Symposium: Why Historicize the Canon?

Abstract

In her anchor-piece on historicizing the canon, Li-Hsiang Lisa Rosenlee appeals to professional philosophers to develop several tools that can be implemented in historicizing the canon. Amy Donahue, David H. Kim, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, and Kris Sealey tessellate different aspects of this call. Donahue augments Rosenlee’s argument by braiding together Dharmakīrti’s “anyāpoha” theory and Charles Mills’ ruminations about “white ignorance”; Kim explores some of the nuances of Rosenlee’s account for a post-Eurocentric philosophy; Maldonado-Torres ruminates about the larger social context in which thinking can be decolonized; and Sealey uses the work of Kristie Dotson to acknowledge the possibility of multiple canons.

In putting on the table a number of questions, concepts, and approaches to canon-building, the symposium aims to contribute to what is by now a large array of similar reflections and engagements in different parts of the world.