Nick Clanchy
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nickclanchy.bsky.social
Nick Clanchy
@nickclanchy.bsky.social
2K followers 780 following 210 posts
Departmental Lecturer in Ethics and Feminist Philosophy @ University of Oxford | Associate Editor @ Hypatia | www.nickclanchy.com | boxd.it/TfcR | 🏳️‍🌈🌱 | they/them
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nickclanchy.bsky.social
Whoever wrote in the blurb for this edition of Edward Said’s Out of Place that the book reveals “an unimaginably rich world of colorful characters and exotic eastern landscapes” desperately needs to read some Edward Said
The back cover of a copy of Edward Said’s memoir Out of Place. The blurb includes the sentence: “Said writes with great passion and wit about his family and his friends from his birthplace in Jerusalem, schools in Cairo, and summers in the mountains above Beirut, to boarding school and college in the United States, revealing an unimaginably rich world of colorful characters and exotic eastern landscapes.”
November 3, 2025 at 10:57 AM
nickclanchy.bsky.social
When I bought my copy of Given Time I from Amazon several years ago, I was impressed that they had seemingly internalised something of the book’s message since they proclaimed “gift options not available”. Having just checked, I’m sorry to see the same is not true of the second volume.
A screenshot of an Amazon shopping basket containing Derrida’s Given Time I: Counterfeit Money. Above the “Buy now” button is noted: “Gift options not available”.
November 3, 2025 at 10:47 AM
nickclanchy.bsky.social
Finally, the best drink I’ve ever had in my life
A clear liquid resembling white wine in a wine glass. Salon Badin, a small basement speakeasy. Jazz night. Description of a Mottainai cocktail from the menu at Salon Badin: Mezcal, Fino Sherry, Dry Vermouth, Eastern White Pine, Fermented Honey, Juniper Berries. Mottainai is the ancient Japanese principle of using a living organism or ecosystem to its fullest potential. Fermentation is what drilled this philosophy into me, unlocking flavours from every part of every ingredient, ones I’d never accessed before. The wild fermentation that is raw honey, needles, cone, and bark of Eastern white pines, juniper and turkey tail mushrooms grown on conifers, to me, represents the Mottainai of Quebec’s forests. It ties together different components of the ecosystem we call home.
September 24, 2025 at 8:28 PM
nickclanchy.bsky.social
Art
A photo from the 2025 Montreal Street Photography exhibition at the McCord Stewart Museum depicting a woman with wild hair sat behind the wheel of a car. Next to her appears to be a cat wearing a suit. Rodney Graham’s Media Studies ‘77 at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, depicting the artist sitting on a desk as if about to present a lecture. James Tissot’s October in the Museum of Fine Arts depicting a woman wearing a long black dress in the style of the 1870s surrounded by the golden leaves of a tree. Mark Tansey’s Action Painting II, depicting several people painting a rocket taking off in impossibly quick time. The painting is monochrome with a greenish tint.
September 24, 2025 at 8:28 PM
nickclanchy.bsky.social
Churches
Inside the Basilica, a golden altarpiece is bathed in blue light. Outside the Oratory: a green dome tops imposing stone.
September 24, 2025 at 8:28 PM
nickclanchy.bsky.social
Walking around
A queer pride flag has been painted onto the road through the Gay Village, which is pedestrianised throughout the summer. A spectacularly dilapidated concrete building down by the river near the Old Port. A protest sign which hung between two trees on the McGill Campus during the 2024 student encampment which reads: “Queers Solidaires de la Palestine: Fuck Le Pinkwashing” A statue of doctor and communist revolutionary Norman Bethune on Maisonneuve.
September 24, 2025 at 8:28 PM
nickclanchy.bsky.social
Murals
A mural depicting three Indigenous women (possibly a grandmother, mother, and daughter). A mural depicting geese taking flight. A mural depicting a Black woman with hoop earrings and a pet bird against a pink background. A mural depicting a tabby cat wearing a bowtie.
September 24, 2025 at 8:28 PM
nickclanchy.bsky.social
Night
Fireworks at the Montreal Fireworks Festival, summer 2024. Two deer constructed out of fairy lights stand in Atwater Square. A chipmunk constructed out of fairy lights stands outside a church on St Catherine. A large metal ring between two buildings on St Catherine frames Mont Royal in the background.
September 24, 2025 at 8:28 PM
nickclanchy.bsky.social
Dusk
A large metal ring between two buildings on St Catherine frames Mont Royal in the background. Early evening, summer 2025. A view from Summit Woods the top of Mont Royal west over the St Lawrence river. The trees are bare and the island covered in snow. Late afternoon, winter 2025. The sun has just set behind a fountain in Parc Jarry. September 2024. A spectacular orange sky over Lac Sacacomie. Summer 2024.
September 24, 2025 at 8:28 PM
nickclanchy.bsky.social
Dawn
A view of downtown Montreal from Kondiaronk Belvedere at the top of Mont Royal just before dawn, summer 2024. A view of downtown Montreal from Kondiaronk Belvedere at the top of Mont Royal just after dawn, summer 2025.
September 24, 2025 at 8:28 PM
nickclanchy.bsky.social
Summer
A shaded fountain with a church in the background, near Laurier. The Chinese garden at the Jardins Botaniques. A beaver eating an aspen leaf near Lac Sacacomie. An overgrown topiary dog in Westmount Park has dried out in the summer heat and needs a haircut.
September 24, 2025 at 8:28 PM
nickclanchy.bsky.social
Spring
A pink magnolia in full bloom at dusk near Laurier metro. A friendly rabbit I sometimes used to walk past on my way home from work at Université de Montréal.
September 24, 2025 at 8:28 PM
nickclanchy.bsky.social
Winter
Two conifers covered in snow at the top of a mountain, late afternoon winter light. Behind the boreal forest stretches to the horizon. Winter hike 18th Jan 2024. A frozen stream in the boreal forest. Winter hike 29 Nov 2024. A view of the boreal forest from the top of a mountain. My friend Caroline and I at the top of Mount Sutton in winter, behind us are snow-covered trees and in the distance you can see Vermont. Winter hike 3rd March 2024.
September 24, 2025 at 8:28 PM
nickclanchy.bsky.social
Fall
A tree with yellow leaves photographed from below against a clear blue sky, near Park St George. A mound of pumpkins on the street outside a supermarket near Westmount Park. First chipmunk I ever saw on the ground in the forest, which is covered with fallen leaves. Fall trees reflected in Beaver Lake at the top of Mont Royal.
September 24, 2025 at 8:28 PM
nickclanchy.bsky.social
A sequel to Healy (2017), perhaps
A screenshot of the abstract from Kieran Healy’s 2017 paper “Fuck Nuance”, which reads: “Nuance is not a virtue of good sociological theory. Although often demanded and superficially attractive, nuance inhibits the abstraction on which good theory depends. I describe three “nuance traps” common in sociology and show why they should be avoided on grounds of principle, aesthetics, and strategy. The argument is made without prejudice to the substantive heterogeneity of the discipline.” The keywords are: “theory, nuance, models, fuck”.
August 28, 2025 at 12:36 PM
nickclanchy.bsky.social
The thing that will make me become the Joker is people talking about increased energy outputs from renewables as if it entails decreased energy outputs from fossil fuels when (a) it evidently doesn’t and (b) it’s the latter that’s the *whole game* viz. mitigating climate change
A graph from Our World in Data showing energy consumption by source for China 1965-present. It shows that while the number of TWh generated from renewable sources is growing, so is the number of TWh generated from fossil fuels - especially coal.
August 21, 2025 at 11:53 PM
nickclanchy.bsky.social
A v cool thread that reminded me of this duck-rabbit kettle-whistle someone posted on the Other Place a few years back
A close-up photo of a kettle-whistle reminiscent of Wittgenstein's duck-rabbit which someone posted on twitter years ago.
August 19, 2025 at 7:12 PM
nickclanchy.bsky.social
Apparently it’s now been deleted from their website, but this was the explanation they offered there a couple of weeks ago…
A screenshot of text from the University of Warwick website which reads: Using ‘Beyond’ in our messaging Warwick is known for defying norms and challenging convention. Our communications must reflect this notion. Therefore, we use ‘Beyond’ in unconventional ways. Using ‘Beyond’ as a subject noun makes ‘Beyond’ an entity that is actively driving change, e.g. - Beyond is using AI to detect premature births. - Beyond is harnessing linguistics in sport. Using ‘Beyond’ as an abstract noun captures the idea that ‘Beyond’ is a conceptual space where limits are exceeded, for example: - Beyond creates a power source for Arctic Exploration. - Beyond shortcuts a billion years.
August 8, 2025 at 4:13 PM
nickclanchy.bsky.social
Obvs talk of “le wokisme” is not to be abided (I live in Québec, so this is personal), but there’s still an interesting question as to why it’s gained *such* a substantial foothold in France - @adriandaub.bsky.social is good on this in his book on the cancel culture panic
A passage from Adrian Daub’s The Cancel Culture Panic (2024) listing a long list of books published in French in the last three years decrying “le wokisme”. Daub suggests that key to explaining this trend is that “French public discourse has long been preoccupied with the idea that the unifying power of French culture was slackening, that particularism was rupturing the social fabric.”
August 1, 2025 at 9:06 AM
nickclanchy.bsky.social
Fwiw other opinions are available…
June 24, 2025 at 9:11 AM
nickclanchy.bsky.social
Love this - reminds me of the breakfasts in Phantom Thread, and this passage from “Tenir un discours”
A 5 star letterboxd review of Phantom Thread with a quote from Roland Barthes’s How to Live Together: Novelistic Simulations of Some Everyday Spaces, which reads: “I see him sitting before a copious breakfast, eating calmly, with intensity, with controlled appetite: in view of everyone, he’s busy satisfying a need, staging a pleasure. When consumed in such a manner, I’m struck by the impression that breakfast is actually a discourse X is sustaining: force, vigor, continuity, tension, a certain theatricality. Investment: breakfast is a garment.”
May 2, 2025 at 11:17 PM
nickclanchy.bsky.social
This is an excellent piece on the horrific conflict in Sudan, which ought to be getting a lot more attention.
“Over 150,000 people are estimated to have died. Sudan is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. It’s also the world’s worst displacement crisis: 13 million people have fled from their homes. Nearly two-thirds of the population is in dire need of humanitarian assistance, including 16 million children. In December 2024, the Famine Review Committee of the Integrated Phase Classification - the world’s gold standard in measuring food insecurity - predicted that famine would occur in North Darfur and South Kordofan. The humanitarian response for 2025, though, is less than 10% funded. Trump’s cuts to foreign aid have rendered this unliveable situation even more intolerable: 75% of the emergency response rooms, organizations set up by Sudanese activists to provide food and medical care across the country, have closed, after they ran out of money.”
April 22, 2025 at 9:01 PM
nickclanchy.bsky.social
Reading today’s decision in For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers, it occurs to me that the anti-trans side succeeded in part by providing the Supreme Court with what C. Thi Nguyen calls the seductions of clarity: philarchive.org/rec/NGUTSO-2
Paragraph 35 of the UK Supreme Court judgment in For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers, which reads: “We are grateful to the interveners for their contributions. We are particularly grateful to Ben Cooper KC for his written and oral submissions on behalf of Sex Matters, which gave focus and structure to the argument that “sex,” “man” and “woman” should be given a biological meaning, and who was able effectively to address the questions posed by members of the court in the hour he had to make his submissions.”
April 16, 2025 at 8:26 PM
nickclanchy.bsky.social
Huge thanks to @nonamename.bsky.social @jdtw.bsky.social @aidanmcglynn.bsky.social @lecre.bsky.social and a long list of other people not on here for their comments and encouragement!
Many thanks to Amandine Catala, Rachel Fraser, Rhea Ienni, Anna Klieber and the other members of the Trans Philosophy reading group, Corinne Lajoie, Zoey Lavallee, Lauren Lyons, Aidan McGlynn, Anna Milioni, Amia Srinivasan, George Surtees, Livia von Samson, Jordan Walters, Rory Wilson, Jules Wong, an audience at le Centre de Recherche en Éthique at the University of Montréal, and two anonymous referees at Ergo for questions, comments, thoughts, and conversations that helped shape this paper. Work on this project was jointly funded by the Canada Research Chair on Epistemic Injustice and Agency at the University of Québec at Montréal and le Centre de Recherche en Éthique at the University of Montréal.
February 17, 2025 at 3:24 PM
nickclanchy.bsky.social
Abstract:
Previously proposed strategies for preventing hermeneutical injustices mostly take for granted the interests people have in various things about themselves being intelligible, and aim only to enable them to satisfy these interests. Historically, the pursuit of such strategies has been somewhat successful in preventing trans people from suffering hermeneutical injustices in their interactions with cis people. Yet the widespread anti-trans backlash of recent years has brought to the fore a number of limitations and previously unacknowledged downsides to trans people’s pursuit of such strategies. Thankfully, the pursuit of such strategies is not the only way to go about preventing trans people from suffering hermeneutical injustices in their interactions with cis people. At least some such injustices can be prevented by instead doing away with some of the interests trans people have in certain things about themselves being intelligible to certain cis people, and thus with the possibility of those interests going unfairly unsatisfied. In particular, trans people can do away with some of those interests by meeting the needs which underly them for themselves. Such strategies are infrapolitical in the sense that because they largely play out within a marginalized group rather than between a marginalized group and a dominant group, they tend not to register on the radar of the dominant group. I argue that especially in the context of a backlash against a marginalized group by members of a dominant group, this is an important advantage to strategies of this previously untheorized sort.
February 17, 2025 at 3:24 PM