No us and them

  • Posted by Helen Douglas
  • On March 30, 2023
There is no us and them, only us. The white supremacy thing, the patriarchy thing, the class thing: binary structures of inequality and violence. The antidote? Affirming equality already here and getting ourselves together, mixing it up, messing with it. Laugh at it, blow kisses. These structures depend on division, difference. They need walls. They’re […]
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Otherwise philosophy, Philosophy otherwise

  • Posted by Helen Douglas
  • On November 25, 2021
Levinasian philosophical practices Friday 26 November 2021, 1:00pm–6pm EST. Live-streaming on MS Teams 1:00pm: Welcome and Introduction 1:15pm (8:15 pm in South Africa): Helen Douglas, Philosophical Counsellor, Cape Town, South Africa, “Otherwise Philosophy or Philosophy Otherwise: Levinasian Philosophical Practices”. I’ll be talking about my counselling work as an interpersonal Levinasian practice of ethics and emancipation […]
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Making sense

  • Posted by Helen Douglas
  • On November 17, 2020
Like consciousness is always consciousness of something (if you believe Husserl), making sense is always to someone, to some particular first-person singular. It’s interior, private, personal. That makes sense to me. But I have to ask you, Does this make sense to you?
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Living matters

  • Posted by Helen Douglas
  • On June 14, 2020
If black lives mattered, then all lives would matter. If women’s lives mattered, then all lives would matter. If Jewish lives mattered, then all lives would matter. Black in the racialised sense of “not white”. Such that mattering would mean the abandonment of white supremacy.
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“The luxury of isolation”

  • Posted by Helen Douglas
  • On May 29, 2020
So I find myself thinking, if there’s this group of people, who are being labelled “essential”, but are being treated as sacrificial, [and] then there’s this other group of people, who are at home – like us, right? – who have the luxury of isolation. So what are we, if we’re not essential? [laugh] Are […]
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For a post-millenarian philosophy

  • Posted by Helen Douglas
  • On May 4, 2020
I am so tired of all the posturing. The lines drawn to keep everything in its place and everyone accountable. The absurd insistence that people do not change. Consider the Anthropocene. A couple of centuries of industrialisation and empire – mere decades, not even a tick in geological time – and boom, our own epoch […]
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