Alexis Shotwell
Areas of Research
Impurity and imperfection as a basis for action, environmental justice, racial formation, disability, unspeakable and unspoken knowledge, sexuality, gender, and collective political transformation.
杏吧原创
I鈥檓 a theory and science fiction fan, functional potter, and I ride my bike in all weather. I鈥檝e been part of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at 杏吧原创 since 2012, where I鈥檓 cross-appointed to Philosophy and the Feminist Institute of Social Transformation. I was proud to teach from 2007-2012 in the Department of Philosophy at Laurentian University, and I mourn its death at the hands of the Ford Government. From 2013-2018 I co-investigated (with Gary Kinsman and others) the history of AIDS activism in the Canadian context 鈥 I am slowly working my way through that material and welcome inquiries from graduate students who would like to work on the archive we鈥檝e assembled.
Other Ongoing Projects
I鈥檓 working on a few ongoing projects, which are at various stages of draft:
- No Higher Purpose is a book about crafting meaning in the middle of ongoing multiple catastrophes. It is written for readers who are living their lives without recourse to stories about there being a fixed plan for our life, laid out for us by a deity, our genes, the people who raised us, or the society we鈥檙e in. Many of us know that we cannot personally solve the huge and complicated problems that shape the conditions of our lives, but we still feel called to offer something to the shared work of trying to help. However haltingly, we might have a sense that there is something important and meaningful about this project of carrying on in the face of despair. No Higher Purpose affirms that it is good to live our lives as though they matter. It is good to imagine a future that, maybe to our surprise, doesn鈥檛 end in apocalypse. The book thinks with Ursula K Le Guin鈥檚 anarchism to offer pathways for thinking and practicing such futures.
- Only With Others, which begins from the understanding that we face multiple wicked problems that we cannot solve alone and for which we are not equally responsible 鈥 complex things like global warming, systemic racism, and chemical pollution. Starting from the understanding that there is no place outside of complicity, I offer approaches to turning towards collectivity rather than individual guilt or immobilization in response to wicked problems. This book constellates three main topics, weaving connections among them: Climate catastrophe and the global extinction crisis; white settler practices of responsibility; and shaping new practices of sexuality and gender.
- A short advice book called This Is Not Writing Advice, in which I offer some of what I鈥檝e learned teaching academic and activist writing, with the aspiration that it can help people suffer less in their writing practice. This book is mostly organized around writing play exercises, and the belief that the best thing we can do as writers is figure out what works for us, then find ways to do it.
Recent Publications
Books:
Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times (University of Minnesota Press, 2016)
Knowing Otherwise: Race, Gender, and Implicit Understanding (Penn State Press, 2011)
Journal articles:
鈥溾橝ll we have is means鈥: Ursula K. Le Guin鈥檚 utopianism as ongoingness.鈥 World Literature Studies 4 vol. 16 2024 (3 鈥 17)
鈥淐hallenging Straightness.鈥 APA Studies on Feminism and Philosophy. Volume 23, number 2 (spring 2024) pp. 46-54
鈥淏uilding Complicity with Another World.鈥 Parallax, Volume 29, Issue 3 (2023) pp. 364-385
鈥淔lourishing Is Mutual: Relational Ontologies, Mutual Aid, and Eating.鈥 Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 7 (3) 2021. .
Non-academic writing:
鈥溾 Aesthetics for Birds (online publication). February 11, 2022
鈥溾 The Conversation June 24, 2021
鈥.鈥 Upping the Anti: A Journal of Theory and Reflection. Blog post. Published on May 5, 2020.
鈥.鈥 The Arrow: A Journal of Wakeful Society, Culture, and Politics. Practice, Resilience, and Compassion in the Time of COVID-19 collection. Published on April 16, 2020.
鈥淰ampirement: How the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board feeds on some futures to secure others鈥 Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. Issue 04: ACCOUNTING Eds. D.T. Cochrane, Alison Cooley, Fraser McCallum, Christine Shaw and Joy Xiang (serial broadsheet, invited contribution). University of Toronto, Blackwood Gallery. (July 2019).
鈥淐laiming Bad Kin鈥 Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. Issue 03: BEARING Eds. D.T. Cochrane, Alison Cooley, Fraser McCallum, Christine Shaw and Joy Xiang (serial broadsheet, invited contribution). University of Toronto, Blackwood Gallery. (March 2019).
With Chris Dixon. 鈥淔or a grieving optimism鈥 Canadian Dimension (magazine). Vol 52 issue 3, Fall 2018.