Okay, this is a thing.

The "usual convention" might apply IF Stock actually adhered to the usual conventions to make their arguments. One of the things about Stock and her ilk is that their arguments are made BEYOND the boundaries of the conventions of the academy. (1/n) https://twitter.com/philosophybites/status/1346426674913701888

Moreover, the demand that we respond to Stock through the usual conventions while allowing her the freedom to act beyond these conventions is, simply put, yet another way the field enables the circulation and uptake of her arguments as legitimate in the field. (2/n)

That is, Stock can evade the whole structure of the academy through her chosen venues, while simultaneously relying on the defensive mechanisms of the academy to protect her work and her right to evade the structure through heaping additional burdens on her critics. (3/n)

IF Stock functioned within the "usual conventions," then those conventions could be deployed to slow or restrain the speed at which her work circulates and is taken up within the discipline. But that would require the "usual conventions" to function in an egalitarian way. (4/n)

Which is yet another problem to contend with: even if we deployed the "usual conventions" to contest Stock, we still have to deal with the cultural context and organization of those conventions via institutionalized oppression and marginalization within the field. (5/n)

This is an organization which, even at its most benevolent, restricts how and what kinds of counter arguments can be made and in what venues. Thus, even IF we managed to use the "usual conventions" in the ways that Nigel is suggesting, there's still a higher bar to clear. (6/n)

That said, I want to make this abundantly clear: we have not been able to deploy the "usual conventions" against Stock for the past two years BECAUSE she evades the conventions altogether AND the field does not see responses to Stock's chosen medium (lol) as legitimate. (7/n)

I say "two years" because this "publish a response to Stock" argument comes up every single time people push back against her. Publish where? Against what? In what venue? This is a moment where the "usual conventions" are inapplicable BECAUSE of the ways she evades them. (8/n)

That said, even if we were to use the "usual conventions" Stock and company have made clear that they believe that the trajectory of feminist scholarship, including the venues governed by "the usual conventions" are not legitimate. How then do we proceed with critique? (9/n)

Do we wait for peer review while Stock churns out more "scholarship" and is defended by the very norms that restrain the critique that the field demands we follow? Do we shirk the norms and publish outside of the field and risk being declared illegitimate? (10/n)

I have no answers to those questions. What I can say is that appeal to the "norms" of the discipline is a losing fucking strategy when the field itself is hostile to the critique and Stock and company have chosen NOT to bother with the norms themselves. (fin)