Undisciplinary
Undisciplinary
Summer Edition: Re-post of 2021 conversation with Bryan Mukandi on Race and Medical Power
Undisciplinary - a podcast that talks across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health.
Follow us on Twitter @undisciplinary_ or email questions for "mailbag episodes" undisciplinarypod@gmail.com
Just being seen right is something that some folks can take for granted by virtue of their position in society and the power that comes with that, whereas for other people, presenting oneself to a medical institution is literally doing that you present yourself and you hope that you are received in a manner that's just.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Undisciplinaria podcast, where we're talking across the boundaries of history, ethics and politics of health. Today we are recording on the unceded lands of the Wadawurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation in Geelong, and my name is Chris Mays. I'm joined by my co-host, courtney Hempton. Courtney, how are you going?
Speaker 3:Good thanks. How are you? Welcome to 2021.
Speaker 2:Hampton Courtney, how are you going? Good thanks. How are you? Welcome to 2021. I know this is the first episode of 2021. Still a little rusty with the technical and procedural side of things, but, yeah, looking forward to getting into more undisciplinary conversations this year. And so who are we talking with today?
Speaker 3:So today we are joined by Dr Brian McCundy. He's an ARC, decra Research Fellow with the School of Languages and Cultures in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Queensland. And Brian's background is in medicine, public health and philosophy. And these various fields come together in his transdisciplinary research agenda, which revolves around gaining greater conceptual clarity into the well-being of people belonging to marginalized groups. So Brian's research calls for an understanding of causal pathways, including the role of institutions and informal social configurations in ameliorating or worsening people's circumstances and what is owed to those served least well by society. So, brian, welcome to Undisciplinary.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for having me. It's just an absolute joy to be here.
Speaker 3:So, as I just very briefly introduced, you have an undisciplinary training which we love, an undisciplinary training which we love, and you've trained in various places as well. So you did your medical degree in Zimbabwe, a Master of Arts in Ireland and your PhD in Queensland in philosophy. So I guess, if you're wanting to expand on, I guess, your path through these fields, perhaps what drew you to medicine and then kind of what drew you from there into arts and humanities. So yeah, a bit about your undisciplinary background.
Speaker 1:OK, brilliant, thank you. Yeah, I was trying to think I was thinking yesterday. Do I think of myself more as a doctor who works in philosophy, or philosophy with a medical background? The doctors probably won't have me because I was last in hospital maybe 10 years ago, so I guess it's philosopher. But I think the medicine piece is really important for me.
Speaker 1:So I grew up mostly in Zimbabwe. My mom was an ICU nurse and back in the 80s I think we mostly in Zimbabwe, my mom was an ICU nurse and back in the 80s I think, when infection control maybe no when things were just a little bit more relaxed, my mom would sometimes take me to work and I would kind of sit there in the ICU nurse's station and sometimes kind of, you know, go on rounds, like just really briefly, and I was fascinated like there were all these very cool machines. I think I might have been too young to recognize the fact that these were like really really seriously ill folks who were lying in bed, but it was nice. My mom worked for an, you know, a private hospital. These were just very nice, very fancy settings, right, and I was a bit of a sickly child. So you know, I saw my GP a lot, and I I don't know at the age of five or six, I decided that when I grew up, I was going to be a doctor, and my parents held that against me. So you know like, when I got up, I was going to be a doctor and my parents held that against me. So you know like, when I got the grades, I ended up in medical school. The weird thing, though, is that I started medicine. I started my medical degree in the year 2000.
Speaker 1:And when I was doing my clinical rotations, it was probably the peak of the HIV and AIDS pandemic in southern Africa, right, and this was kind of before antiretroviral drugs were available in the public system, so it was pretty much a terminal diagnosis for most people. The public system was really, really massively under under strain. It wasn't fancy, it wasn't nice, it wasn't like that private hospital system, and it became pretty clear that, in a very, very, very kind of like visceral and real sense, that where you were born into meant that you either had, if you contracted, this virus, you were either going to have an annoying chronic disease, or you're going to be in a situation where you should start to put your affairs in order, and without having the vocabulary for it. I was just really troubled by the question of moral lack and I was also really troubled by the fact that, regardless of how smart or dumb you were, regardless of what you had done, if you were born into a family in my part of the world, more likely than not this diagnosis is going to be catastrophic if you did exactly the same things and you ended up in exactly the same situation in ireland, where I later lived, or you know most parts of australia, you know, then again, like manageable chronic disease, like diabetes or hypertension, or you know a bunch of other things like diabetes or hypertension or you know a bunch of other things. But that wasn't arbitrary, right, that wasn't random, like there was a set of historical processes that made that so and it just felt like the situation of the most vulnerable folks in the Zimbabwean health system was like a compounded, you know, reparation. So you know I found those questions and kind of trying to work through and thinking what it might look like to repair those. You know that that situation I found that a lot more interesting than clinical medicine, to be honest, and that kind of led me on this strange journey and you know I ended up here, yeah, but oh, but also, I mean sorry. One more thing. I had this thought earlier this morning. My mother's going to be horrified if she listens to this.
Speaker 1:My parents and my aunt and uncle they used to have this game of keeping up with the joneses. It was hilarious, you know, if one got something, the other family had to get like the slightly better version of it. It was just, it was dumb, but that's just how they were. So I started school at the local public school and my cousin started school at this nice private school and my parents couldn't have that and my mother hassled my father and hassled my father and hassled my father until eventually I went to this.
Speaker 1:I sat this entrance exam for a private school and they didn't want me. They're like, yeah, no. My parents were horrified. I think they might have tried to coach me, you know. They found like another private school and that private school was like, yeah, okay, we'll take them, and that was great. But then came time to actually pay fees, because that's what you do for fee paying private schools, right. My parents were like, no, we just don't have that money. Um, so no, and the school took a liking to me for some strange reason, um, and they're like, fine, we'll keep him and we'll give him a bursary.
Speaker 1:I wasn't anything close to being, in my opinion, the smartest of the people kind of, in my family or in my neighborhood, but I had access to an incredible wealth of resources an incredible wealth of resources, right and as a result of that I could kind of take my hard work and transform it into, you know, a bunch of like outcomes in ways that folks who are smarter than I was, who worked harder than I did, weren't able to. And again, moral luck like what. You know. What makes it so that a school decides that this five-year-old is worth investing in, whereas that one isn't, you know. So the, you know, at the back of my educational journey, I think, has been a recognition of lack of unmerited, unjustified kind of privilege, I suppose, and a question of the sorts of responsibilities and the obligations that come with that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's really interesting journey.
Speaker 2:And I think self-awareness, I mean a lot of people like to attribute moral, like to merit, and no doubt you're also working hard through these circumstances. And then, though, what I mean you were saying you moved from the clinical, or you felt that the clinical process wasn't, I guess, addressing these questions that you were having, but moving into philosophy. I mean, there's interesting how many people at least I know, just not personally know, but I guess in the history of, I guess, philosophy, humanities who kind of blur those lines, come from medicine into philosophy, and a number of people who I do know working in the, in the field of sort of bioethics or medical history or medical anthropology. Um, I won't name them all here because I'll forget some of them, but you know there are a lot of them around, um, not to say that it's a common thing, but it's an interesting thing, um, in that phenomena of, I guess, looking at human life in a sort of biological, physiological, clinical space and then moving into a sort of historical, philosophical, analytic space oh wow, oh yeah, that's so rich.
Speaker 1:Okay, I guess. First of all, just very quickly about the marriage thing. One of the first works of philosophy that I read and absolutely kind of fell in love with was, I think I think from Iris Marion Young's. I think it's Justice in the Politics of Difference or I think it's, uh, justice in the politics of difference or democracy in the politics of difference. One of the two, uh, and I think it's in there where she has this, this paper that basically debunks the idea of merit. And that was what I at its best.
Speaker 1:What I love about philosophy is the way that it gives a conceptual language to intuitions. Right, it's like you know, it's like people know things Like you speak to, you walk into any community, there will be like really wise people in that community and they know things you know and they'll express things in a variety of really interesting ways. One of the things I really value about philosophy is the sets of conceptual tools, the kinds of language that it can give to help communicate kind of intuitions and thoughts that are there but that, for a variety of reasons, some people kind of need proving. So, if you're like there's no such thing as merit, a lot of people know that right. A lot of people in Australia today know that the idea of merit is just rubbish. But there's a vested interest in the idea, you know. There's a vested interest in maintaining the idea of merit, and one of the things I really value about philosophy is the kind of.
Speaker 1:One of the things I really value about philosophy is the kind of sets of tools it gives, I think, for trying to show folks who buy into the idea of merit. Um, the problems with that it's not, you know it's often not successful, but at least you know it's something. But, and I think that idea of conceptual tools is what drew me to philosophy. So, um, you know, like I followed, um, a brilliant woman to ireland and, and that's why I went, how I ended up in ireland, and while I was there I started studying this really broad social science degree and there were all of these really well-intentioned folks, a lot of them who had worked in the development sector, some of whom had told me about how they'd gone to, you know, save the starving black babies in Africa. And these really nice, well-meaning people in their minds infuriated me, like infuriated me, except their response, for everything would be but human rights or something like that you know, and even response to human rights or something like that.
Speaker 1:You say racism and paternalism, especially if you're like African. It's like, ah, you're that kind of African and kind of. The assertion of human rights and the drawing on a figure of a particular kind of African leader kind of automatically disqualified me and it meant that I couldn't defend and I couldn't contribute to conversations often around people like me in ways that I just found really infuriating. So I was like I need to come up with a conceptual language that will allow me to explain to these people why they're wrong. Uh, and so I was like I think philosophy will help. I'm not sure. Um, and you know, there was this master's degree in political philosophy and I was like I'll take that, uh, and I signed up for it, um, and I went off and I did it. I mean, like once I got accepted onto the program I was like, ah, I've actually never taken a philosophy course and I'm now doing a postgrad degree in philosophy. This might not be my smartest decision. Think it's aimed for young people like you know, like 12, 13 year olds, and it kind of runs through the history of philosophy and that was my entry into philosophy, to be honest, and then I lived in the library, um, and I lived in the library and I read voraciously and I was beautiful.
Speaker 1:It was a really small program with like 12 people on it. We only had about four hours contact time each week and the rest of this time we spent reading and arguing with each other in coffee shops and bars. It was brilliant. It was a wonderful kind of introduction and I kind of you know, like when you think like I've arrived, like I'm home, this is exactly what it is I want to be doing with my life. That kind of happened, except the global financial crisis happened. We moved to Australia and that was strange because it was like there's a global financial crisis happening in Europe, not in Australia. That's you know.
Speaker 2:Ireland was really hit hard by that as well yeah, it really was.
Speaker 1:It really was. You know, I moved to australia as a stay-at-home dad for a little bit, um, and that was exhausting, um, that was exhausting, uh, and I decided I needed to do something easier and I got like a public health job, working on chronic diseases, and so I did that for a while, which is, I mean, academia is a strange thing. Right, my most cited papers are papers where, like, I contributed to papers on diabetes. It's the thing I'm least interested in everything I've ever done, but it's kind of it. It it makes me look like a much better and a much more prolific academic than I am. Uh, it's, it's very strange how academia works. Again, to merit, right, it's just a very strange thing yeah, yeah, no, I have similar, I think um yeah, small contribution to a big aim on sort of fiscal responses to taxes.
Speaker 2:And yeah, you write 150, 200 words, get cited a lot. You spend ages writing some philosophically turgid thing with 12,000 words.
Speaker 1:Yes, my version of that only has one citation, which was me. But again, you know the idea of merit and worth and how we value things. There's an instrumental value and there's a big community that's invested in diabetes mellitus. That work is taken up a lot, right. You know, and that's great. But I can tell you now it's not pathbreaking. There aren't very many interesting ideas in it.
Speaker 2:It's just a thing well, how about we move? Like I, I would like to hear much more, but, um, I think we like just to sort of fast forward to a paper that you've just recently had published in um, as you know, I've got a vested interest in this as as part of a special issue that I I co-edited with professor yin parodies and uh, emmanuel elias, uh, here at deacon on institutional racism.
Speaker 2:Um, uh, whiteness and the role of bioethics. Um, yeah, I mean here and now your work is bringing these two things together, the sort of medical dimension and a philosophical approach and your paper being seen by the doctor, a meditation on power, institutional racism and medical ethics. You know it's really fascinating and links will be provided in the show notes. But I mean you start this paper with an observation about a difference in the English expression of go and see a doctor in your language. I won't try to pronounce it here, but perhaps you can but the idea of go to be seen by the doctor and you begin a sort of meditation on that distinction. I was wondering if you, for the listeners who haven't had the opportunity to read, sort of just discuss that be seen and see and how that sort of then plays out in some of your thinking.
Speaker 1:Yeah, be seen and see and how that sort of then plays out in some of your thinking. Yeah, look, so I mean like, and it's an incredible special issue, forget my paper. All of the other papers in it are just brilliant and it's just a really, really, really nice, incredibly philosophically rich, uh and just really thought-provoking series of papers. So congratulations, and I know because I spent the last three years teaching medical students medical ethics, right, and getting I often, you know, I my approach has always been.
Speaker 1:Charles Mills has a paper called, uh, ideal theory as ideology in Hypatia Uh, and he's like, yeah, like ideal ethics, uh, principalism, uh, utilitarianism, deontology, like whatever any you know, virtue, even virtue ethics, like any kind of like ideal approach to ethics. For him it's like, ultimately, this is like an assertion of ideology, right, the real world's kind of like really non-ideal. So how do you grapple with and I spent the last three years kind of trying to find really good bioethics work um, that in a real, real kind of grapples with the health system from the vantage of, you know, folks at the pointy end of social injustice, right, and I think the special issues are a really great contribution to that and thinking about that like contribution to that and thinking about that. Like a lot of people, I think, think of going to see the doctor as either a neutral thing or a positive thing. You know, I was struck that, like think about the existence of the Aboriginal Medical Health Service and the Aboriginal, you know, and the community controlled the indigenous community controlled health sector.
Speaker 1:You know a group of people, you know, aboriginal Torres Strait Islander folks were like going to the doctors is not only a frightening thing, it's a dangerous thing. There's a sense in which kind of folks were like we's a dangerous thing. There's a sense in which kind of folks were like we don't get seen and there's all these harms that were attended to it. Right, right, you know there's numerous, numerous, numerous cases about people who go into hospital with these, really, really, really. When I first read the Miss Du case and I taught it, I remember saying to students that you know, if I were doing clinical teaching and a third or fourth year student failed to diagnose this woman, I'd be like you should be embarrassed. And yet you had a series of experienced people misdiagnosing her.
Speaker 1:There's this kind of just being seen, right, it's something that some folks can take for granted by virtue of their position in society and the power that comes with that, whereas for other people, presenting oneself to a medical institution is literally doing that you present yourself and you hope that you are received in a manner that's just and it's it's a horrific thought, right, like, particularly given how the institution of medicine has marketed itself as this benevolent, beneficent institution.
Speaker 1:You know, and I just I wanted to, I wanted to kind of grapple with that. And yeah, yeah, I just I just really wanted to grapple with that phenomenon. Yeah, and again, philosophy is really really useful, right? One of the first things a lot of people in philosophy will learn is kinds of distinction between the phenomenal and the noumenal. Right that there is a distinction. There may be a distinction between what's there and what we perceive. You know, medical training for the most part doesn't doesn't allow medical students the opportunity to grapple with that. The assumption is that there are these brute facts in the world and so long as you're sufficiently skilled, you ought to be able to apprehend them. And I wanted to take the most basic entry point of that, like seeing and perception and just showing how complex it actually is.
Speaker 2:And I mean you start as well with this vignette from Toni Morrison and to think about the power of both the medical gaze and seeing. And in this vignette there's um a woman in a hospital bed who's um, uh, as she describes, uh being looked at as if she's a horse falling and and the medical? Students are around being instructed.
Speaker 2:And incidentally, both Courtney and I were listening to this symposium recently via Zoom, where Carl Elliott, the philosopher and bioethicist, was talking about a similar experience when he was a medical student as something that struck him in the hospital where, as medical students, they were all around this woman who was having some kind of gynecological procedure and just being talked about as if she wasn't there. And I think the instructing doctor might have said you know, if you haven't seen a cervix before, here's your chance. And you know they all sort of took turns having a look and him just feeling a sense of shame as to this context.
Speaker 2:But yeah, so you start with this Tony Morrison vignette and I'll just read this quote. Only one looked at me, looked at my face, I mean I looked right back at him. He dropped his eyes and turned red. He knowed, I reckon, that maybe I weren't no horse foaling, but them others. They didn't know, they went on and then also notes that then she sees them talking to the white women how you feel going to have twins and these different relationships. But you note that in Toni Morrison's account there's also this power to look back. So there was the sort of objectifying power of the doctor looking, I guess, down, but then the power of the black woman looking back in this white institution retains a power, I guess not this complete helplessness.
Speaker 1:See, that one's a tough one, right, because you know, I think it's always important to hold up folks' agency, right? So, like I never want to say people are powerless, but you know, like, so I know what it's like to walk along the corridors of the hospital, knowing where everything is, knowing where everything belongs, being the doctor being treated in a certain kind of way. Everything belongs, uh, being the doctor being treated in a certain kind of way. There's power there, right, like I I know the power of being a doctor. I also know the helplessness of, you know, in the first week of, in the first week of his life, my son ended up this really high temperature and I had to take him to ER and like to ED sorry, wrong country and this utter helplessness of this hospital system that I wasn't a part of and these doctors that I didn't know and didn't know me, and this kind of being at their mercy. You know, I mean mean, like later on in that paper I talk about this incident, uh, with an um, irish medical officer who wanted my son to undergo I was just dumb he wanted my son to undergo this painful procedure for which there was a no, there were no clinical indications, but they just had a blanket policy about Africans. And in that case, like, I spoke, medicalese I was able to ask him about, like, the pathophysiology and so on and so forth, but ultimately he was just like you're intimidating me, I'm going now, so on and so forth, but ultimately he was just like you're intimidating me, I'm going now.
Speaker 1:Um, there was an utter powerlessness, right, in a lot of ways, um, there was agency but also powerlessness. So like, yes, that woman in that bed, the person who looked down, isn't the only one she would have looked at, he is the only one who responded. He was the only one kind of capable of, of shame, right, like, um, to his credit, you know, and I think, and the rest were insensible to it. So you know, the lesson that I drew from that like, especially in teaching medical students, was to ask the question like, you know, to what degree are you capable of a similar kind of shame? You know to what degree.
Speaker 1:How do you cultivate? How do you cultivate an ability to be, to be seen too? You know, like, how do you cultivate like a, how do you make sure you don't become insensible? You know, how do you cultivate a certain kind of disposition that means that, um, the gaze isn't unidirectional for all intents and purposes. And I mean, and what's interesting is that there are some wonderful, wonderful, wonderful students who were open to hearing, to being challenged and to grappling with that question. But already you know, first year of medical school, maybe the majority of students are already so invested in the power and the privilege that becoming a doctor will bestow on them that they are already you know, like they are already, the situation that's played out in that vignette. You can tell that exactly the same would unfold already at this stage and I think it's a.
Speaker 2:It's an interesting um idea as well to be able to be seen, perhaps, as a doctor, be seen as an individual, rather than be seen as part of and hide behind a fraternity or hide behind a society or hide behind the institution when things go poorly or when things go not the way that you would want.
Speaker 2:And I think that's um. It just reminds me of a paper by the sociologist peter conrad, um about, I think it's called, becoming doctor um, and he sort of notes the socialization that when they come into medical school they want to be, that their desire not all of them, but their desire primarily is towards the patients. But then they're slowly um socialized into being protecting each other, um from the patients, or protecting becoming part of a hospital or institutional or, you know, medical society, where when there are, I guess, accusations of malpractice or racism or those sorts of things, they lock in together rather than, I guess, the difficulty and you address this, I think, in your paper when you discuss the idea of paresia, of speaking truth to power, and whether it is putting too much on an individual medical student, I think, in your example of to be able to simply speak if it's, yeah, just a matter of speaking truth to power in those institutional contexts. Or how do we retain an agency, retain an individuality in that context?
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yeah. So it's difficult. I mean, you know, I, the challenge that I put before students in teaching medical ethics is in Specters of Marx, derrida has this thing where he meditates and he dwells, he tarries on the phrase learning to live right and he thinks about the different valences of that phrase, what it means to learn to live, and he gets to this point where he's like but it can be troubling, you know, it can feel like training, like dressage, you know, and so what I ask my students is like you know this process, this you know, enculturation into doctor is it an education you know like, in the sense of by there, like you know, like? Is it a genuine, rigorous education, or is it a training like a show pony you know like? Is this dressage is ultimately what you're working at, to become like this fancy show pony? I'm currently writing, I'm working on this paper based on my last student.
Speaker 1:Evaluations were hilarious. One student who I thought was incredibly, incredibly insightful and I love this comment said I hope we don't have this person teach us next semester. So it's really respectful. You know, they were really respectful. So I was like I hope we don't have this professor next semester. The overseas students call everybody a professor. I'm not, uh, but they're like because I just want to learn how to be a doctor. I don't want to have to think about whether or not diabetes mellitus is a social construct, you know, and I thought that was so insightful and that was brilliant. I was like but what does that mean? Right, I don't want to have to think, I don't want to have to, I don't want to be troubled, I don't want to be unsettled, I just want to learn my steps. You know, I just want the dressage.
Speaker 1:And how long was the habits of racism? I find, in terms of thinking about responsibility, you know there's a you can kind of think that's a neutral thing. I just want to learn my steps is politically neutral, right. But politically neutral again, we said like, like you know, there's this set of institutions the medical institution is one against the background of which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander folks have decided they need a separate you know, culturally safe, like safe medical system. So neutral means conformity with a system so unsafe that others have had to go and set up something else, you know, for their own safety.
Speaker 1:So neutral isn't particularly neutral, right. And we have this really difficult situation where you can tell yourself that I just want to be a good doctor, I just want to be a good clinician, I just want to focus on the science, and that becomes an alibi to a kind of complicity and a means of not having to look at the power relations and the social structure that you're upholding. Um, you know, there's a great, great, great paper in the uh commentary in the mja by charles bond and david singh, where you know which ends with this kind of like call for uh, if we're serious about the health and well-being of everybody, there needs to be this radical transfer of power. You know, this reconfiguration of power, right and and so like you know, like the person right at the get-go.
Speaker 1:You know who is like as an individual. I just want to be a really good applied scientist, and that's all I want to focus on has already made a kind of political decision about maintaining the status quo.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and your paper as well has a good. I mean you start this by turning a brief light onto academic publishing conventions as well, which is nice. I did appreciate a number of the papers you know did take a little dig at. Yeah, I think you know, in publishing these sorts of articles there's always that um, you know, depending on the journal, um trying to beat it into a particular shape that's required and particular conventions that are required.
Speaker 2:But um, uh, and, and you talk about the sort of the fidelity to conventions, the needing to hold up the governing regime, and, and you draw on Nietzsche, but also with Hannah Arendt, and just to quote a little bit from what you take from her, you know Arendt casts this in this idea of the status quo in terms of habituation to algorithmic patterns of thought.
Speaker 2:By this she means the establishment of a pattern of excusing oneself from the incredibly difficult labor of thought, deferring instead to off-the-shelf status quo, reinforcing conventional wisdom and cliches.
Speaker 2:And I guess you know that there is a comfort in that of just thinking with the status quo, of just going with the flow, and and I mean pierre bordeaux also talks about this as sort of fast forward thinking, often, sorry, fast food, thinking that it's just a reliable predictable. You use the cliches, other people understand you, you fit in with the conventions. You don't have to stop and pause a project to ask, um, is, uh, diabetes a social construction, or why is it unevenly distributed in these different communities that seem to align with whiteness and class and all sorts of things. So, um, yeah, I mean, I think then you use that to unpack then the difficulty of seeing certain patterns within and and thinking differently to that sort of algorithmic pattern. And I think, with the context of the medical student, but then with academics as well and everyone who are operating in these different kinds of institutions, there is that great challenge.
Speaker 1:And you know it's funny because, believe it or not, by inclination I think I'm a little bit conservative and like the sense of there is, I understand, the comfort of, you know, bessie Head, a South African novelist from way back. It's like we love our grooves, you know, we love our grooves, no matter, you know, no matter how icky that groove is, there's a comfort in being, in staying in your groove, right? I, you know, I like work that isn't challenging to me in the sense that it doesn't question, it, doesn't kind of shift the rug from underneath me, you know. So, critical work that's critical in a way that I understand, I love because it's like reinforcing and it's comforting, right. Every now and again I'll read something and I'll like I don't know what to do with this and it's troubling, you know, and that's a you know, and I think for all of us that's difficult. And if our grooves were just, if they led to kind of like this just outcome, then that would be fine. If they led to kind of like this just outcome, then that would be fine, right. But it's like we don't live in a perfect society, you know, our health systems don't serve everybody.
Speaker 1:Academic publishing conventions are such that there are some groups of people with some sense of ideas that are more likely to get published than others. And again, if we go back, like you know, like the papers that I've contributed to that on paper would look like the best given the metrics are the least worthwhile that I've ever you know that have my name on them, not to suspect to those papers, but like it's like there's nothing there that you won't find somewhere else, if we, you know, back to bond and saying, right, like, if our starting point isn't like status and isn't doing well on the basis of the status quo, if our starting point is, let's say, health, you know, a good health for everybody, or a delight in a challenging ideas, you know, or an unrelenting pursuit for wisdom, then then I think there's got to be an openness to. If that's the case, then I think what you, you know the grooves won't cut it. Then, right, you know, I've found, like I've consistently found, that the only times I ever think to myself I might be the smartest person in the room is in really elite rooms, you know, like in, typically, the rooms that are made up mostly of older white men. Typically those spaces aren't particularly smart or creative, you know, you know that thing about kind of like, you know, back in the day when we could still go to conferences. Uh, and you, you go to some international conference and there's this panel and there's this room full of the people whose books you've read, and it is profoundly disappointing. I think part of it is because convention means that the people who are elevated are elevated on the basis of their fidelity to convention and not necessarily on the basis of what it is they bring. You know, the people who are systematically excluded. On the other hand, there's often a wealth of ideas there.
Speaker 1:Now, the challenge for me and I think it's a genuine challenge for all of us is so on what basis do you adjudicate the thing that appears in a non-conventional form? You know, because there's a lot of just rubbish as well that's non-conventional. The fact that it's non-conventional doesn't mean it's good. You know, there's a lot of just rubbish as well. That's not conventional. The fact that it's not conventional doesn't mean it's good.
Speaker 1:You know, I often have arguments with my 11 year old son about how his taste of music is trash and mine is excellent. The question is, you know, and what we're really arguing about is the terms and the basis on which we make judgments of the good. Uh, and I again, I can't, you know, like I don't like emmanuel kant, like I just I just think a person is not a transcendental unity of our perception. I think he was wrong about a bunch of stuff, but one thing from his that I think is really useful is, to borrow from his language. I think we often conflate judgments of taste for judgments of the good. I think often we're like this feels good and right and I'm comfortable with this and I can read this as valuable, and we conflate that with, and we allow ourselves to believe that this is valuable and those things often aren't the same thing. Um, sorry, I'm going on a rant we love a rant.
Speaker 3:Um, I've had lots of questions.
Speaker 3:One of the things that I was thinking as you were talking particularly around the um, medical education and particularly teaching ethics to medical students is whether that's how you've perhaps, through that process, reflected on your own medical training and in the paper you kind of speak of.
Speaker 3:Um, you know we need to see medical training as this kind of process of enculturation and how there may be ways to kind of resist that or change that. But there's also you kind of comment that there's a reality to a student who's resisting or overly vocal, but they need to kind of be seen as passing professionalism and all these other kind of encoded kind of aspects of what it means to be a good doctor, kind of as we train them through a system. But yeah, I was just kind of wondering if that's if kind of looking at that now, teaching the current kind of cohort of medical students, as you've been doing that for the past few years, as to perhaps, when you yourself was, were a medical student, what what we might expect of medical students in terms of their role in, I guess, shifting this process or this system in a perverse kind of way.
Speaker 1:I think I was really fortunate as a medical student, right like I was a medical student at a time of social, political and economic upheaval, like you know. I mean, I remember one time, you know, having to leave a bread queue to go join a cash queue and then actually the cash queue to go join a fuel queue, and sitting in the fuel queue with, like my medical books because I had to study at the same time. Like it was it was. It was a really unusual and a really strange time, but what.
Speaker 1:I think what was really helpful for that cohort was reality was horribly inescapable, like, do you know, when you spend half the day in the wards and people are literally dying and we're in a context where things are just unstable and you know the status quo is fragile, you know the status quo is fragile. I think that forces a deeper kind of engagement with what you're doing and it forces a kind of you know like thought I think becomes inescapable because those algorithms won't serve. You know you can't work on the base of algorithms when, like you know, things are falling apart. You can't work on the base of algorithms when, like you know, things are falling apart. I I think the challenge, I think the challenge for the you know, like, our current crop of students is you think about the filtering process it takes to get to medical school right, like if you grow up in a small rural community, you're just less likely to have the kinds of resources at your disposal that mean that your hard work and your intellect will transfer into an op. The opportunity cost of doing all the things to get you into a graduate entry are such like just life means that you're less likely to be able to pay that cost, and if you do, you're probably going to be like a good bit older by the time you get there, and so your manner of interactions with the rest of the class is just different, right, your manner of interactions with the rest of the class is different, right? If when my son comes home at the end of the term and we go through his report, I ask him you know so how much of this particular bad grade is you being lazy and how much of it is like your teacher just not quite seeing you because you're a black kid, you know? And so again, like you know, there's going to be racialized kids and so on and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1:Like you know I mean this we have really difficult conversations about if you have physical disabilities, uh, what you know, to what physical impairments would make it so that you couldn't reasonably practice medicine and how much of it is, you know, just the again a kind of inherent ableism in medicine. But, like, we have this filtering process that means that the typical student, the student body, tends to have a pretty narrow set of lived experiences, you know. But those lived experiences are far richer and far more diverse than the lived experiences of those of us who teach them, because, again, think about the filtering process that it takes to kind of be someone who teaches in medical school and and so I don't know, like I think you know, systems are really good at reproducing themselves, right? I'm not sure. I'm sorry, I'm not sure I have a good answer for you.
Speaker 1:I think maybe it's like lately I've just been really preoccupied by, by the question of possibility, right, like the, the question of the possibility of change, um, and the question of of how, what it would mean to genuinely kind of democratize and the epistemic ramifications of kind of democratizing medicine. Like, what would the practice of medicine look like? If, what would our conception of health and wellbeing and our and our, you know, we give lip service, for example, to the richness of indigenous conceptions of health, right, what would it take and what would look like, um, to actually have those incorporated? I'm I'm sorry. Again, this feels like just a really long ramble. I'm not sure.
Speaker 2:That was no, no, no that's perfect and I think that it touches on both, something in your paper that I think is the sort of crux of a lot of this and also then leads into perhaps the next set of sort of final set of questions about your future projects.
Speaker 2:But I think, like you make this point about, I guess, different kinds of racisms in the sense of the I guess what some people talk about, you know the subjective individual, there's the racist, and you were sort of saying that's not conceptually interesting or sort of difficult. Not conceptually interesting or sort of difficult. Like you're talking about this, the, the role of philosophy, I guess, in in your work, and the, and the way that, um, yeah, to spend work on, on, on pointing those things out, is important. And I think you say you know we need to marshal resources to be able to identify and remove these sorts of people from institutions, but the, the um, that's right then here to, to quote from you, uh, and I think I'll be using this in a lecture at the end of the week, um, saying, well, I just think that it really gets to the.
Speaker 2:The difficulty in saying um, uh, that the bulk of the conceptual labor regarding racism within the health sector, for example, ought to be directed is in illuminating the racism that the health professional does not recognise or realise or refuses to see as racism. And I think it's that sort of difficulty of being able, you know it's in those contexts where people say, oh, it wasn't meant that way, or you're being overly sensitive or you're interpreting these things wrongly. And I think to your point about being fully democratising healthcare and incorporating Indigenous knowledges of health. I think the difficulty oh not the difficulty the possibility of change your point. The difficulty or not the difficulty, the possibility of change your point like is people from people who already see this stuff don't need to be taught it. And I think trying to teach people it as important as that is and I think you know, for those of us who are involved in that, need to continue to do that.
Speaker 2:But expecting, say, the higher-ups, the AMA, to all of a sudden, from top down, see institutional racism and radically transform the healthcare system, it's going to come from below.
Speaker 2:I believe that possibility of change will come from the margins, as marginality is a difficult, problematic concept in and of itself, and even historically, thinking about medical students, like the Journal of Medical Ethics today, arguably a pretty conservative kind of journal, but it was started by medical students, a lot of these sort of different, you know and in the 70s and responding to radical politics then, and I think sort of that possibility of the Indigenous perspective on health, which is then the, a project that you're involved with, I think has a really interesting potential for some of this sort of transformation from below and from the edges that hopefully doesn't have to labor so much on illuminating that racism, because the people involved in these projects are already well aware of it or don't need to be convinced by it because they know it. Yeah. So yeah, your project is what I guess that rant was leading to. This project you're part of, led by Associate Professor Chelsea.
Speaker 2:Bond and Lisa Wopp has been on. This program is also part of led by Associate Professor Chelsea Bond and Lisa Wopp has been on. This program is also part of. It Sounds, yeah, really exciting. If you could tell us a bit about that, it would be great to hear more.
Speaker 1:Okay, great, okay, brilliant, yeah so.
Speaker 2:Or while you gather your thoughts. Not to interrupt, sorry to interrupt, we could, so we've got the project description. So the Indigenous Health Humanities was awarded through the Discovery Indigenous Program and it aims to develop Indigenous health humanities as a new and innovative field of inquiry, building an intellectual collective capable of bridging the knowledge gap that hinders current efforts to close the gap in Indigenous health inequality. Yeah, I won't read the whole thing, but we'll put it up on our show notes. But yeah, it's.
Speaker 1:Okay, great, it's just. There's a gazillion thoughts in my mind. I was just thinking it's messy, you're really, really undisciplinary. I'm thinking how to order it in a coherent narrative.
Speaker 1:Okay, a while back again, before the plague, where we could travel, I was at this international conference-y thing and I ended up being sat at a conference dinner with a phenomenologist and I said to this phenomenon, I said to somebody else, actually this PhD student, someone who's about to start their PhD, I was really interested and they were really interested in mental anguish and how we understand and make sense of psychiatry and so forth. Right, and you know, I offered some unsolicited advice, you know, unfortunately, but I remember saying if I were you, I would keep my focus primarily on the folks who you're thinking about and about the and on what mental anguish is, as opposed to phenomenology. Because I find that folks who are primarily invested in the discipline that leads you know that leads them astray, because you know fidelity to discipline is like being on a set of railway tracks and it'll let you move up and down, but along the route set out on those railway tracks and you don't want to be bound by that, to be bound by that, and the phenomenologist heard this was very offended and we, yes, let's just say I don't imagine I'll be collaborating with that person. But well, that's to say a long time ago, you know, like there was a period of time when I was seduced by philosophy, right, there's a period of time when I was seduced by philosophy, right, there was a period of time where the idea of what philosophy might be and philosophers and philosophical gatherings were really really seductive to me and I was really into them.
Speaker 1:There were all these things that I thought the philosophy you know like, and I got tired at kind of like philosophy conferences saying philosophy establishment in Australia. What are we doing about the racism you know? What are we doing about the absolute refusal to have Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander keynotes and to think? And what are we doing about, I mean like, the idea of a continental European philosophy in Australia, the idea of a continental European philosophy in Australia? It's a fascinating idea but the laziest and the worst application of that is exegesis of 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th century European thinkers' work in Australia today as though we were. You know this, when Tony Abbott talks about Australia as this outburst of the anglosphere, indeed, if not in word, the philosophy establishment in Australia often kind of gives a sense of that in ways that I thought were troubling. Right, and who knows, maybe if I could comfortably situate myself in that anglosphere project, maybe I would have been satisfied. I hope not, but maybe I would have been, you know.
Speaker 1:So I I'm not trying to be self-righteous or anything, but I just found myself in a situation where I was like the things that are most dear to me, the actual questions, you know, that matter most to me, this group of folks is either incapable or unwilling to take seriously. You know, there was another group of folks, you know, aboriginal tar sri ala scholars, like grappling with what seemed to me like the most pressing and the most interesting philosophical questions in Australia today. Right, and I was like that you know like, can I hang out? Because these you know like, these you know like, because I think I think the most profound thought, I think the best thought, is thinking done in commune, in community and in relationship. Because, again, to quote tony abbott, you know, no one's the suppository of all wisdom. Right, you know we, we are, we are finite. And because we're finite, you know my people have a saying like a single finger can't crush like a flea right, like a deep, sustained, important intellectual work. I think only happens in partnership, you know, and in community and the community of folks most committed and doing the most like just rigorous and interesting intellectual work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, I thought well, like you know, aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander folks kind of grappling with the questions of what's possible, do you know, I mean the question of what does well-being and health mean and look like for the colonized in a colonial situation? You know, I mean just conceptually. But it's not just conceptual because, as folks are like, I'm not thinking these things for the sake of, you know, having the cleverest journal article or like the fanciest book, but because the answers matter to my family and my community, like and that life for death, like urgent, important, deep thinking and thinking that's anchored by by, by its urgency, by the urgency of the subject matter. Like you know, it's just wonderful, um, and I found, uh, immense amounts of generosity and friendship and community. And you know, like I, after my PhD, I worked in the Polish Centre for Indigenous Health for a while and I was situated in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies unit. But you know, I'd known Chelsea for like years before. Then again, she'd just been like incredibly generous uh and the toughest and best kind of back and forth over cups of coffee, like with her and others. Uh, I mean, like you know, like I've told you already, like I I said that uh, the episode you guys had with lisa wop, uh for my students, uh, she's just a giant and she's brilliant. And again like just yeah, brilliant thinker.
Speaker 1:And the thing with the Indigenous Health Humanities Project was the starting point was Lester Rigney has kind of, like you know, articulated like an Indigenous health research paradigm, where health research paradigm, where research ought to have kind of like an emancipatory gulf, first Nations folks, where indigenous voice is crucial and the research is kind of like seen as unapologetically political because and we know this right, louis Althusser, like you know, the cultural state apparatus and the ideological state apparatus, like you know, like this has been articulated by a variety of people in a variety of contexts.
Speaker 1:I think about, you know, linda Chai-Smith's decolonizing methodologies. Like you know, there's a and you know like in and you know like in and you know like in articulating kind of like this indigenous research paradigm, you know, drawing on his own, on Rigney's own work, on, you know, martin Aikita's work, on AM Robinson's work like. And yeah, the question then becomes like if the health, the well-being, the situation of First Nations people is what's centered, what are the range of research methodologies and research approaches and research agendas that will kind of, yeah, the project's about kind of instituting a research agenda and program that is faithful to that? But yeah, I mean like again, chelsea Waterglobe now and Lisa Wobb would be far better a place to kind of have this conversation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, we hope to have that conversation not to be presumptuous about such things, but I think it's also yeah, it's something that's uh. When those announcements were made, I think such an exciting thing to look at, especially, I think you know a field, if you like, of medical, medical humanities has so much promise but then ends up often being a bunch of retired surgeons sitting around drinking wine talking about how literature applies to, whereas this, yeah, as you say, like dealing with pressing and a radical rethinking of the way things are being done and that interconnection of health, indigeneity and humanities, I can't resist not joining you and throwing a bit of shade on philosophy.
Speaker 2:I went to this. I mean your point as well about the seduction of philosophy, I think, in these spaces is really interesting as well.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of people, I guess, have had their hearts broken or their desires broken by philosophy, but I I always think of this um, uh, alienating and encouraging experience all at once. It was the end of um, spep, um the society for phenomenal and existential philosophy, sort of uh, in the us in 2013, and you know it was fun being over there meeting people and all sorts of things, but often just sitting through all those papers just like what am I doing here?
Speaker 2:and then um, uh, I'm pretty sure it was christy dotson, um, a black feminist theorist from michigan state university who was responding to, I think, someone's book panel or something like that, and then um took said that a lot of philosophy, contemporary sort of continental philosophy, in that context as well, was what she as fan fiction, that it was just this sort of exegesis of what would Hegel think now, what would Foucault think now, and this detailed exegesis of these particular points, as if I am, you know, cosplaying for code or something like that, and that's not to sort of you know, there's, as we all know, footnotes, great things, et cetera, et cetera. But yeah, that disappointment of there's also a lot of other things going on that we could be thinking about.
Speaker 1:But do you know what. So this is not just because I'm back in the same faculty now as the philosophers I need to be playing nice. But seriously, like, I mean the criticisms. You know and Chelsea says this, this a lot that, uh, criticisms an act of love, right, like when people, like, when people are complaining about what may end up being kind of this temple venerating European thoughts, when, let's be honest, thus far, that's what the institution you know, that's what we've been doing.
Speaker 1:So what's the problem? And you know, like, I stand by that critique, but I make it, and I stand by it because I think I mean the potential, right, it's like there is diversity isn't just a marketing thing, it really, really, really isn't. You know, like, how I understand the value of it is, and you know, to take a continental European figure, you know, get them up. We have a horizon of understanding, right, we're finite, we're limited. There's this plane from which we understand. Engaging with folks who understand from a different horizon provides an opportunity for a kind of reorientation, for, like, just this deep, profound kind of learning. Why wouldn't we want that? Do you know what I mean? Like and again, like if what you're invested in is an unrelenting pursuit for wisdom or, in less grandiose terms, if you're interested in democracy, or if you're interested in health, or if you're interested in justice, or if you're interested in, you know, just whatever it is, why wouldn't you know, like, why wouldn't you investigate the various traditions and the various places in which people have grappled and are grappling with these things? And to me it seems like the only way. So here's the indictment. I think the only way the discipline in this country looks the way it is is that the investment you know the primary ends for at least enough people haven't been justice or democracy, or that's not what the interest has been. The interest hasn't been in wisdom. The interest has been in maintaining a particular kind of status quo, maintaining a particular kind of hierarchy and enjoying the privileges that come with success on those terms. And I'm like, okay, but what would happen if, like, surely there's ways of ensuring success on more just times, right? Like, yeah, I don't know my criticism, like it's because the status quo kind of breaks my heart.
Speaker 1:Like you know, I think about, so I've been, you know, like the, you know your special issue of the Journal of Biological Inquiry. Like you know, like I've been watching the articles as they come out and they're all really different, is some of them? Um, some of the articles just appeal to me and I find easier to engage with than others. You know some of them I'm like pom-poms out. Others I'm like I'm not so sure about that, but like it's rich, it's challenging and it's a wonderful collection of, if you want to think, institutional racism and health. I'm like like you know what a great way to do that, right? I mean, I, I'm into like I think it would be incredible if philosophers committed to philosophy as opposed to I'm not. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I don't know, I'm going to stop there.
Speaker 2:We should probably begin to wrap up up, but it would be really good. I know this. This may not be the beginning, this could be the beginning of the end, but, um, yeah, I mean congratulations. You were, you received, um, your decra, uh, in the same, uh around the same time as the discovery indigenous came through. Must have been a nice, uh little period for you, um. But, yeah, the your project, um, seeing the black child, um, I was wondering if you could just tell us, yeah, a little bit about what that project is, and obviously only just beginning, but it will be, yeah, another good thing for us to keep thank you, thank you very much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I'm grateful, right, like um, it's it's difficult to celebrate those things too much because, like you know, there's a, a lot of folks who put in wonderful, wonderful applications, who would have done really great work, whose projects didn't get up, um, and so that's hard, right, yeah, that's difficult to contend with. But I am grateful, I'm immensely grateful, and also, again, like I think about the conditions of the possibility of that work and the love that goes into it. Right, like you know, like Chelsea put me on, like had me on a bunch of projects and you know, on her work, you know um had me like as a chief investigator and a co-author where other academics would have uh paid me for my labor but not kind of officially put me down on stuff, and that makes such a big difference. You know just that generosity uh made such a big difference. That application, um, you know, uh, nalawangra, a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, uh community controlled organization, um just very generously, uh happy to partner with me, and again, makes all the difference in the world. I think about all of those times someone cited my work and said something nice about it and I could quote that in the application.
Speaker 1:Like you know, I am a big fan of robust critique and engagement. I think it's important, like it's an important part of intellectual integrity and honesty, but that doesn't preclude kindness. But that doesn't preclude kindness. And you know, and a bunch of people have been kind to me, even you know, like some of my reviewers, like they were, just they were really kind, you know, like and in the just in all of the competitiveness of academia, I think sometimes we lose sight of just our humanity and sometimes, you know, there's just an unnecessary lack of kindness and I think what, reflecting on kind of getting that award, the thing that kind of like strikes me most is just the kindness, right and and the relationship within kindness and just, yeah, keeping keeping a hold of of of of what's important of our humanity, yeah, but in terms of the actual project, um, so it starts with having a conversation with my son.
Speaker 1:I remember what he had done. He wasn't paying attention with something or other, he was just, you know, and half jokingly, but not really. I kind of said to him I was like dude. And this is how I speak to him I was like dude. Like you know, you're growing out of this cute little black child thing and you're now entering into, you know, black youth, and people are going to read your kind of way and, yeah, dangerous, dodgy, black youth, and you just can't be a child anymore. You've kind of got to be aware. I said this to a 10 year old and and I sat with that for you know, and I recognized that I said this to my 10 year old and I went away and I was like, was that unkind? It's like maybe, yes, was it unfair? Yes, was it wrong? No, because it's true.
Speaker 1:And then I genuinely started to ask, like you know, like, do black kids get to be kids in this context, in the society? You know, um, and I don't think so. You know, like, I remember in melbourne and there was a, there was the african gang situation. You know, exactly the same act, exactly the same sets of circumstances. Uh, you could just say those are a bunch of kids being stupid, those are dumb kids who need to be arraigned, right. Or you could be like those are criminals or proto-criminals or something. If they were blonde-haired, blue-eyed children from affluent neighborhoods, I suspect there's a really good chance that it would have been like these are dumb kids. What is with this alienation? Let's come up with some afterschool programs. Let's think about what it is that makes these kids, who have everything going for them, act so stupid, you know, or I think about the fact that there was, you know, not too long ago, that report about 100% of kids in youth detention in the Northern Territory being Indigenous.
Speaker 1:That, to me, says that when some police officers see an Indigenous kid do something dumb, they don't think dumb kid, I'm giving you a warning, they think I'm taking you in. Or when they see a white kid doing something dumb, they're like don't be stupid, do that again and you'll be in trouble. Or maybe when someone might be acting suspiciously, they might be like ah, not worth investigating, or that type, I need to go investigate. You know again, magistrates, right, when the magistrate is sentencing. It leads me to believe that some magistrates at least think, you know, with some white kids at least think don't do it again, come from a good family and a good home, or whatever. Like you know, with some white kids at least think, don't do it again, come from a good family and a good home, or whatever. Like you know, or can, or when they see the child, maybe see themselves or see their own children and when it's an Indigenous kid, there isn't that same kind of identification. Because if it were the case, if there was something in the water there that meant that if you're non-Indigenous, your kids are exempt from all kinds of criminality, then we you know, all of us non-Indigenous folks would be moving our children and moving to the Northern Territory in droves. Right, it's like this is magical, it's guaranteed good outcomes for your children.
Speaker 1:You know, I don't think that's what it is. I think what it is is different ways of seeing. You know, I don't think that's what it is. I think what it is is different ways of seeing. And it made me think about, you know, like Sananakata's work on childhood and Joanne Faulkner's work on childhood and just kind of thinking like what's the figure For both of them? Like you know, childhood is a political concept, concept, you know, like it's not, it's not, it's not a natural thing, it's not a thing that exists in the world. Uh, it's not an a priori category, it's a political concept. And I was like, if child is a political, how do the children of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander folks and African folks and African diaspora folks, what's their relation to that concept?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it looks fascinating from the project description and, yeah, I was more familiar with Joe Faulkner's work on the innocence of the child. So, yeah, it would be interesting to see this in conversation with that and others, particularly, I think, in Australia, particularly the innocence of the child being lost in the wilderness and all of this kind of you know, long history of that um, but this um, yeah, completely different configuration of the the black child, as you are pointing out and the the politics and history associated with that. I've been thinking this almost will need to be a two-parter. I think there's so much in it, but I think we can get it. It's been a great conversation with you, brian, but yeah, we look forward to yeah, try to get more discussions of the Indigenous health humanities and your work as it develops. It would be great to hear and keep abreast of.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. I mean like, yeah, it's you know. I mean like you know, like you know this right, like it's a privilege kind of getting the kind of time and space to when you're doing your phd. When I was doing my phd, I didn't realize how much of a privilege it was. Uh, I think, yeah, honestly, like, in a lot of ways I'm the same kind of headspace now, you know, interestingly, same kind of anxieties as well, but I'm just I'm really looking forward to, you know, like, with the project, one of the things is to think about theory, right, and think about what it might look like to theorize relationally, like to theorize relationally, and I'm just really, really looking forward to grappling with the work of people that I find valuable. You know, again, like I think I'm thinking particularly so about Sananakata and Joan Faulkner and others, like you know.
Speaker 1:I mean, like, typically, what philosophy taught me is you take a book, you sit down, you work through it, you make pronouncements and you attempt to justify these pronouncements.
Speaker 1:And maybe, maybe, if these pronouncements and you attempt to justify these pronouncements, and maybe, maybe, if these pronouncements are in relation to people who are alive, they might, over time, make their own pronouncements over your pronouncements and then maybe you might make you know and we kind of call that a conversation or a dialogue but is it really? And that there's a kind of but is it really? And that there's a kind of inherent, not adversarialness, but I don't know. That's one way of going about things. I I'm I'm wondering what it looks like to engage with somebody's work and sit down with them and to to ask them just, I mean, like in the kind of way that you're modeling, I think, like you know, like in this format, um, it's like you're having conversations with folks about the work that they do, right? Uh, I imagine if you were then going off to write about it, that yields something really different to if you decide that you're just going to write based on how you initially, how you by yourself, kind of grasp, see that work.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I'm not going to say anything, but thanks so much, brian. It's really been fantastic to talk with you and we could talk with uh about uh. So much more of this, um, cool thank you so much for joining us thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:You guys are awesome, okay, thanks brian.
Speaker 3:So thank you for joining us for the first episode of undisciplinary for the year um. You can find other episodes, listen, rate, review, subscribe, et cetera on usual podcast apps. You can find us on Twitter at Undisciplinary underscore and our website is Undisciplinaryorg.
Speaker 2:Thanks a lot. Bye, thanks a lot. Thanks. Maybe we could have an undisciplinary after dark or something.