Adrian M. S. Piper - Rescuing Philosophy From Academic Philosophy

"The irony in the case of racism is that there is a substantial literature in biology and the social sciences that indicates that almost all purportedly white Americans have between five and twenty percent black ancestry and hence are, according to this country's entrenched 'just one trace' convention of racial classification, black." 

Adrian M. S. Piper - "Higher-Order Discrimination", page 308, fn 9.

"Ethics is transcendental. (Ethics and aesthetics are one)" Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (6.421)

Racialism (aka Racism) and Misogyny (defined as hatred of women) recently have been very much on my mind. I live (try to live) in America after all. And even after the most recent presidential campaign, and the election of Barak Obama to a second term in office, where two of the three, and only three, planks of the Republican Party's presidential campaign platform were framed in a language using the same thinly veiled racialist and misogynist code words: "unqualified" and "right to life" were and are favorites. Who knows what similar evils reside in the hearts of Democrats, liberals, and other 'do-gooders' before and after elections? The third plank in the Republican platform was the taxes warhorse. I call it a "warhorse" because "tax policy", "balanced budget", "entitlements", and "an assault rifle in every home" are code-words for perpetual war against the poor. In other words, the poor pay for perpetual war - Iraq and all that - with their earnings powerlessness at home and their lives on the battlefield. There are three ways for the poor to go: into the very profitable penal system (aka "prison"), hamburger university, or the military. Education? Education! What education?

Philosophy to the rescue? 

Quite by accident I was prompted to think again about the philosopher, conceptual artist, and feminist Adrian M. S. Piper. In 1998 I read an article by Adam Shatz in the November 1998 issue of Lingua Franca (now defunct). The article entitled "Black Like Me" (pps. 39-54) treats Adrian Piper's life growing up in the Sugar Hill section of Harlem, her education at CCNY and Harvard, her performance art, and her travails as an academic philosopher at the University of Michigan (U. of M.), Wellesley, and Georgetown. Piper wrote her Ph.D. under the eminent philosopher John Rawls at Harvard. Rawls' subjects were ethics and political philosophy. Piper was denied tenure by U. of M., granted tenure by Georgetown and Wellesley, and banished by the latter without any retirement benefits. She has lived in Berlin in recent years. In the mean time, two volumes of her writings entitled Out Of Order, Out Of Sight I & II were published in 1996 by MIT Press.  In addition Ms. Piper has been working on a massive two volume work in ethics and meta-ethics: volume one treats David Hume and his notion(s) of the self; volume II treats Kant and his notions of the self and ethics. It should be added that these volumes treat much else besides. Full titles please: Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean Conception and Volume II: A Kantian Conception. These two volumes were to have been published in the first instance by Oxford University Press. Then after Oxford withdrew as the publisher, Cambridge University Press agreed to publish Dr. Piper's volumes.  After Cambridge University Press's staff 'requested' 100 page excisions from each volume, Dr. Piper decided to publish both 2nd edition volumes on the internet - links are provided below.

The Introduction to Adrian Piper's first volume is well worth reading for the insights that she provides about the present state of academic analytic philosophy. While Socrates may be revered as a personality in academia today, his example as a gadfly has been lost and is seldom followed. Piper emphasizes how serious philosophical discussion is blunted for the sake of careerism - small fish living off the works of a few greats, providing streams footnotes as it were.

For Adrian M. S. Piper aesthetics and ethics are, if not one in Wittgenstein's sense, both vitally important. Reading her work via the link's below - and in print - has for me been richly rewarding. I'll continue my reading of her two volumes. I hope that you will too. By the way links to Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volumes I & II reside in her philosophy webpage below. The two MIT volumes, Out Of Order, Out Of Sight are well worth looking into. If one can locate Adam Shatz's article (referred to above), it's well worth reading too. The Wikipedia entry is quite thorough and it along with Piper's "Passing for White, Passing for Black" (link below) are very good introductions to her life and work. [Alas, the Wikipedia entry has been deleted.]





http://www.adrianpiper.com/
http://www.adrianpiper.com/philosophy.shtml
http://pages.ucsd.edu/~bgoldfarb/cocu108/data/texts/piper_pass1.pdf
http://141.213.232.243/bitstream/handle/2027.42/43399/11098_2004_Article_BF00356498.pdf;jsessionid=419B488225A6242F1047FA636D1CDDD5?sequence=1