Curiosity and Power: The Politics of Inquiry

304 Pages·2021·1.742 MB·English

by  Perry Zurn

CURIOSITY AND POWER
This page intentionally left blank
Curiosity and Power
THE POLITICS OF INQUIRY
Perry Zurn
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis
London
Portions of chapter 4 were published in “The Curiosity at Work in
Deconstruction,” Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy 26,
no. 1 (2018): 65–8 7. Portions of chapter 5 were published in “Curiosity and
Political Resistance,” in Curiosity Studies: A New Ecology of Knowledge,
ed. Perry Zurn and Arjun Shankar, 227–4 5 (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2020). Portions of chapter 7 were published in “Puzzle
Pieces: Shapes of Trans Curiosity,” APA Newsletter on LGBTQ Issues in
Philosophy 18, no. 1 (2019): 10–1 6.
Copyright 2021 by Perry Zurn
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401-2 520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
ISBN 978-1-5179-0718-1 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-5179-0719-8 (pb)
Library of Congress record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020058490
Printed in the United States of America on acid-f ree paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal-o pportunity
educator and employer.
UMP BmB 2021
Contents
Preface vii
Why the Politics of Curiosity? 1
1. A Political History of Curiosity 21
Part I. Episodes from Political Theory
2. Friedrich Nietzsche: Curiosity and
the Scene of Struggle 49
3. Michel Foucault: Institutionalized Curiosity
and Resistance 73
4. Jacques Derrida: Sovereign Curiosity
and Deconstruction 99
Part II. Archives of Political Experience
5. Curiosity, Activism, and Political Resistance 127
6. Cripping Curiosity: A Critical Disability Framework 149
7. Trans Curiosity: Beyond the Curio 173
Unsettling Curiosity 199
Acknowledgments 221
Notes 225
Index 279
This page intentionally left blank
Preface
It is rare to place a scholarly project in personal context. And yet,
when it comes to the politics of curiosity, and the politics of my curios-
ity in particular, it seems incumbent—f or the sake of honesty, as much
as accountability— to do so, if ever so briefly.
It is commonplace to think of curiosity as uniquely belonging to
childhood. In my case, the expectation was true, although perhaps in
unexpected ways. I was homeschooled in the foothills of Central Penn-
sylvania. The experience was always wholistic, often experimental.
Buried in our twenty-two-v olume encyclopedia, surrounded by over a
thousand books, I remember imagining knowledge as an endless series
of pages, stretching out in every direction. My mother, a creative type,
would constantly come up with projects that brought history and sci-
ence to life. And my siblings and I would sit outside with sketchbooks
until the rabbits came to sit side by side. Curiosity was connection.
But curiosity can also break connection. Growing up in a conserva-
tive religious community, I spent a lot of time sitting in pews. I would
get bored. So I started reading the Bible in Latin and doing music
theory in the hymn book. I needed more stimulation. By the time I
was of college age, I had fallen in love with the theology- adjacent field
of philosophy. People were concerned. After all, did not Saint Paul
write, “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain
deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world,
and not after Christ” (Colossians 2:8)? Through a series of adventures,
however, I found myself majoring in philosophy at a small religious
college in the Midwest. One day, my history professor called me into
viii PREFACE
his office, lifted a large paper calendar from his wall, and revealed a
handful or two of student photos underneath. “I pray for their souls,”
he said in a doomed tone. My photo was among them. I had, after all,
just written a paper on Jacques Derrida and deconstruction.
I lived for my honors courses. Bobbing and weaving through his-
tory, theology, philosophy, art, and science, I could not help but feel
at home. In middle school, I had put together a “living” portfolio of
mushrooms, everything from gills to mycelium, from ancient medi-
cines to Alice in Wonderland. Now, in my junior year of college, I
created a portfolio entitled “The Zeitgeist of Existentialism” (a proud
and ponderous title). In it, I explained— or so I thought— what psy-
choanalysis, literary absurdism, and abstract expressionism had to do
with Gödel’s incompleteness theorem. Prisming suits me. Not unre-
latedly, I lucked into an invitation to join the Underground Chapel,
poetically so named insofar as it met in the basement of the library,
in a dark room tucked just behind the main staircase. Inspired by
the Emergent Church movement, the group offered a welcome respite
from daily chapel services in the mass auditorium, trading the jum-
botron for silence, the flashing lights for candles, and conviction for
compassion. We explored new ideas, affects, rituals, and traditions;
asked the what and the wherefore; and took care of each other. It was
a return to something wholistic and experimental. No question was
irrelevant.
But some questions were becoming unusually relevant. As I came
into my queer identity, I also came into a unique visibility and I had
trouble making sense of it all. Because the “LGBT lifestyle” was pro-
hibited by the student code of conduct, the college put me on proba-
tion my senior year. Regular street harassment started in grad school.
Luckily, as I traveled from the cornfields of Ohio to the Philly suburbs,
back to the cornfields, and then on to Chicago, I got streetwise. But I
wondered why? Why is this configuration of a body uniquely an ob-
ject of curiosity, a spectacle, an offense? The natural target for hurling
words, and bottles, and fists? School gave me partial answers. I first
encountered feminism in undergrad: “I call it ‘Women in America,’”
my professor proudly announced; she had finally gotten the course
approved by applying a patriotic sheen. Deep in her face, I thought I
could see a crease for each attempt. I met queer and trans theory in
graduate school. But it was still hard to come by. Again, I wondered
PREFACE ix
why? Why are these stories, these histories, these concepts less valu-
able, less scholarly, often hidden, and sometimes lost?
Entering my doctoral program, I was eager to find my own voice
in a field that had been my friend for so long. During my first year,
one of my professors was denied tenure. The reason: her work was
not philosophical enough. She was a woman of color, specializing in
postcolonial theory. I still remember her eyes. Like someone pulled
inside out and told to walk again. I thought back to my own aca-
demic probation and wondered: how can one’s muchness count as a
lack? By some force of fate, I drew up a dissertation proposal on cu-
riosity. But my advisors were hesitant. Curiosity is not an established
philosophical topic, some said. It is not a true philosophical question,
another intoned. I wondered: How does that get said? Get thought?
Get decided? How does Alison Kafer get told that disability is not an
academic topic, or Shay Welch that Native American philosophy is a
nonstarter, or Robin Wall Kimmerer that her interest in Indigenous
ecologies is not proper to a botanist? By what force and logic does a
discipline become threatened by its own questions?
And its own questioners? While writing my dissertation, I worked
for the McNair Scholars Program, a nationwide initiative to pre-
pare low-i ncome, first-g eneration students for graduate school. The
point was to transform the professoriat. In a cement- block, window-
less room, warmed by student photos, study abroad highlights, em-
powerment notes, and the occasional snack mix, I met student after
student— in art history, chemistry, communications, philosophy, politi-
cal science, psychology, and more— changing the questions and shift-
ing the contours of their fields. Insisting that their voices be heard
and their communities engaged, they tackled Chicago food deserts,
diabetes, Latinx street art, epigenetics, and art therapy for activists.
One summer, I returned to the foothills of Central Pennsylvania to
help run the Philosophy in an Inclusive Key Summer Institute (PIKSI),
a similar program for young philosophers. Without McNair and
PIKSI students—e specially Brooklyn, Erica, Eyo, Ife, and Pau—t his
book would not have been written. They taught me something timeless
about the moment courage and curiosity intertwine.
Not long after, I found myself at Hampshire College, in the heart
of Western Massachusetts, for my first teaching gig. Hampshire lives
by its motto, non satis scire— to know is not enough. Affect, action,