Bibliography

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Barriers to Undisciplined Inquiry 

These entries identify some ways that undisciplined inquiry is impeded, silenced, erased, or destroyed.

Abel, J. 2013. The Place of Scraps. Talonbooks.

Publisher Abstract: The Place of Scraps revolves around Marius Barbeau, an early-twentieth-century ethnographer, who studied many of the First Nations cultures in the Pacific Northwest, including Jordan Abel's ancestral Nisga'a Nation. Barbeau, in keeping with the popular thinking of the time, believed First Nations cultures were about to disappear completely, and that it was up to him to preserve what was left of these dying cultures while he could. Unfortunately, his methods of preserving First Nations cultures included purchasing totem poles and potlatch items from struggling communities in order to sell them to museums. While Barbeau strove to protect First Nations cultures from vanishing, he ended up playing an active role in dismantling the very same cultures he tried to save. Drawing inspiration from Barbeau's canonical book Totem Poles, Jordan Abel explores the complicated relationship between First Nations cultures and ethnography. His poems simultaneously illuminate Barbeau's intentions and navigate the repercussions of the anthropologist's actions. Through the use of erasure techniques, Abel carves out new understandings of Barbeau's writing - each layer reveals a fresh perspective, each word takes on a different connotation, each letter plays a different role, and each punctuation mark rises to the surface in an unexpected way. As Abel writes his way ever deeper into Barbeau's words, he begins to understand that he is much more connected to Barbeau than he originally suspected.

Categories: Doing UI; Barriers to UI; Where UI is or can be done

Atleo, E. R. / Umeek. 2005. Tsawalk: A Nuu-chah-nulth Worldview. University of British Columbia Press.

Publisher Abstract: Western philosophy has long held scientific rationalism in a place of honour. Reason, that particularly exalted human quality, has become steadily distanced from the metaphysical aspects of existence, such as spirit, faith, and intuition. In Tsawalk, hereditary chief Umeek introduces us to an alternative indigenous worldview -- an ontology drawn from the Nuu-chah-nulth origin stories. Umeek develops a theory of "Tsawalk," meaning "one," that views the nature of existence as an integrated and orderly whole, and thereby recognizes the intrinsic relationship between the physical and spiritual. By retelling and analyzing the origin stories of Son of Raven and Son of Mucus, Umeek demonstrates how Tsawalk provides a viable theoretical alternative that both complements and expands the view of reality presented by Western science. Tsawalk, he argues, allows both Western and indigenous views to be combined in order to advance our understanding of the universe. In addition, he shows how various fundamental aspects of Nuu-chah-nulth society are based upon Tsawalk, and what implications it has today for both Native and non-Native peoples. A valuable contribution to Native studies, anthropology, and philosophy, Tsawalk offers a revitalizing and thoughtful complement to Western scientific worldviews.

Categories: Calls to action; Proposed solutions; Theorizing UI; Doing UI; Critiquing DI; Barriers to UI; Where UI is or can be done

Blackburn, S. 2015. “Can an Analytic Philosopher Read Poetry?” in J. Gibson (ed.) The Philosophy of Poetry, Oxford University Press, pp. 111–126.

Author Abstract: This chapter offers a tongue-in-cheek indictment of analytic philosophy for providing us with philosophical resources too impoverished to be capable of making sense of the poetic use of language and its significance in human life. The contemporary philosopher’s Fregean inheritance, concerned as it is with truth and reference—poems can appear to have neither—make it very difficult to acknowledge the philosophical, moral, and cultural value of the poet’s labour. The chapter shows that the matter is not as bleak as it seems, but there are concerns dear to many philosophers that reveal them to have a radically different set of expectations about language than the poet does. In respect to the ancient feud, the chapter ultimately concludes that it is the poet’s sensitivity to language that has the greater claim to being ‘our best guide to who we are, and even to where we ought to be heading’.

Categories: Doing UI; Barriers to UI

Campbell, M. 2007 "We Need to Return to the Principles of Wahkotowin," in Eagle Feather News 10

Project Abstract: Campbell calls for Indigenous peoples to embody the principle of Wahkotowin, that is, kinship, relationship, and family with all of creation. Campbell laments the loss of this principle within Indigenous communities in Canada, and she points to some examples including the lack of safety and family support for Indigenous children, and the lack of “Indian status” for some Indigenous groups like the Lubicon Lake Cree Nation. Campbell emphasizes the importance of remembering Wahkotowin, especially for safeguarding Indigenous children.

Categories: Calls to action; Doing UI; Barriers to UI; Being disciplined; Where UI is or can be done

Davies, T., Isakjee, A., and Obradovic-Wochnik, J. 2022. “Epistemic Borderwork: Violent Pushbacks, Refugees, and the Politics of Knowledge at the EU Border,” in Annals of the American Association of Geographers 113, pp. 1-20.

Author Abstract: Borders are sites of epistemic struggle. Focusing on the illegal tactic of the “pushback,” which is routinely deployed by state authorities to forcefully expel asylum seekers from European Union territory without due process, this article explores the uneven politics of knowledge that helps to support or unsettle this clandestine border violence. Drawing on long-term qualitative research on the Croatia–Bosnia border, including interviews with pushback survivors and activists, as well as a database of border violence reports, we explore the competing truth claims and epistemologies that help to conceal, or counter, the pushback regime. Informed by postcolonial perspectives and contributing to political geographies of violence, we argue that “epistemic violence” (Spivak 1988) is a central feature of contemporary borders. We propose that epistemic borderwork is regularly used by state authorities to silence unwanted voices, undermine insurgent perspectives, and stifle the capacity of refugees to draw attention to their own mistreatment. In opposition to this injustice, activists are documenting, mapping, and archiving pushback survivor testimony to construct a counternarrative of refusal, which subverts the harmful knowledge claims of state authorities. In doing so, refugees and activists create epistemic friction, which helps to resist the ontological violence of borders, and “pushes back” against the pushback regime.

Categories: Theorizing UI; Doing UI; Barriers to UI

Dotson, K. 2012. “How is This Paper Philosophy?” in Comparative Philosophy 3, pp. 3-29.

Author Abstract: This paper answers a call made by Anita Allen to genuinely assess whether the field of philosophy has the capacity to sustain the work of diverse peoples. By identifying a pervasive culture of justification within professional philosophy, I gesture to the ways professional philosophy is not an attractive working environment for many diverse practitioners. As a result of the downsides of the culture of justification that pervades professional philosophy, I advocate that the discipline of professional philosophy be cast according to a culture of praxis. Finally, I provide a comparative exercise using Graham Priest’s definition of philosophy and Audre Lorde’s observations of the limitations of philosophical theorizing to show how these two disparate accounts can be understood as philosophical engagement with a shift to a culture of praxis perspective.

Categories: Critiquing DI; Barriers to UI, Doing UI

Fazakas, L., Cussans, J., and Hopkins, C. 2019. Beau Dick: Devoured by Consumerism. Bill Reid Gallery.

Abridged Abstract (from White Columns Gallery): “We talk about the ‘the system’. It has no face; it has no conscience either. So these forces we are up against are almost on the supernatural level. My conscience tells me we have to fight back. And in some ways it is war on another level; nonviolent, but spiritual warfare. It has come to that.” – Beau Dick, 2017. ‘Devoured by Consumerism’ includes a group of some fifteen carved and painted masks and sculptural works made by Dick between 1980 and 2016. The exhibition explores and amplifies the inherent tensions and contradictions between the Kwakwaka’wakw Winter Ceremonies and contemporary consumer culture. Writing about Dick’s intentions for ‘Devoured by Consumerism’ LaTiesha Fazakas suggests: “Through the sharing of works inspired by the Kwakwaka’wakw Winter Ceremonies, Beau Dick hoped to spark change in a world that he saw as devouring itself under the ravenous pressures of capitalism.”

Categories: Calls to action; Doing UI; Barriers to UI; Critiquing DI; Being disciplined

Jenkins, C. 2021. “Do Gender Norms Enforce a Divide Between Literature and Philosophy?” in New Statesman.www.newstatesman.com/ideas/agora/2021/07/do-gender-norms-enforce-divide-between-literature-and-philosophy

Project Abstract: in this piece Jenkins highlights how a definition of philosophy as the discipline inquiring into objective, universal, and impartial truths is used to divide philosophy from literature, and how this divide is gendered. Philosophy’s supposed objectivity and impartiality is masculine, while the partiality of literature and its ability to induce strong emotions is feminine. Jenkins highlights how this gendered divide is invoked by philosophers and writers themselves, and explains why this divide should be abandoned.

Categories: Critiquing DI; Barriers to UI; Proposed solutions

Jenkins, C. 2022b. “Love as a Gift Economy,” in New Philosopher 35.

Project Abstract: In this essay Jenkins uses Robin Wall Kimmerer’s framework of the Gift Economy to reconceptualize practices of romantic love. Jenkins discusses the capitalist commodification of women’s care, love, attention, and reproductive labour as scarce resources that must be hoarded and controlled, and she explores what it might mean if love were instead construed as a gift, drawing a comparison with a statement made by a rainforest hunter-gatherer, that “I store my [excess] meat in the belly of my brother.”

Categories: Theorizing UI; Barriers to UI; Types of UI; Being Disciplined

Khan, S. 2022. “Becoming Undisciplined: Disciplinary and Disciplining Norms” in ASAP review.https://asapjournal.com/node/becoming-undisciplined-disciplinary-and-disciplining-norms-sanaa-khan/

Project Abstract: Using excerpts from her personal journal, correspondence with friends, and correspondence with university administrators, Khan explores her experience of being disciplined into following the norms of (colonial) academia and the expectation that she submit to those norms. Khan considers how the process of becoming disciplined is detrimental to her health, and how becoming undisciplined is necessary for her survival.

Categories: Doing UI; Critiquing DI; Barriers to UI; Who does UI; Being disciplined

Kimmerer, R. W. 2013. Braiding Sweetgrass. Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions.

Publisher Abstract: An inspired weaving of indigenous knowledge, plant science, and personal narrative from a distinguished professor of science and a Native American whose previous book, Gathering Moss, was awarded the John Burroughs Medal for outstanding nature writing. As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science. As a Potawatomi woman, she learned from elders, family, and history that the Potawatomi, as well as a majority of other cultures indigenous to this land, consider plants and animals to be our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowing together to reveal what it means to see humans as "the younger brothers of creation." As she explores these themes she circles toward a central argument: the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgement and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the world. Once we begin to listen for the languages of other beings, we can begin to understand the innumerable life-giving gifts the world provides us and learn to offer our thanks, our care, and our own gifts in return.

Categories: Proposed solutions; Doing UI; Types of UI; Who does UI; Where UI is or can be done; Barriers to UI

Kimmerer, R. W. 2022. “The Serviceberry: An Economy of Abundance,” in Emergence Magazine.

Author Abstract: As Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from Indigenous wisdom and ecological systems to reimagine currencies of exchange?

Categories: Theorizing UI; Doing UI; Barriers to UI; Types of UI

Ludwig, D. and El-Hani, C. 2025. Transformative Transdisciplinarity: An Introduction to Community-Based Philosophy. Oxford University Press.

Publisher Abstract: In the face of planetary crises -- from biodiversity loss to climate change to food security -- transdisciplinary methods promise effective and just responses through equal collaborations. However, transdisciplinarity also creates complex challenges by bringing together different actors with different frameworks, like scientists, Indigenous and local communities, and policy makers. Successful collaboration among such actors requires navigating different forms of knowledge, worldviews, values, and positions of power. In Transformative Transdisciplinarity, David Ludwig and Charbel N. El-Hani synthesize insights from the philosophy of science and empirical action research to address these challenges through a framework of partial overlaps. On the one hand, the framework highlights the overlapping concerns and perspectives of actors that provide common ground for collaboration and mutual understanding. On the other hand, it emphasizes partialities that require navigating differences and tensions between actors. This book addresses the fundamental epistemological, ontological, and political questions of transdisciplinarity through this framework of partial overlaps, aiming for a transformative vision of collaborative science in the face of planetary crises.

Categories: Calls to action; Critiquing DI; Barriers to UI; Theorizing UI; Proposed solutions

Mignolo, W. 2009. “Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and Decolonial Freedom,” in Theory, Culture & Society 26, pp. 159–181.

Author Abstract: Once upon a time scholars assumed that the knowing subject in the disciplines is transparent, disincorporated from the known and untouched by the geo-political configuration of the world in which people are racially ranked and regions are racially configured. From a detached and neutral point of observation (that Colombian philosopher Santiago Castro-Gómez describes as the hubris of the zero point), the knowing subject maps the world and its problems, classifies people and projects into what is good for them. Today that assumption is no longer tenable, although there are still many believers. At stake is indeed the question of racism and epistemology. And once upon a time scholars assumed that if you ‘come’ from Latin America you have to ‘talk about’ Latin America; that in such a case you have to be a token of your culture. Such expectation will not arise if the author ‘comes’ from Germany, France, England or the US. As we know: the first world has knowledge, the third world has culture; Native Americans have wisdom, Anglo Americans have science. The need for political and epistemic de-linking here comes to the fore, as well as decolonializing and decolonial knowledges, necessary steps for imagining and building democratic, just, and non-imperial/colonial societies.

Categories: Theorizing UI; Doing UI; Barriers to UI

Petroff, E. 1994. Body and Soul: Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism. Oxford University Press.

Publisher Abstract: Opening a window onto a long-neglected world of women's experience, this text features eleven essays that examine the writings of medieval women mystics from England, France, Germany, Italy, and the Low Countries, providing close readings of a number of important texts from the viewpoint of different literary theories. Surveying various styles of hagiographical writing, the author offers ground-breaking scholarship on a broad range of topics such as how medieval holy women may have appeared to their contemporaries, medieval antifeminism, comparisons between earlier and later Christian mystical writing, the relationship between male confessors and female penitents in the Middle Ages, and the process by which these extraordinary women produced their work. For courses in religious, medieval, or women's studies, this unique text fills a conspicuous gap in an important and fascinating field of literature.

Categories: Doing UI; Barriers to UI; Who does UI; Where UI is or can be done

Plato, Symposium. Trans. A. Nehemas and P. Woodruff.  Hackett.

Author Abstract (selected from the introduction to the text from translator Benjamin Jowett): Of all the works of Plato the Symposium is the most perfect in form, and may be truly thought to contain more than any commentator has ever dreamed of; or, as Goethe said of one of his own writings, more than the author himself knew. For in philosophy as in prophecy glimpses of the future may often be conveyed in words which could hardly have been understood or interpreted at the time when they were uttered which were wiser than the writer of them meant, and could not have been expressed by him if he had been interrogated about them. Yet Plato was not a mystic, nor in any degree affected by the Eastern influences which afterwards overspread the Alexandrian world. He was not an enthusiast or a sentimentalist, but one who aspired only to see reasoned truth, and whose thoughts are clearly explained in his language. There is no foreign element either of Egypt or of Asia to be found in his writings. And more than any other Platonic work the Symposium is Greek both in style and subject, having a beauty 'as of a statue,' while the companion Dialogue of the Phaedrus is marked by a sort of Gothic irregularity. More too than in any other of his Dialogues, Plato is emancipated from former philosophies. The genius of Greek art seems to triumph over the traditions of Pythagorean, Eleatic, or Megarian systems, and 'the old quarrel of poetry and philosophy' has at least a superficial reconcilement.

Categories: Types of UI; Barriers to UI; Being Disciplined

Schilt, K.  “The ‘Not Sociology’ Problem,” in D. Compton, T. Meadow and K. Schilt (ed.s)Other, Please Specify: Queer Methods in Sociology, University of California Press, pp. 37-50.

Project Abstract: in this article Schilt explores how the disciplinary boundary of sociology is gatekept with three strategies that dismiss disruptive research as “not sociology.” Resistance attempts to erect boundaries against an emerging area of inquiry. Reduction dismisses emerging scholarship as unimportant, irrelevant, or as “too niche” to matter. Ridicule devalues inquiry by depicting it as absurd, or by questioning its scholarly credentials. Schilt provides a case study of each of these strategies. Schilt also discusses who can engage in UI, and identifies different challenges faced by tenured and non-tenured scholars.

Categories: Critiquing DI; Barriers to UI; Who does UI

Ward, J. 2018. “The Methods Gatekeepers and the Exiled Queers,” in D. Compton, T. Meadow and K. Schilt (ed.s)Other, Please Specify: Queer Methods in Sociology, University of California Press, pp. 51-66.

Project Abstract: in this book chapter, Ward explores the “tense but dynamic relationship between sociological methods and queer methods” via an ethnography of their own career trajectory. Ward takes the term “mansplaining” and expands it to capture another form of epistemic arrogance, methodsplaining. Ward explains how queer, trans, and sociologists from other underrepresented groups are often met with skepticism that their methodologies are not “proper sociology.” Ward then details how this supposedly neutral and objective critique is inseparable from conservative political agendas. The result is queer scholars are exiled from sociology.

Categories: Calls to action; Theorizing UI; Critiquing DI; Barriers to UI; Types of UI; Who does UI; Being disciplined

Whitehead, J. 2017. Full-Metal Indigiqueer. Talonbooks.

Abridged Publisher Abstract: This poetry collections focuses on a hybridized Indigiqueer Trickster character named Zoa who brings together the organic (the protozoan) and the technologic (the binaric) in order to re-beautify and re-member queer Indigeneity. This Trickster is a Two-Spirit / Indigiqueer invention that resurges in the apocalypse to haunt, atrophy, and to reclaim. Following oral tradition (à la Iktomi, Nanaboozho, Wovoka), Zoa infects, invades, and becomes a virus to canonical and popular works in order to re-centre Two-Spirit livelihoods. Zoa world-builds a fourth-dimension, lives in the cyber space, and survives in NDN-time – they have learned to sing the skin back onto their bodies and remain #woke at the end of the world. “Do not read me as a vanished ndn,” they ask, “read me as a ghastly one.” This project follows in the tradition of authors who, Whitehead believes, utilize deconstruction as a means of decolonization. This is a sex-positive project that tirelessly works to create coalition between those who have, as Donna Haraway once noted, “been injured, profoundly.” Zoa stands in solidarity with all qpoc folk who exist as ghosts with intergenerational and colonial phantom pains.

Categories: Theorizing UI; Doing UI; Critiquing DI; Barriers to UI; Who Does UI; Being Disciplined; Where UI is or can be done

Zwicky, J. 2015. Alkibiades’ Love. McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Publisher Abstract (abridged): Alkibiades, a central character in Plato's Symposium, claims that philosophy touches him to the quick. When Socrates speaks, he's often moved to tears and realizes he must change his life. In Alkibiades' Love, Jan Zwicky demonstrates that this image of philosophy is not anachronistic, but remains the living heart of the discipline. Philosophy can indeed matter to our lives, but for it to do so, we must reconceive the methods that, since the Enlightenment, have dominated its self-image in the West. In these meticulously researched essays, Zwicky argues that analytic and poststructuralist philosophy are not simply fashions in academic discourse, but are manifestations of the technocracy which they sustain and promote. The alternative she develops, by showing it in action, is lyric philosophy - an integrated mode of understanding whose foundations lie in the way we comprehend music and metaphor.

Categories: Theorizing UI; Doing UI; Critiquing DI; Barriers to UI