9th Annual Graduate Student Conference
9th Annual Philosophy Graduate Student Conference
“Crossing Borders Within Philosophy and Across Disciplines”
Friday, March 17 and Saturday, March 18
MacOdrum Library, Room 482
Keynote Speaker:
Lorraine Code, York University
Distinguished Research Professor Emerita and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
“Who Do We Think We Are?”
Friday, March 17 at 4:00 pm
The title question of this paper is one I pose provocatively, in order to urge “us” to recognize that integral to much late-twentieth and early twenty-first century thinking are unexamined references to “we”, to “us”, to “them”. Who/what do these referents refer to? Often they seem insignificant and are spoken and heard as epistemically-ontologically neutral, easily interchangeable. My thinking is motivated by a recognition that the seemingly simple “we” often carries with it a set of uncontested assumptions, taken-for-granted ways of being that may not themselves be innocent or presupposition-free. While it would be cumbersome always to pause and contest such utterances, at times it is vital to do so, in order to understand some of the social-political implications of seemingly neutral assertions. Here I venture on such an exploration.