One thing that interests me is the extent to which our agency depends on others' recognition. In this context, our ability to name oppressive practices depends (obviously in complex ways) on the ways in which others respond to the names that we provide. YPAR's approach seems doubly useful, then. Not only do teachers aim to provide students with the tools they need to name their own experiences and concerns; they also commit to taking a certain perspective on their students, one that recognizes the names that students arrive at as authoritative, and so constitutive of a developing public language. That second step is crucial.

My first reaction at this point was to wonder how collaboration in these virtual worlds might exacerbate the growth of oppressive ideologies, thinking mainly of the reactionary cult of masculinity involved in GamerGate. But maybe we should put some pressure on any apparent disanalogy between the racism, sexism, etc. that organize many virtual spaces, and the kind of high-minded respect that some people might expect in more traditional civic spaces. Oppressive ideology pervades our discourse in both of these spaces, so perhaps we shouldn't shy away from seeing virtual spaces as sites of civic engagement on these grounds alone. I'm going to have to hunt down Boellstorff, Chen, and Nardi to see if they address these kinds of issues.

Tommie Shelby has a new book out on the ways in which we respond to the geography of inequality, critiquing in particular what he calls "the medical model." This model acknowledges that those who are least well off are the victims of past injustices, but assumes (for a variety of reasons) that the effect of that past injustice leaves its victims ill-positioned to speak on their own behalf. The deficit approach seems to fit squarely within this model, and it might be productive to read this piece in conversation with Shelby's book. http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674970502

This is roughly how I've tried to use platforms like Twitter, and I've had some good results with it. I've found some really helpful resources on disability rights, for instance, by following disability rights activists and thinkers and getting a sense of the kinds of things that concern them.

But I feel like I've been pretty lucky cultivating my TL, and I don't have a great sense of how to share that luck with others. Every now and then, I recommend to students they try to use Twitter for similar purposes, and while I can give them a few people to follow for starters, I'd love to be able to give them more direction.

I've been rolling this point around in my head for the last couple of days, thinking about the nuances it implies. When I first read it, I immediately remembered the disturbing fact that so many prominent white supremacists managed to earn bachelor's degrees in philosophy, even completed honor's theses in philosophy. If Richard Spencer can satisfy our honors requirements while training himself to peddle a violent mythology, then we need to critically reevaluate the ways in which we assess and cultivate our students. And like Ball, I think that focusing on the skills involved in critical thinking won't suffice. We need to make explicit the connections between good philosophy and empathy for our fellows.