I primarily work on the metaphysics and epistemology of oppression and related social categories from an intersectional and critical theoretical perspective.
The social epistemology branch of my work explores the ways that oppressive social structures shape our information, reasoning, and attention, especially in ways that reinforce oppression. The social ontology branch of my work develops a systematic account of oppression, intersectionality, race, and gender.
You can find a more detailed overview of my work, including links to papers, below. Drafts not linked to here may be available upon request.
Research
Journal Articles
Rejecting the Group-Based View of Oppression
Published in Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy: Volume 11
Pre-print available here
Abstract: The standard view of oppression is that it is group-based. Groups are standardly taken to be the primary subjects of oppression, and it is thought that individuals are only oppressed by virtue of their membership in an oppressed group. While this view is so standard as to frequently be taken to be definitional of oppression, not much has been said to actually elaborate or defend it. In this paper I consider the group-based view in more detail and argue that we should reject it. My argument is on two main grounds: that the group-based view presents an additive and falsely universalizing picture of oppression, and thereby fails to accommodate important intersectional insights; and that appealing to membership in certain groups does not explain oppressive treatment. I suggest that we should instead opt for a positional view of oppression and give greater attention to the ways in which an individual’s holistic, complex social positioning interfaces with institutional and ideological mechanisms to generate experiences of oppression and privilege.
Intersectionality without Fragmentation
Pre-print available here
You can find an overview of the paper on the New Work in Philosophy substack here.
You can also find a discussion of the paper on the PEA Soup blog here.
Abstract: Feminist philosophers have long worried that intersectionality undermines the viability of the concept and category of woman, thereby undermining feminist theory and politics. Some have responded to this problem by abandoning intersectionality; others have attempted to find some suitably inclusive way of reconceptualizing woman. I provide a novel solution that focuses on conceptualizing oppression in light of intersectionality, rather than trying to provide an account of what it is to be a woman. By enabling us to understand feminism as responding to gender oppression, this account shows that intersectionality does not conceptually undermine and fragment feminism. Feminism should be intersectional.
Abstract: Rick has never witnessed excessive policing; Rebecca has never heard of redlining; Dr. Kritz lacks information about whether the drug tamoxifen will harm her Afro-Latina patient. Each of these characters lacks knowledge about some important matter relating to race or racial inequality. They are each, we might say, white ignorant. But what is white ignorance? In this paper, I identify a theoretical and political role for ‘white ignorance’, present three alternative accounts of white ignorance, and assess how well each fulfils this role. On the Willful Ignorance View, white ignorance refers to white individuals’ willful ignorance about racial injustice. On the Cognitivist View, white ignorance refers to ignorance resulting from social practices that distribute faulty cognitive resources. On the Structuralist View, white ignorance refers to ignorance that (1) results as part of a social process that systematically gives rise to racial injustice, and (2) is an active player in the process. I argue that, because of its greater power and flexibility, the Structuralist View better explains the patterns of ignorance that we observe, better illuminates the connection to white racial domination, and is overall better suited to the project of ameliorating racial injustice. As such, the Structuralist View should be preferred.
In Preparation
Abstract: Suppose you’re on the train home after a long day. You exit at your station, preoccupied with thoughts about work. A few minutes later, you stop— something isn’t right. It takes you a moment to realize that you missed a turn and obliviously walked several blocks in the wrong direction. Despite its everyday familiarity, there has been no extended treatment of obliviousness within philosophy. In this paper I provide an account of obliviousness and show that this is a phenomenon worthy of sustained philosophical attention. On my account, an agent is oblivious of p at t when they non-deliberately fail to take a rational route to the belief that p that is immediately available to them at t. This account raises further questions, such as when agents should take rational routes to belief that are immediately available to them, what kind of failure obliviousness involves, and what explains cases of obliviousness. In answer to these questions, I suggest that agents should take those rational routes that are directly relevant to pursuing some aim that that they are or should be actively pursuing at t; that obliviousness involves both an epistemic failure and a practical failure; and that a number of different kinds of errors might underlie obliviousness, including failures of salience, failures of interpretation, failures to consider certain possibilities, and failures to raise or properly settle certain questions. In developing the account and answering some of the questions it raises, I draw connections to ongoing discussions in different areas of philosophy, including about the nature of epistemic normativity, inquiry, salience and norms of attention, non-ideal vs. ideal epistemology, claims that an agent should have known, moral evaluations of ignorance, and the insidiousness of oppressive social conditions.
Intersecting What? Intersecting How? An Intersectional Social Ontology at the Structural and Experiential Levels
Draft available here
Abstract: While intersectionality has gained prominence, the idea that race, class, gender, ability, sexuality, and other social divisions intersect has remained relatively undertheorized. For instance, exactly what kind of phenomena should be understood intersectionally— identities, groups, oppressions, or structures? And what does it mean to say that these phenomena intersect? My paper helps address this gap by developing a social ontology that provides a concrete picture of intersectionality at the levels of individual experience and social structure. On my account, intersectionality manifests at the level of social structure through structural mechanisms that represent a “fusion” of, e.g., race and class in the form of what I call complex sub-Sorts, as well as fused institutional roles. Then, because social structures causally explain experiences of injustice, distinctive experiences emerge at the intersections of traditional categories of analysis as a product of (1) the causal effects of “fused” structural mechanisms and (2) interactions between structural mechanisms. This account highlights different ways that social categories appear in discussions of intersectionality, and offers concrete ways of understanding the idea that social categories intersect.
Abstract: The recent, widespread focus on implicit bias has sparked a debate about the role of bias in causal explanations of persistent, systematic injustice. “Structural prioritizers” argue that structural causes are more important than individual causes, while “equal prioritizers” insist on the equal importance of individualistic and structural factors. In this paper, I make two interventions on this debate. First, I suggest that the debate is better framed in terms of explaining oppression. This is because there are multiple phenomena that are closely related to the forms of persistent, systematic injustice at the core of this debate. Using the language of oppression helps to clearly fix the explanatory target, distinguish it from closely related phenomena, and elucidate the explanatory demands that are relevant in the context of this debate. Second, I argue that both sides are mistaken in accepting that both individualistic and structural factors are necessary for explaining oppression. Explaining oppression, I argue, requires accounting for the various ways in which oppression is persistent and systematic, and explanations that appeal to individualistic factors fail to do this. As such, I argue that we should go in for a form of pure explanatory structuralism about oppression.
How is Oppression Structural? Let Me Count the Ways
In preparation
Abstract: The idea that oppression is a structural phenomenon is now widely accepted. It has become common to hear references to structural injustice and structural inequality, and to hear claims that racism, sexism, classism, and other such "-ism"s are structural. But what exactly does the claim that oppression is structural amount to? In this paper I distinguish between four main senses in which oppression can and has been thought to be structural, and suggest that each captures an important dimension of the nature of oppression. Identifying these distinct senses of structuralism allows us to clarify claims and arguments surrounding the structural nature of oppression, and also enables a better understanding of the phenomenon. In particular, I identify four main kinds of structuralism about oppression: (1) causal structuralism, which concerns the causal explanation oppression; (2) normative source structuralism, which is about where we locate the source of the harm or injustice done by oppression; (3) effects structuralism, which concerns structures that are brought about by oppressive processes; and (4) constitutive structuralism, which is about the conditions that make something oppressive, or make it such that some group counts as oppressed.