Sunday, June 25, 2023, 11:47 p.m.
One of the objectives of the ‘la Caixa’ Foundation is to promote talent in all disciplines. For this reason, each year the entity provides scholarships to different people to carry out undergraduate, postgraduate, doctoral and postdoctoral studies at prestigious universities in their areas. One of these chosen ones was Saray Ayala, who in 2006 carried out a research stay at the British Columbia University, during which she taught and took doctoral courses.
–What did the scholarship awarded to you by ‘la Caixa’ Foundation mean?
-That scholarship made me regain confidence that someone like me can do something interesting in philosophy. I arrived in Barcelona to do my doctorate, leaving behind the narrowness of my town, Archena. Barcelona promised to be a liberation, but I ran into difficulties that I had not anticipated. My thesis advisor did not believe that a woman could do a PhD (so she put it). Not only my perceived gender, but also my Murcian accent turned out to be an obstacle to the perception of my abilities, and like so many other people who migrate from the south, I ended up hiding it. That scholarship gave me another opportunity to reconnect with philosophy.
–Barely a week ago, he participated in the ‘Becari@s knowledge day’ of Fundación ‘la Caixa’. What does it mean for you that they continue to count on you for this type of event?
-It is motivating that they count on me because it illustrates that they continue to give importance to philosophy.
–In the description of ‘Bec@rios knowledge day’ they highlighted their commitment to ‘doing philosophy from the margins’. What does this description refer to?
-Doing philosophy from the margins means trying to understand the world from positions that are not the dominant ones. The world is made as if we all occupy the same social position: white, cisgender, heterosexual, upper-middle-class men, with the nationality of the country we inhabit, and with bodies that function in a way they call ‘normal’. When you look at the world from any other position (for example, a person with functional diversity, a ‘trans’ person, or a migrant without the nationality or language of the country where they live) then the world does not fit, it is not understood. But even without understanding, this world made in a unique way causes violence and damage to those who do not fit in. Doing philosophy from the margins means, first, that I am one of those people who inhabits those margins, and second, that I am trying, like so many other feminist philosophers, to think and understand the world in alternative ways, and thus expand it to be more welcoming and less unfair.
–At what point do you think philosophy is currently?
-It is often said that philosophy is important because it teaches us to think critically. I believe that in addition to learning to think critically, we have to learn to think well, to be good people. If we give space to philosophy but use its techniques to harm and exclude people, then we continue not to give it the importance and the role it should have, which is to teach us to lead a good life.
–She is a professor at California State University in Sacramento and teaches classes on feminism, philosophy of mind and language, science, and values. What role does and should philosophy play in feminism?
-There is often an attempt to devalue feminism by calling it ‘ideology’, in contrast to philosophy, which is an intellectual exercise far removed from ideologies and dogmatisms. The objective of feminism is, however, the same as that of philosophy: to question and learn to think better. And thinking better means not only discovering the truth, but learning to be a better person, to love better, to better perceive others as they are and to embrace the fascinating diversity of people.
-Related to the subject you teach, the majority of known philosophers are men, as is the case in other areas such as painting or literature. How could you promote those female figures that were important and that are unknown?
-There is still much left to do. A few days ago I was at a conference in Seville organized by Professor Carla Carmona, where I met two Spanish philosophers I had never read before: Ángeles Jiménez Perona and Elvira Burgos. It has been a gift knowing them. We need more acts like this that make known the wealth of thought that exists and offer students more opportunities. The philosophical canon is a bore. Aristotle, Descartes and Kant said interesting things (also misogynistic), but there are many more interesting ideas, and on topics that great male philosophers have put aside as unimportant. Philosophy made from the margins enriches our extremely reduced model of the world. For those who console themselves with “we’re better than before, that’s already something”, I tell them that educating in the diversity of ideas and including all identities is a project that has to be rushed. It doesn’t comfort me that they are giving themselves pasicos. When it comes to doing justice, such as expanding the canon of thinkers and giving space to women philosophers, it must be done immediately.
–She is part of the editorial committee of the feminist philosophy magazine Hypatia. What value does this type of project have for promoting feminism in philosophy and in other fields?
-These projects are very valuable, because they make visible, as I said above, people and ideas that improve the world.
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