Philosophers as Unreliable Narrators
The notorious distance between many academic writers’ on-the-page personae and their in-person personalities is widely thought to be a good thing. If, in person, many of us are quarrelsome, neurotic, egotistical, oblivious, thin-skinned, competitive, self-aggrandizing, and self-indulgent, yet on the page we appear gentle, thoughtful, courageous, well-informed, and touchingly vulnerable, then at least the research has not been contaminated by the personality. In daily life, we may or may not want to know the person behind the prose as a friend, colleague, boss, neighbor, lover, or presiding judge, but in our studies we expect to hear from a distinctive writing persona, someone calmer, more reliable, more open-minded than most of us ordinarily are. As philosophers, we are supposed to aspire to a higher writing self.
Story‐telling for Social Change
abstract As strategies for social change, feminist activities in the area of law and popular education both rely on the oppressed telling stories of their daily lives. Storytelling in these contexts represents different perceptions of reality that are intended as an opposition to established knowledge. Focusing primarily on popular education, the author describes how the uncritical reliance on stories has led to the failure in the classroom to acknowledge the risks taken by various oppressed groups when they attempt to critically reflect and build coalitions. Furthermore, stories have not in fact always been empowering. Without mechanisms to critique the stories, mixed sex, mixed race groups have been unable to identify political strategies and to determine effective political action. In order to speak and to listen across our various subject positions, and ultimately to act, the author argues that critical pedagogy has to pay attention to how we know, hence the context in which we tell and hear stories.
Is federalism being undermined in the current surge to 'recognise' Indigenous Australians in (and into) the Commonwealth Constitution
When Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples think within a federalist frame, it is not the settler state's concept of federalism. As a Wiradjuri person, I can see that a modern Wiradjuri nation could be characterised as a federation. Federalism is then, for me, an idea that binds and respects levels of autonomy of peoples existing at a local level; and where the local laws are respected as the foundation of the negotiated sharing of sovereignty to create and maintain another level of governance. These are the federalist principles still deployed by the Iroquois Confederacy of Nations.