Shelley Tremain sends this report about recent activism.
----------------------
ABLEIST LANGUAGE AND PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATIONS
Over the last couple of decades, disability theorists in the humanities have produced work that shows how signifiers of disability employed in literature, art, films, pop culture, the news media, and everyday discourse are paradigmatically and stereotypically oppressive to disabled people: the nasty villain with facial scars, the evil pirate with a prosthetic arm, the wicked witch with one eye, the determined cripple who overcomes all odds and is redeemed, and so on. One focus of these efforts has been the ways that “blindness” is used as a rhetorical and representational device to signify lack of knowledge, as well as epistemic ignorance or negligence and the moral downfall it implies.
I first wrote about the use of blindness as a metaphor in 1996. For the last few years, I have tried to get the APA to remove the phrase “blind review” from its publications and website. The phrase is demeaning to disabled people because it associates blindness with lack of knowledge and implies that blind people cannot be knowers. Because the phrase is standardly used in philosophy and other academic CFPs, it should become recognized as a cause for great concern. In short, use of the phrase amounts to the circulation of language that discriminates. Philosophers should want to avoid inflicting harm in this way. Now, one might think that the term “blind review” means, literally, that reviewers cannot “see” the name of an author (or authors) of a given paper. But consider that under the terms of this form of refereeing, it would be not be acceptable for an editor to verbally communicate the name (or names) of an author (or authors) to a referee, while preventing the referee from seeing the name or names. Equally, it would not be acceptable if a blind philosopher heard the name (names) read out by her screen-reader software, even though she can’t see them.
A couple of years ago, I emailed both the Executive Director of the APA and the past President of the CPA (Canadian Phil. Assoc.), explaining to them why the use of the phrase “blind review” in their publicity materials, CFPs, etc. was oppressive and demeaning to disabled people, and I posted these emails in the body of a comment on the Feminist Philosophers blog. In an email to me, the Executive Director of the APA wrote that this matter had never been brought to his attention in the past and that he would have APA staff act on it immediately. The President of the CPA made a commitment to me that he would raise the issue at the next meeting of the CPA Board of Directors.
As a result of these correspondences, the phrase “blind review” was removed for a time from the APA National Office’s publicity materials. However, the term was still used by at least two divisions in their published materials. The CPA no longer uses the phrase “blind review” and has replaced it with the phrase “anonymous review”.
I do not know whether this means that the Pacific APA will, or has recommended that the Eastern and Central Divisions be advised to remove the phrase from their materials or whether such advice is beyond the jurisdiction of the National Office, given the relative autonomy of the three divisions. What concerns me, furthermore, is whether there is a guarantee that *future* Pacific Division Executive Committees and staff of the National Office will continue to refrain from using the phrase or whether, give that it is so widely used, the phrase will be restored in the future.
I have suggested to Amy Kind that the Pacific Division make a motion at its next AGM that the phrase should be permanently banned from all of the APA’s publicity, as it did in regard to homophobic ads in the JFP.
Recent Comments