This coming Wednesday, MAP will meet to discus Kristie Dotson’s paper ‘How Is This Paper Philosophy?’

1-2pm, Wednesday 23rd October

Activity Room E, 8th Floor South East Wing, Bush House

In the paper, Dotson considers how a culture of justification in academic philosophy is creating a difficult working environment for academic philosophers from diverse backgrounds and what can be done to change this! As the paper is a bit on the longer side, we will be focusing on sections 2-5, but you are more than welcome to read the whole thing if you have the time and energy!  

The reading is open to all! Please feel free to come along and join.

In celebration of Black History Month, MAP and PhilSoc will be co-hosting a film screening of the documentary ‘The Stuart Hall Project’ (2013), written and directed by Black British artist and writer John Akomfrah.

Tuesday 15th October, 18:00-20:00

Strand Campus, S -1.27 (wheelchair accessible)

Stuart Hall was a Jamaican-born British philosopher, critical theorist, sociologist, and Marxist. He is considered one of the founding figures of the ‘New Left’ political movement of the 60s and 70s, as we as central to the development of Cultural Studies in Britain. The documentary looks at Hall’s life from colonial Jamaica to British intellectual, exploring themes of identity, diaspora, post-coloniality, and what it meant to be Black and British during the 70s.

The film screening is open to all!

If you are non-King’s student you will need to book a ticket on eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-stuart-hall-project-film-screening-tickets-75169129891

Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1359864710849465/

KCL MAP reading group will be meeting 13:00 – 14:00 next Wednesday, 9th October, in Activity room E, KCLSU (Bush House, South East Wing). The reading is ‘Reparations and Racial Inequality’, by Derrick Darby, University of Kansas (see file/abstract below). The reading group is open to all — staff, students, PGTs and PGRs, within and external to the department. All are welcome to attend!

For regular updates, join our Facebook reading group page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/581544455595991/

Or sign up to our mailing list by emailing: mapforthegap.kcl@gmail.com

Abstract: A recent development in philosophical scholarship on reparations for black chattel slavery and Jim Crow segregation is reliance upon social science in normative arguments for reparations. Although there are certainly positive things to be said in favor of an empirically informed normative argument for black reparations, given the depth of empirical disagreement about the causes of persistent racial inequalities, and the ethos of ‘post-racial’ America, the strongest normative argument for reparations may be one that goes through irrespective of how we ultimately explain the causes of racial inequalities. By illuminating the interplay between normative political philosophy and social scientific explanations of racial inequality in the prevailing corrective justice argument for black reparations, I shall explain why an alternative normative argument, which is not tethered to a particular empirical explanation of racial inequality, may be more appealing.