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Iris Marion Young

Iris Marion Young


Five Faces of Oppression

Partial synopsis of Justice and the Politics of Difference, by Iris Marion Young (1990), helpful for facilitating conversations about what justice means given the different ways that people experience oppression.

Throughout the 1980s and even still today, many people have dismissed “identity politics” as a mere distraction. Iris Young’s book Justice and the Politics of Difference was a milestone in the fight to prove that so-called “identity politics” had serious demands and ambitions for social transformation. Young synthesized years of theorizing by social movements, presenting claims for social justice in a clear, incisive form that was hard for mainstream liberals to ignore. Her book is particularly helpful for how it talks about power and its relation to oppression.

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