Masked Philosopher's Ball, Memphis, TN, March 13-16, 2015

The Masked Philosophy Conference.  

First, I recall the CFP (the call) that was made in March, at the PES meeting in Albuquerque http://www.philosophyofeducation.org/2014/2015-call-papers

Yesterday I was reminded of that moment in the CFP when I cite Foucault, from the interview he gave to Le Monde in April, 1980, that is titled “The Masked Philosopher,” in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth (the last selection in the volume): http://monoskop.org/images/0/00/Foucault_Michel_Ethics_Subjectivity_and_Truth.pdf

“There is no sovereign philosophy, it’s true, but a philosophy or rather a philosophy in activity.  The movement by which, not without effort and uncertainty, dreams and illusions, one detaches oneself from what is accepted as true and seeks other rules – that is philosophy.   The displacement and transformation of frameworks of thinking, the changing of received values and all the work that has been done to think otherwise, to do something else, to become other than what one is – that too is philosophy.”

Here is the context from the PES Memphis CFP for that citation of Foucault:

Making Philosophy, and Delivering the Good(s) to the Absent Monarch

By framing the conference around the blues and soul music, and emphasizing our gathering as a showcase for the ways we make philosophy of education, my interest, as program chair, is to encourage papers and proposals that express an experimental spirit, and understand our meeting as an occasion to exhibit new theoretical and conceptual strategies, novel discursive forms, alternative ways of approaching perennial questions and authoritative figures, as well as bold initiatives for organizing the way we gather to share and support the work of philosophy of education.   I am inviting anyone who will be submitting papers, and alternative session proposals to understand our gathering as not just ‘another’ PES, but as philosophical event or happening, as a moment in what late Ilan Gur Ze’ev described as an Orcha: “an improvised moment that is to find/create its own destiny.”  

At this point the program is coming into form, and this is happening with the same force that brought the CFP into being!   I have arrived at a full draft of the program – all in pencil at the moment – in terms of papers and alternative sessions.    And as I moved into this final part of the program planning I was returned to Foucault’s interview and to his proposal that we play a game: “year without a name.”   I am proposing that in anticipation of PES Memphis 2015 that we experiment with a new form for how we do philosophy of education, for how we make PES, and thus I will send the submitted drafts to selected respondents without the author’s name attached.   They, in turn, will write their response without divulging their name.  And then I will create a conference program without names! The only names will be the ones that list the review team, committees, Frank the President, etc., as well as our invited speakers, out of respect.    This is what I wrote to one team member yesterday when I announced my intention to play this game with PES Memphis 2015 (I then sent it out via Twitter):

“fyi: i'm trying an experiment with my respondents.  I'm calling it the "masked philosopher experiment" (you know that piece by Foucault?).  basically, I'm not going to reveal the identity of the authors to the respondents, nor am i going to inform the author of the person responding to them.  I'm very interested to see how it turns out.  I've always wondered about Foucault's proposal and this is my opportunity to enact a version of it.  So you can write as if it were whomever you think it may be…or just respond without imagining the person….whatever works for you!”  

And here is a citation from “The Masked Philosopher” Foucault interview:

“Why did I suggest that we use anonymity? Out of nostalgia for a time

when, being quite unknown, what I said had some chance of being

heard. With the potential reader, the surface of contact was unrippled.

The effects of the book might land in unexpected places and form shapes

that I had never thought of. A name makes reading too easy.

I shall propose a game: that of the "year without a name." For a year,

books would be published without their authors' names. The critics

would have to cope with a mass of entirely anonymous books.”