A Brief Intellectual Biography...
Like all disciplines, philosophy has its rules for how one must work within its domain. But personal experiences usually compel us to enter a field in the first place and determine the themes we choose to take up under its tutelage. In my case, a stint in psychology and working with people labeled schizophrenic led to my first philosophy book, Psychology and Nihilism: A Genealogical Critique of the Computational Model of Mind (SUNY, 1993). I argued there that the key metaphor in psychology, the computer, couldn’t provide a basis for explaining our cognitive competence. I also conjectured that the model itself was driven by a millennium of intellectual and social history that culminated in a technocratic form of rationality as the reigning framework of thought and a technocratic class as the main player in both capitalist and socialist societies. These conditions made it seem natural to privilege computational processes as the model for understanding our own minds, no matter how anomalous this model might be otherwise. We left aside a transfigurative form of rationality in favor of the routinizing of life that Nietzsche called “the last man.”
But there was another part of my history that had a greater influence on me than even my brief sojourn as a psychologist. I was against the Vietnam war but also against draft deferments for college students. No doubt the second of these two positions had to do with growing up in the Midwest and imbibing the equality that was preached everywhere but less frequently practiced in that part of the United States or elsewhere. Whatever my original motivation, I chose to exchange my deferment for a free pass to work in the war arena, specifically in Laos, under the auspices of International Voluntary Services, a non-governmental, non-profit organization. I learned the Lao language, lived in the local culture, and stayed for five years (1969-1974). The first two years involved a base-line survey and an impossible community development project near what was then the Royal Capital, Luang Prabang; the next three years were more successful work-wise, but this time at the Lao National Orthopedic Center in the administrative capital, Vientiane. At the Center, I worked with a Lao amputee counterpart in order to set up a social worker position. Surrounded by amputees, I learned that war criminals are those who start unnecessary military ventures.
Working in Laos, and later in Colombia as an exchange professor (1981-82), inspired my single-authored book, The Multi-Voiced Body: A Philosophy of Society and Communication, in the Age of Diversity (Columbia University Press, forthcoming). In this work, I address one of the most important issues of our time: how can we conceptualize diversity without succumbing to either a merely expedient pluralism or a homogeneous totality? In order to answer this question, I argue that society, global or national, is “a unity composed of differences” or, more specifically, what I call a “multi-voiced body.” This conceptualization is an original way of thinking about society as well as language, communication, and our status as persons. It also, I maintain, compels us to affirm diversity rather than to repudiate it through “ethnic cleansing” or other policies of political and social exclusion. In clarifying these claims, I draw on art, literature, and science as well as my primary field, philosophy. Throughout the book, I critically engage leading modernist and postmodernist thinkers in philosophy, cultural studies, linguistics, psychology and other intellectual fields. Moreover, my book straddles philosophy and political practice by specifying the implications that the idea of a multi-voiced body has for globalization, democracy in the work place, and collective rights. Currently, I am working on another book that brings my theory of society as a multi-voiced body to bear on the relation between art and citizenship within democracies.
Besides these two books, as well as a co-edited volume of articles on Merleau-Ponty (Chiasms: Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Flesh, SUNY: 2000) and numerous journal articles and book chapters, I teach PhD level courses on Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze, and Foucault, as well as thematic courses. On the undergraduate level, I regularly conduct a course on the philosophical roots of psychology. I am also Coordinator (director) and a founder of Duquesne’s Center for Interpretive and Qualitative Research (CIQR). The Center engages in monthly meetings on qualitative research projects and method, and brings together scholars using non-quantitative or mixed quantitative and qualitative methods from across the major Schools that comprise the University (www.ciqr.duq.edu). Furthermore, I am one of the initiators of a social justice group on campus. Our efforts have played a major role in establishing the University Social Justice Committee, inducting the University into the Workers Rights Consortium (a national-level anti-sweat shop organization), helping teaching adjuncts and graduate students to receive better health benefits, advocating successfully for the establishment of an official gay-straight alliance on campus, and, our current project, encouraging the University to accept a living-wage ordinance that would help campus employees as well as those working for companies with which the University contracts for various services. For some of these efforts, I received the President’s Faculty Award for Excellence in Service, 2002. More importantly, I enjoyed the bonds that these activities helped me forge with numerous colleagues that I otherwise would never have met.
For a more detailed and chronological record of my publications and other academic achievements, click here.