Social Epistemology
I’m interested in epistemic environments and epistemic perspectivalism. Regarding the former, I work on epistemic distortions, positive feedback cycles, and ideology. Regarding the latter, I am curious about the roles of modeling and partiality in our epistemic perspectives. What happens when we take seriously the facts that a) perfect, complete knowledge is impossible, b) we all have limited perspectives and c) these perspectives are often limited by oppression and ideology?
I also am Managing Editor at the Journal of Social Philosophy.
Race, Gender, Ability
I write and think about social groupings—especially race, gender, and (dis)ability—often. I consider these categories to be models or heuristics that we use to understand the world given our specific epistemic contexts. Drafts of a paper on the minimal conditions necessary for the development of a concept like “race” and on the social construction of schizophrenia are available upon request.
I am an Editorial Assistant and Visual Arts Editor at Women’s Studies Quarterly.
Animals
Humans are animals. My dissertation concerns how human animality has been denied and how the analytic of animality has been used to oppress women, POC, and, of course, animals. Contra the (understandable) urge for oppressed groups to resist animalization, I argue that accepting animality can be a route to liberation. I encourage everyone to look into the MOVE Organization in Philadelphia for a biting example of how fiercely authorities resist challenges to the human-animal paradigm.
De-/Post-Coloniality
I’m inspired by efforts of de- and post-colonial philosophy to decolonize knowledge, both in content and methodology. I hope that my work in ideology critique and social epistemology (see above) and in Asian American Philosophy (see right) both help further this decolonial project. At the moment, I am especially inspired by decolonial critiques of the human and human kinds.
Asian American Philosophy
Asian/American philosophy is not new, but its inclusion in the academy is. For some badass Asian American philosophizing I recommend Gidra, a leading publication of the radical Asian American Movement of the 1960s-70s. I have three papers in process, one sketching some of the foundations of a decolonial Asian American epistemology; one on coerced emotionality in Asian Americans, and what this tells us about the social construction of emotions; and a third about the “oriental octopus.” Email me for drafts of any of these.