably entwined with the deleterious conception of disability that prevails in philosophy. Thus, my work to resist and transform the situation of disabled philosophers in the profession necessarily informs my theoretical and conceptual work and is informed by it.

If someone wanted to take on work like yours, what steps or resources would you recommend?

I don’t think that there is one recipe for how to do public philosophy which is designed to oppose the apparatus of disability and other apparatuses of power. The profession of philosophy remains hostile to this work, though not as hostile as it was in the past when I began to do it. Philosophers do not like challenges to the status quo of the tradition and profession of philosophy and the tradition and profession of philosophy are deeply ableist. So, if someone wants to do public (or other) philosophy about disability, they should be prepared to encounter either significant indifference or significant resistance, even now. I’ve always felt incredibly isolated in my philosophical writing on disability, my research, my activism, and my public philosophy. I’ve come to inhabit that isolation. I’ve grown accustomed to it. Many disabled people are accustomed to isolation and loneliness due to social inaccessibility, ableist hatred, and exclusion. Nevertheless, I would recommend that budding disabled public philosophers do what they can to find other disabled philosophers. Find a community from which you can derive support and a sense of solidarity. BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY Facebook is one place to find this solidarity. Another place to find that solidarity is in the work of other disabled public philosophers, in our writing, and in our activism. I am always happy to be contacted at the email address posted on BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.    

What motivates you to do this work?

I suppose that I am motivated in part by my own heartbreaking experiences of exclusion, humiliation, dismissal, and subordination in philosophy. I am also humbly motivated by the disabled philosophers who tell me how important the work that I’ve done has been to their own philosophical development and to their understanding of themselves as disabled. In the moments when I want to flee from philosophy and philosophers, I both remind myself of, and draw upon, the persistence of disabled and other marginalized philosophers, as well as my own stubbornness and acute sense of what people deserve. One day last year when I was feeling especially deflated, Tina Fernandes Botts, during the course of a brief Facebook chat, urged me to never ever give up. The defiance of that remark has stayed with me. I now try to summon the defiance of that remark when I feel overwhelmed by the injustices of the philosophy profession and the world more broadly. Many disabled and other marginalized philosophers inspire me to continue to do the work, including Adrian Piper, Kyle Whyte, Jesse Prinz, Angela Davis, Lori Gruen, and Joshua Knobe.

To what larger justice issues do you connect your public philosophy work?

My work on BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY and my writing and activism in philosophy more generally are linked to issues of justice for disabled people, including racialized disabled people and disabled people, verbal and nonverbal alike, who are incarcerated in nursing homes, prisons, and other institutions. The segregation of seniors, elders, and younger disabled people in these places is a very serious form of injustice that North American and Northern societies in general and philosophers in particular continue to ignore, discount, and legitimize. I am also increasingly troubled about the intransigence of settler colonialism and hope to facilitate the production of more public philosophy on BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY that contributes to the decolonization of Turtle Island, the occupied territory otherwise referred to as North America.

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