Showing posts with label LCC campaign. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LCC campaign. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

The "Languaged" Conference Campaign

Okay, I know---'Languaged' is not a word in English, but so what? :-) I think we should start a campaign to highlight the underrepresentation of non-native English speakers in the line-ups of many (supposedly international) conferences and edited volumes. The campaign is, of course, modelled on the (very effective and much needed!) Gendered Conference Campaign promoted by the Feminist Philosophers blog. And, like that campaign, this campaign is not about blame; nor is it about identifying the causes of the underrepresentation of non-native English speakers in analytic philosophy. It only aims at raising awareness of this systematic phenomenon (especially among philosophers who are native English speakers who seem to be mostly oblivious to it). Analytic philosophy aspires to be universal in its scope and yet it is surprisingly provincial and insular when it comes to including people whose native languages are not English. As I have argued elsewhere, I think that this phenomenon hurts not only EFL philosophers, but analytic philosophy in general. I hope that the LCC will start raising awareness about this issue.

Please feel free to e-mail me at g 'dot' contessa 'at' gmail 'dot' com to bring any conferences/volumes with an all-native-English-speaker line-up. I will post these on this blog (and keep the source of the "tip" anonymous). Please note that, since it's not always easy to verify whether or not a certain philosopher is a native English speaker, sometimes conferences/volumes will be incorrectly flagged. In those cases, please contact me at the above address and I will run a correction and retract the post. Again, the purpose of the campaign is not to point fingers or to "name and shame"---it's to highlight a systematic problem.

PS Note that the LCC campaign does not advocate for the inclusion of philosophers who are non-native English speakers at the expense of philosophers who are members of other groups that have been historically underrepresented in analytic philosophy. To the contrary, the campaign is animated by the idea that the more diverse and inclusive analytic philosophy is, the better it is for everyone. Also, it is quite possible that the bias due to language is not nearly as strong as the biases due to gender, race, or ability. I am not interested in playing the Oppression Olympics. First of all, professional philosophers tend to be more privileged than the overall population (as usually they are highly educated and solidly middle-class (even if with the increasing number of adjuncts this is quickly changing)). Second, the sort of linguistic bias targeted by the LCC is closely associated with but is not identical to racial/ethnic biases experienced by underrepresented racial/ethnic minorities, so it is difficult sometimes to distinguish between the two and to determine the individual contributions each bias makes. (Also see my disclaimer here)