Introduction: Iris Marion Young in context
By: Michaele L Ferguson, Andrew Valls
Abstract:
Iris Marion Young was one of the most influential and innovative political theorists of her generation. She had a substantial impact on a wide range of topics such as democratic theory, feminist theory, and justice. Young work hence constitutes an important challenge to many of the most dearly held notions about the task of theory in general, and political theory in particular, even while it affirms the necessity of sound theory and the inescapability of questions of justice. Her work is deeply informed by many Continental schools of thought, including poststructuralism, existentialism, phenomenology, and critical theory, yet Young also engaged Anglo-American and analytic political philosophy. Young draws upon the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s as a source and an inspiration for her arguments about justice. The work of justice is first to render the structural processes visible and then to take collective action to dismantle those social structures that are sources of domination and oppression.
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