Practicing Ethics is an open access educational tool designed and produced by David Roberts, curated by Jane Rendell. Within the project’s scope are a rich variety of resources covering Principles, Processes, Practices, protocols and Publications.
The curated list of publications is impressive, showing a vast range of resources that detail current approaches to ethical issues, in particular I found the reading list curated by Jane Rendell very interesting, with publications such as Hilde Lindemann, An Invitation to Feminist Ethics, Judith Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself, and Kate MacNeill and Barbara Bolt (eds), The Meeting of Aesthetics and Ethics in the Academy: Challenges for Creative Practice Researchers in Higher Education.
Within the Principles section is an amazing resource of terms relating to Principles, similar to the resources list on the Shades Of Noir site. I find this way of listing resources very accessible and immediately engaging, and in subject matter that can be a deep and detailed to go through as ethics, it is a very useful tool to navigate the principles in ethics. In particular the section on teh prinicple of feminist ethics, with immediate reference to intersectionality as part of feminist ethics, before going on to this reference to care. “In addition, practising feminist ethics involves committing to care. All types of care are interwoven: care for yourself, care for others, and care for the world around you. As such, empathy, not distance, is a fundamental tool for feminist research.[8] The emotional vulnerability that empathy entails offers a powerful way to understand the world,[9] enabling the co-production of knowledge based on partnerships of equivalence. [10] People behave in surprising ways, however, so feminist ethical approaches prepare researchers and institutions to expect the unexpected and treat unpredictability and its consequences as interpretable data.” I would like to follow this up more in the PhD I will be applying to do at UAL after completing my PGCert. I found this very relevant to the activism series of events Bechdel, which I run within the Screen School at UAL. I also found the section on the principle of Positionality very interesting, as it relates to our knowledge of self, the spaces we are inhabiting and the relationship to other within that space. In particular, this quote from Susan Hekman shows a way to relate the different principles in ethics together: “feminist stand-point theorists’ quest for truth and politics has been shaped by two central understandings: that knowledge is situated and perspectival and that there are multiple standpoints from which knowledge is produced. As the theory has developed, feminist standpoint theorists have explored, first, how knowledge can be situated yet “true,” and, second, how we can acknowledge difference without obviating the possibility of critique and thus a viable feminist politics … Recently there has been much discussion among feminists of the parameters of a “politics of difference.” I believe that feminist standpoint theory has laid the groundwork for such a politics by initiating the discussion of situated knowledge.[2]“
The Processes section has a wide range of case studies, including a fascinating take on reperforming as a practice of preserving confidentiality by Naomi Gibson. I find this interesting within the context of appropriation and in sound arts units I teach, the notion of the voiceover as appropriation of culture and traditional knowledge. However, as I practice the decolonising of curriculum I am concerned with the issue of burdening those with lived experience with extra workload, when they already face more obstacles in attainment. Perhaps this is a window into a solution I can investigate more, in decolonising the curriculum.
The Protocols section is again very accessible, and definitely a resource I will return to to identity more protocols from a wide range of resources.
This online open access educational tool is incredibly valuable, and as it is online it is able to tap into current debate and methodologies. It has been very inspiring, especially following some difficulties and obstacles in facilitating an International Womens Day event this year, and I will be incorporating some of this research into my PhD proposal as well as into my teaching and extra curricular events series Bechdel.