[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series, Naomi Scheman, (Minnesota)

[Ryan Cox]

Hi everyone,

This week's speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is Naomi Scheman, (Minnesota)

The title of the talk is "Wittgenstein, Lugones, and the Politics of Intelligibility". Here is an abstract for the talk:

One way of understanding Wittgenstein's notion of forms of life is through the Argentinian-American Lesbian philosopher María Lugones's notion of "worlds"--inhabited communities of sense-making. "World"-travel involves the realization that who and what one is can shift, often disconcertingly, as one moves from one to another world of sense and sees oneself reflected in different eyes. Such travel can be mandatory for those who are variously marginalized and who thereby acquire skills that the more privileged may lack, including the communal crafting of livable, intelligible identities within alternative, counter-normative "worlds". Following Wittgenstein's injunction that learning a language is learning a form of life, I want to explore responses to the linguistic innovations arising from within trans communities, such as the singular 'they' and the prefix 'cis' for non-trans women and men. As such innovations spread into the dominant "world", I will argue that we ought not to trivialize the resistance with which they are met. These shifts in "what we say" deeply challenge and change the dominant world of sense, undermining a form of life in which there are, for example, only two genders and which one we are is determined by how we are assigned at birth. Such a shift (one I think we have conclusive reason to undertake) is and ought to be seriously disconcerting.

The seminar will take place at 3:30pm on Wednesday Aug 06 in the Philosophy Seminar Room (N494).

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to ryan.cox at sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan.cox at sydney.edu.au

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