Papers by Zara Bain
Theory and Research in Education
Recent philosophical secondary literature on white ignorance – a concept most famously developed ... more Recent philosophical secondary literature on white ignorance – a concept most famously developed by the late philosopher Charles W. Mills – suggests that white ignorance is, one way or another, a non-structural phenomenon. I analyse two such readings, the agential view and the cognitivist view. I argue that they misinterpret Mills’ work by (among other things) committing a kind of structural erasure, and one which implies that Mills’ account cannot capture, for example, cases where white ignorance (and white racial domination) involves historical erasure, especially when perpetrated by sociopolitical institutions. This is particularly salient in cases such as the recent movement against anti-racist education, now widely conflated with critical race theory, in the United States and United Kingdom, which I offer as a brief case study.
Theory and Research in Education, 2023
Recent philosophical secondary literature on white ignorance – a concept most famously developed ... more Recent philosophical secondary literature on white ignorance – a concept most famously developed by the late philosopher Charles W. Mills – suggests that white ignorance is, one way or another, a non-structural phenomenon. I analyse two such readings, the agential view and the cognitivist view. I argue that they misinterpret Mills’ work by (among other things) committing a kind of structural erasure, and one which implies that Mills’ account cannot capture, for example, cases where white ignorance (and white racial domination) involves historical erasure, especially when perpetrated by sociopolitical institutions. This is particularly salient in cases such as the recent movement against anti-racist education, now widely conflated with critical race theory, in the United States and United Kingdom, which I offer as a brief case study.
Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies, Jun 21, 2022
What is the relation between ignorance and epistemic injustice, i.e. that body of work in philoso... more What is the relation between ignorance and epistemic injustice, i.e. that body of work in philosophical social epistemology that is said to identify cases where people are harmed in virtue of their status as knowers? That there is some relation between these two concepts and the phenomena they pick out has been affirmed from the perspective of epistemic injustice (Fricker 2016; Fricker and Jenkins 2017). I offer an alternative account of this relation which begins from the perspective of what philosophers and sociologists term ‘the epistemology of ignorance’. I make a preliminary case against the de facto subsumption of ignorance within the frame and terms of epistemic injustice risked by ‘epistemic injustice-first’ analyses, while defending the claim that ‘ignorance-first’ analysis is better able to track phenomena salient to any analysis of the epistemology of domination, oppression, and injustice.
Leading Works in Law and Social Justice, Jan 22, 2021
Chapter 3 looks at the work of Charles Mills, taking in a range of his scholarship including his ... more Chapter 3 looks at the work of Charles Mills, taking in a range of his scholarship including his most famous work – The Racial Contract – and his latest work, Black Rights, White Wrongs. Zara Bain applies Mills to consider how social justice applies in the UK. She looks at the interactions and co-constitutions of racism, classism, and ableism, and the role they play in the production of poverty. The chapter argues that Mills offers us a non-ideal contractarian analysis that may really offer ‘x-ray vision’ into parts of society many would readily, if not always credibly, deny precisely because it pushes us to look at the world as it really is, to learn our history and to be always on the lookout for the many ways that ignorance about matters of significant import to questions of social justice can be actively, resiliently produced.
Microaggressions and Philosophy, 2020
Our analysis is inspired by the fracas that arose around the second episode of the fourth Season ... more Our analysis is inspired by the fracas that arose around the second episode of the fourth Season of Netflix’s series Queer Eye, titled "Disabled But Not Really." This case will help us to articulate two important elements of microaggressions and to map the epistemic territory that polices the identity of disabled folks. Using this example, we will argue three things: First, central to conceptualizing microaggressions is understanding their mixed legibility. By this, we mean to suggest that crucial to the way that microaggressions function is that they are poised to deliver different messages to different audiences or multi-tiered messages to general audiences. Second, this mixed legibility is what allows microaggressions to be leveraged as part of a complex epistemology of domination that takes advantage of various mechanisms/element of epistemic oppression that are articulated in a growing literature (see literature review in the introduction to this volume). Finally, exploring the terrain of ableist microaggressions most clearly reveals how they can serve as a tool for maintaining the oppressive epistemologies that police the identities of disabled folk, but this role is not unique to them. In the first section, our argument will articulate how we understand “microaggression” and offer a clarifying augmentation of that account. In section two, we briefly locate ourselves within the literature attempting to define disability, then talk through how our analysis connects with the very few discussions of microaggressions within the context of disability. In section three, we introduce the case of “Disabled But Not Really.” In the fourth section, we leverage our previous analysis to show how microaggressions’ mixed legibility is crucial to their role in maintaining an epistemology that polices disability in general and disabled people in particular. We will close by discussing the ramifications this has for future analysis of both microaggressions and disability.
Ethics and Education , 2018
I argue that political philosopher Charles W. Mills' twin concepts of 'the epistemology of ignora... more I argue that political philosopher Charles W. Mills' twin concepts of 'the epistemology of ignorance' and 'white ignorance' are useful tools for thinking through racial injustice in the British education system. While anti-racist work in British education has a long history, racism persists in British primary, secondary and tertiary education. For Mills, the production and reproduction of racism relies crucially on cognitive and epistemological processes that produce ignorance, and which promote various ways of ignoring the histories and legacies of European colonialism and imperialism, as well as the testimonies and scholarship of those who experience racism in their everyday lives. I survey these concepts within Mills' work then marshal evidence in support of my claim that 'the epistemology of ignorance' and 'white ignorance' provide a useful framework for thinking through problems of racial injustice in British education.
Book Reviews by Zara Bain
Conference Presentations by Zara Bain
Does philosophy ignore disability, and if so, what results? The last few years have witnessed a s... more Does philosophy ignore disability, and if so, what results? The last few years have witnessed a surge in various literatures and spaces dedicated to talking and thinking about the philosophy of disability, and to the work and experiences of disabled philosophers. This might seem, on the face of it, to invalidate any claim that philosophy ignores disability. But this conclusion, I suggest, would be false. I argue that we can demonstrate that academic philosophy, and academia in general, has a tendency, in some important contexts at least, to ignore disability. I consider a story of one disabled student’s attempt to win funding for a philosophy PhD. This case study allows us to model three ways that philosophy ignores disability: first, by ‘presuming absent’ disabled philosophers and prospective disabled philosophers in crucial academic spaces such as interview rooms such that they become ‘unexpected bodies’; second, by failing to acknowledge the disproportionate burdens placed on disabled philosophers to participate in and access philosophical spaces; and third, by erasing or downplaying the significance of structural institutional arrangements in the production of these outcomes. In the final part of the paper, I draw on models for theorising ignorance offered by Charles Mills and Kristie Dotson to explore the characterisation of these phenomena as ‘ways of ignoring’ and identify three key aspects of the way that philosophy ignores disability: systematically, perniciously, and in a way that both causes and constitutes oppression. I argue that, at the very least, these ways of ignoring manifest Kristie Dotson’s notion of ‘epistemic oppression’. I conclude by drawing on Charles Mills’s ‘epistemology of ignorance’ to sketch an argument for the stronger claim that ignorance’s role in the production of oppression is not limited to the merely or distinctively epistemic. On this view, philosophy’s ‘ignore-ance’ of disability reproduces disability as a system of oppression.
Transcript for presentation at Florida State University SWAP/MAP 10th Anniversary Graduate Confer... more Transcript for presentation at Florida State University SWAP/MAP 10th Anniversary Graduate Conference, 27th March 2015.
Interviews by Zara Bain
Books by Zara Bain
Philosophy: A Crash Course, 2018
Why do philosophers ask “why”? Because they want to know. Because they love knowledge. Taken lite... more Why do philosophers ask “why”? Because they want to know. Because they love knowledge. Taken literally, philosophy is nothing more (nor less) than the love (philo) of wisdom (sophia)—and who doesn’t love wisdom? All human societies have developed systems of knowledge to help them understand our place in the universe and to satisfy our distinctively human curiosity. However, while standard histories of philosophy tend to focus on canonical figures and their “big ideas,” ideas don’t spontaneously come into existence in isolation from a context. They occur in relation to other ideas, had by other people. This book emphasises the collaborative nature of philosophy, showcasing the way that thinkers’ thoughts become intertwined, and focuses on how philosophy—even in its most abstract form—intersects with everyday concerns, integrating older philosophical discussions with newer debates.
Uploads
Papers by Zara Bain
Book Reviews by Zara Bain
Conference Presentations by Zara Bain
Interviews by Zara Bain
Books by Zara Bain