turn 2 launch reflections
the following text was put together by the opp team, and read at the launch party on mon 29th nov 2021, you can catch it on youtube here.
before and in order to enter this event [or in this case to engage with this blog post] with our beings from various places in the world and to provide some calm amid your day we would firstly like to invite you to settle in breaths together. this is a practice in some South Asian traditions to support calm abiding and insight and we welcome it here. please join us in 17 breaths to place ourselves in what brings us each and collectively here in transpiration and intention and to be with whatever arises and passes.
[17 breaths in silence]
thank you for arriving with us through this short practice.
opp is a journal space for critically questioning what philosophy is and how we're doing it, in form and content. we welcome work that investigates received assumptions about the nature and aims of philosophical inquiry, including contributions that question structural norms of currently dominant research programmes.
welcome to the opp journal turn2 launch, with an aesthetics of revolutionary moon & sun-rise meeting in vortex – welcome whether you join us at night or day perceived from your location. turn2 reflects on the themes of African(a) and South Asian philosophies, and the value(s) of our education. with turn2 we look back to turn1 to thank those who gave spirit and character to this public philosophizing initiative.
Alice Crary – one of our academic advisors – told us to envision more when we first began to consider a virtual space for student philosophizing beyond the classroom at oxford in the form of a journal. there was and is no undergraduate group space for discussing philosophy beyond the classroom. our time/space/and institutions are focused on particular forms and contents that despite some virtues also pervasively drown out and shame not only voices and narratives but lives. institutional silencing and the erasure and omission of experience and different forms of reasoning have devastating and insidious effects in our world. we can better understand and remedy these constructed borders engrained in evaluative systems, in norms of academia and public speech and behaviour, and in our curricula and classrooms by creating a space to explicitly examine these beyond our contained horizons. these limiting forces may manifest themselves differently between institutions so we begin where we are to endeavour to take a step beyond our confines grateful for and investigating the powerful resources and positions we find ourselves in – to invite others to a joint public space with us. we hope to continue to nuance and challenge our interpretative horizons – from reasoning practices in logic and analytic arguments to forms of communication and expression to ethical action and transformative world-participation. this is not easy and we thank you for joining us – whether teaching us as contributors or joining for discussions or plotting with our philosophy team.
we return then also to thank the speakers for our turn1 launch for setting our team off spinning in inspiration at the event which also initiated a ‘theories of non-violent revolution’ series hosted by people for womxn* in philosophy at oxford – our parent organisation. Lee A McBride III / Jack A Goldstone and Leonard Harris ignited an energy that stayed with us and which we felt again in another selection of speakers from that series who are also our speakers tonight and contributors to turn2. thoughts of revolutionary work and transformative philosophy inform these discussions. we welcome back circles of reflection in inviting them here in this ongoing spin around the sun since climatic activity prevented them from speaking together earlier this year. we are so excited to continue the conversation looking to the sunrise.
finally a note on our turn2 themes. expanding our horizons has no set trajectory and surely demands and imperatives will differ depending upon social and geographical (spatial) positions. we cannot claim we will ever seek in a ‘correct’ way. we endeavour to learn as we go without a set path or paths looking to teachers around the world. we turned to turn2 themes from our positions to more critically bring to our students’ eye and our own understanding to the new undergraduate Indian philosophy paper at oxford and to the ‘In Search of Zera Yacob’ conference, now scheduled for spring 2022, bringing together leading global scholars on some ‘early modern’ Ethiopian texts. we sought to understand their significance and to broaden their contexts. as caring students we sought to understand the traditions and terms given to us. the BLM protests and pandemic inequities shape this broader context. the sentient beings experiencing and giving testimony to these phenomena give life to the values of our education-seeking and the ensuing transformative potentials and actualities we have found in compiling this turn which only just brings a fresh wave to our attention in our learning lives.
thank you to all our team and contributors who made this turn possible. the website has been painstakingly and lovingly designed and put together by Zed Nott. Zed is also the wonderful opp illustrator. opp is a collective, so design decisions, playlist compilation, as well as editing, were all a collaborative effort, but we owe particular thanks to: Aamir Kaderbhai, Anna Genevieve Winham, Anushka Shah, Bee Rathleff, Chelsea Wallis, Cody Fuller, Connie Bostock, Emily Passmore, Emma Rath, Jonathan Egid, Katherine Franco, Lucas Janz, Nathan Allen, Heeyoung Tae, alicehank winham, Valquirya Borba.
the turn2 launch party was hosted by Cody Fuller and Valquirya Borba. our speakers and teachers were: Tadhg Kwasi, Greg Moses, Anthony Sean Neal, and Gail Presbey. you can read their contributions to the journal here.
post-launch reflection from Greg Moses
“Having reflected upon yesterday's proceedings, I think there was an important thread connecting the first hour's discussion about content not being the point, to Drs. Neal and Presbey's emphasis on "being philosophical" through critical engagements with valuation and justice. Had I been quicker to see it, I could have pointed it out in real time. But it also becomes an appeal in favor of philosophy's continual transformation, especially in its openness to student yearnings toward valuation and justice.”
follow up resources
Tadhg recommends:
MLK Jr - Letter From Birmingham Jail, and My Pilgrimage to Nonviolence
Black Panther Party - The Ten Point Program
Fred Hampton - Judas and The Black Messiah
Frantz Fanon - Black Skin, White Masks
W.E.B. Du Bois - Souls of Black Folk
Jean Paul-Sartre - Existentialism is a Humanism
Angela Davis - Woman, Race and Class
Malcolm X - Message to The Grassroots
Carol Hanisch - The Personal is Political
Kimberle Crenshaw - Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics.
The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther, by Jeffrey Haas
bell hooks - ‘Racism and Feminism: the Issue of Accountability’, in her Ain’t I a Woman? Black women and feminism
you can listen to the final episode of the turn2 podcast series below:
if you enjoy turn2, and appreciate the work we do at opp, we ask that you please consider donating what you can to our collective here. opp is run by volunteers who embrace and embody our mission to critically question what philosophy is and how we’re doing it. any financial contribution you can make will help us to continue to publish and publicise content that pushes the disciplinary and institutional boundaries of philosophy, including paying for our website and podcast, as well as zoom for our open access events and seminars. if you cannot donate to us at present, please consider spreading the word about opp and turn2 on social media. you can find us on instagram and twitter. thank you.
if you’d like to support opp in a more hands-on capacity, consider applying to join the team! you can have a look at some of our teams and roles here. also watch this space for calls for editors and contributions for turn3.
we also welcome submissions to the opp blog inspired by the launch party, and any turn2 contribution. get in touch with our blog co-ordinator at val@oxfordpublicphilosophy.com.
