Dancing with Iris: The Philosophy of Iris Marion Young (Studies in Feminist Philosophy Series)

Dancing with Iris

Studies in Feminist Philosophy is designed to showcase cutting-edge monographs and collections that display the full range of feminist approaches to philosophy, that push feminist thought in important new directions, and that display the outstanding quality of feminist philosophical thought. STUDIES IN FEMINIST PHILOSOPHY Cheshire Calhoun, Series Editor

Advisory Board Harry Brod, University of Northern Iowa • Claudia Card, University of Wisconsin • Lorraine Code, York University, Toronto • Kimberle Crenshaw, Columbia Law School/UCLA School of Law • Jane Flax, Howard University • Ann Garry, California State University, Los Angeles • Sally Haslanger, Massachusetts Institute of Technology • Alison Jaggar, University of Colorado, Boulder • Helen Longino, Stanford University • Maria Lugones, SUNY Binghamton • Uma Narayan, Vassar College • James Sterba, University of Notre Dame • Rosemarie Tong, University of North Carolina, Charlotte • Nancy Tuana, Penn State University • Karen Warren, Macalester College

PUBLISHED IN THE SERIES: Abortion and Social Responsibility: Depolarizing the Debate Laurie Shrage

Women’s Liberation and the Sublime: Feminism, Postmodernism, Environment Bonnie Mann

Gender in the Mirror: Confounding Imagery Diana Tietjens Meyers

Analyzing Oppression Ann E. Cudd

Autonomy, Gender, Politics Marilyn Friedman Setting the Moral Compass: Essays by Women Philosophers Edited by Cheshire Calhoun Burdened Virtues: Virtue Ethics for Liberatory Struggles Lisa Tessman On Female Body Experience: “Throwing Like a Girl” and Other Essays Iris Marion Young Visible Identities: Race, Gender and the Self Linda Martín Alcoff Women and Citizenship Edited by Marilyn Friedman

Self Transformations: Foucault, Ethics, and Normalized Bodies Cressida J. Heyes Family Bonds: Genealogies of Race and Gender Ellen K. Feder Moral Understandings: A Feminist Study in Ethics, Second Edition Margaret Urban Walker The Moral Skeptic Anita M. Superson “You’ve Changed”: Sex Reassignment and Personal Identity Edited by Laurie J. Shrage Dancing with Iris: The Philosophy of Iris Marion Young Edited by Ann Ferguson and Mechthild Nagel

Dancing with Iris The Philosophy of Iris Marion Young

Edited by

ann ferguson and

mechthild nagel

1 2009

1 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam

Copyright © 2009 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dancing with Iris: the philosophy of Iris Marion Young / edited by Ann Ferguson and Mechthild Nagel. p. cm.—(Studies in feminist philosophy) ISBN 978-0-19-538912-8; 978-0-19-538911-1 (pbk.) 1. Young, Iris Marion, 1949– 2. Feminist theory. 3. Political science—Philosophy. I. Ferguson, Ann. II. Nagel, Mechthild. HQ1190.D36 2009 305.42092—dc22 2008053795

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

Contents

Contributors, vii

part i. homage to iris marion young 1. Introduction, 3 Ann Ferguson and Mechthild Nagel 2. When I Think about Myself as Politically Engaged, I Think of Myself as a Citizen: Interview with Iris Marion Young, 21 Vlasta Jalusˇ icˇ and Mojca Pajnik 3. Letter to Iris Young, 33 Karsten J. Struhl

part ii. embodiment, phenomenology, and gender 4. Iris Young and the Gendering of Phenomenology, 41 Sandra Lee Bartky 5. Resonance and Dissonance: The Role of Personal Experience in Iris Marion Young’s Feminist Phenomenology, 53 Michaele L. Ferguson 6. Throwing Like a Girl, Dancing Like a Feminist Philosopher, 69 Susan Leigh Foster 7. Iris Marion Young: Between Phenomenology and Structural Injustice, 79 Bonnie Mann

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part iii. theorizing the state: method, violence, and resistance 8. L’Imagination au pouvoir : Comparing John Rawls’s Method of Ideal Theory with Iris Marion Young’s Method of Critical Theory, 95 Alison M. Jaggar 9. Between Democracy and Violence and the Problem of Military Humanitarian Interventions, 103 Bat-Ami Bar On 10. Engendering [In]Security and Terror: On the “Protection Racket” of Security States, 117 Margaret Denike

part iv. justice: ethics and responsibility 11. Iris Young’s Last Thoughts on Responsibility for Global Justice, 133 Martha C. Nussbaum 12. Injustice, Evil, and Oppression, 147 Claudia Card 13. The Faces of Animal Oppression, 161 Lori Gruen 14. Making Character Disposition Matter in Iris Young’s Deliberative Democracy, 173 Desirée H. Melton

part v. justice: democracy and inclusion 15. Iris Young, Global Responsibility, and Solidarity, 185 Ann Ferguson 16. Varieties of Global Responsibility: Social Connection, Human Rights, and Transnational Solidarity, 199 Carol C. Gould 17. On Immigration Politics in the Context of European Societies and the Structural Inequality Mode, 213 Máriam Martínez 18. Women’s Work Trips and Multifaceted Oppression, 229 Ibipo Johnston-Anumonwo Works of Iris Marion Young, 243 General Bibliography, 245 Index, 259

Contributors

Bat-Ami Bar On is Professor of Philosophy and Women’s Studies at Binghamton University (SUNY). Her primary theoretical interests revolve around violence and democracy, though she escapes them (often?) by pursuing other themes. Sandra Lee Bartky is Emerita Professor of Philosophy and also of the gender and women’s studies program at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her fields of specialization have included feminist theory, critical social theory, existential phenomenology, Foucault, and Marxism. She has written on such diverse topics as the later Heidegger, female embodiment, white racism, identity formation, aging, and women’s internalized oppression. Her books include Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression (1990) and Sympathy and Solidarity (1994). Claudia Card is Emma Goldman Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin, where she has taught since 1966. Her recent books include The Atrocity Paradigm: A Theory of Evil (2002), The Cambridge Companion to Simone de Beauvoir (2003), and Genocide’s Aftermath (2007), coedited with Armen Marsoobian. She is currently at work on two books, one on terrorism, torture, and genocide and the other an introduction to feminist philosophy. Margaret Denike is Associate Professor and Coordinator of the human rights program at Carleton University. For the past decade, she has been active in national organizations that engage in legal education and law reform initiatives, including serving as president of the National Association of Women and the Law, as a member of the National Legal Committee of the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund, and as a member of the Advisory Committee of

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the Law Commission of Canada. Her publications cover a range of topics in feminist philosophies and human rights theories, including constitutional equality jurisprudence, the ethics of war, discourses of evil, institutional persecution, and sex-based discrimination. Ann Ferguson is a social justice activist and Emerita Professor of Women’s Studies and Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She has written two books and numerous articles in feminist theory, ethics, and politics. The books are: Blood at the Root: Motherhood, Sexuality and Male Dominance (1989) and Sexual Democracy: Women, Oppression and Revolution (1991). She has also coedited a book in feminist ethics with Bat-Ami Bar On, Daring to Be Good: Feminist Essays in Ethico-Politics (1998). Michaele L. Ferguson is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and a junior faculty affiliate with the women and gender studies program at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her work in feminist and democratic theory has appeared in Hypatia, Politics & Gender and the University of Colorado Law Review. She is the coeditor with Lori Marso of W Stands for Women: How the George W. Bush Presidency Shaped a New Politics of Gender (2007). She is currently working on a book manuscript entitled Sharing Democracy. Susan Leigh Foster, choreographer and scholar, is Professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures at UCLA. She is the author of Reading Dancing: Bodies and Subjects in Contemporary American Dance (1986); Choreography and Narrative: Ballet’s Staging of Story and Desire (1996); and Dances That Describe Themselves: The Improvised Choreography of Richard Bull (2002). She is also the editor of two anthologies: Choreographing History (1995) and Corporealities (1996) and the coeditor of the journal Discourses in Dance. Carol C. Gould is Professor of Philosophy and Political Science and Director of the Center for Global Ethics and Politics at Temple University. She is editor of the Journal of Social Philosophy and past president of the American Section of the International Society for Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy. Gould is the author of Marx’s Social Ontology, Rethinking Democracy, and Globalizing Democracy and Human Rights, editor of seven books including Women and Philosophy, Beyond Domination, The Information Web, Cultural Identity and the Nation-State, and Gender. She has published numerous articles in social and political philosophy, feminist theory, and applied ethics. Lori Gruen is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Wesleyan University where she also directs the Ethics in Society Project. She is the coeditor, with Alison Wylie, of Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy. Gruen works at the intersection of ethical theory and ethical practice, with a particular focus on issues that impact those often overlooked in traditional ethical investigations such as women, people of color, nonhuman animals, and the like. She has published widely on topics in practical

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ethics including: animal ethics and mind, ecofeminist ethics and politics, and sex law. Alison M. Jaggar is Arts and Sciences College Professor of Distinction in Philosophy and Women and Gender Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her books include: Feminist Frameworks (coedited, third edition 1993); Feminist Politics and Human Nature (1983); Gender/Body/Knowledge: Feminist Reconstructions of Being and Knowing (coedited 1989); Morality and Social Justice: Point Counterpoint (coauthored 1995); Living with Contradictions: Controversies in Feminist Ethics (1994); The Blackwell Companion to Feminist Philosophy, coedited with Iris M. Young (1998); Just Methods: An Interdisciplinary Feminist Reader (2008); Abortion: Three Perspectives (coauthored 2009); and Pogge and his Critics (2010). Jaggar was a founder member of the Society for Women in Philosophy and is past chair of the American Philosophical Association Committee on the Status of Women. Vlasta Jalusˇicˇ is a senior research fellow at the Peace Institute (Institute for Contemporary Social and Political Studies), Ljubljana (Slovenia) and Associate Professor of Political Science and Gender Studies at Ljubljana University. She has published articles and chapters on gender, women’s rights, Eastern European politics and transition, war, violence, and Hannah Arendt. Ibipo Johnston-Anumonwo is Professor of Geography at SUNY College at Cortland. Her scholarly work integrates gender and ethnicity into geographic research and curriculum. Her publications include two coauthored books Issues in Multiculturalism: Cross National Perspectives (second edition 1999) and Diversity, Multiculturalism and Social Justice (2002); two coedited books Issues in Africa and the African Diaspora in the 21st Century (2001) and The Africana Human Condition and Global Dimensions (2002). She has served as an executive board member of the Geographic Perspectives on Women Specialty Group, and on the editorial boards of Gender, Place, and Culture and Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women’s and Gender Studies. Bonnie Mann is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oregon. After years of feminist activism, much of it in the battered women’s movement, she now teaches feminist philosophy and lives with her partner and four daughters in Eugene, Oregon. She is the author of Women’s Liberation and the Sublime: Feminism, Postmodernism, Environment (2006) and a cofounder of the Society for Interdisciplinary Feminist Phenomenology. Máriam Martínez is a researcher at the Department of Political Science of the Autonomous University of Madrid. She was a visiting researcher at the University of Chicago during the fall of 2005 and at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Columbia University during the 2006–2007 academic year. She is the author of “Iris Marion Young’s Political Thinking: Feminism and Politics of Difference from a Difference Perspective” in Contemporary

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Political Thinking (2008). She is finishing her dissertation, called “On Desire and Difference: The Feminist Approach of Iris Marion Young to the Political.” Desirée H. Melton is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland. She specializes in social and political philosophy and critical race theory and has interests in existentialism and literature. She recently published an article on the role dispositional vulnerability has in recognition of racial injustice. Currently, she is working on an essay that explores vulnerability, hope, and other existentialist themes in Toni Morrison’s Sula. Mechthild Nagel is Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York, College at Cortland and a senior visiting fellow at the Institute for African Development at Cornell University. She is the author of Masking the Abject: A Genealogy of Play (2002), the co-editor of Race, Class, and Community Identity (2000), The Hydropolitics of Africa: A Contemporary Challenge (2007), and Prisons and Punishment: Reconsidering Global Penality (2007). Nagel is the editorin-chief of the journal Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women’s and Gender Studies. Martha C. Nussbaum is Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, appointed in the Law School, Philosophy Department, and Divinity School; she is an associate in the classics and political science departments, a member of the Committee for Southern Asian Studies, and a board member of the Human Rights Program. Her most recent book is Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of America’s Tradition of Religious Equality (2008). Mojca Pajnik is a scientific counselor at the Peace Institute, Institute for Contemporary Social and Political Studies, Ljubljana, Slovenia, and Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Ljubljana. She has published on migration, gender, and the media. Her current research is focused on citizenship and migration. Karsten J. Struhl teaches political and cross-cultural philosophy at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY) and the New School. He has coedited Philosophy Now (1980), Ethics in Perspective (1975), and The Philosophical Quest: A Cross-Cultural Reader (2000). His articles have appeared in a variety of journals, books, and encyclopedias on such topics as ideology, human nature, just war theory, war and terrorism, socialist ethics, global ethics, democracy as a universal value, and visions of communism.

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PART I

HOMAGE TO IRIS MARION YOUNG

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Introduction Ann Ferguson and Mechthild Nagel

In Homage to Iris Marion Young Iris Marion Young was a brilliant, creative, and prolific political thinker, philosopher, and activist. Her career was cut short by her untimely death at the age of 57 in 2006, but her ideas and theories continue to be influential all over the world. Young has created compelling complex theories of justice, social oppression, gender, and democracy that combine insights from phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and critical theory in a unique way. Her achievement in successfully combining these approaches is all the more impressive since proponents of these various approaches have often presented them as inconsistent. In order to celebrate her unique vision and the many facets of her intellectual contributions to political thought and feminist philosophy, we undertook to create this anthology of writings about her work, including a hitherto unpublished recent interview with her that will document and deepen the understanding and spread of her ideas. In what follows, we will outline the important legacy of the major aspects of her work and show how the chapters we have already collected explore and develop these aspects in critical and interesting ways. Both of us have benefited from knowing Iris as a friend, fellow activist for social justice, and feminist theorist. We both want to comment a bit on this from our own points of view.

Mechthild Nagel Iris Marion Young was a mentor of many graduate students like me who participated in the Radical Philosophy Association (RPA), a role she took very seriously. At the first national conference of RPA at Des Moines, Iowa, 1994, I was

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invited to join Young on a plenary to discuss the future of the RPA. The day before the plenary I rewrote the paper with the help of other graduate students to put forth a call of action for the RPA to set up a mentorship program for radical students. After I gave my talk to a sympathetic audience, Young saw an opportunity for organizing, and facilitated a brainstorming discussion, resolutely cutting off any responses that wanted to veer off into abstract philosophizing about other plenary speakers’ papers. As a result of that discussion, we set up a directory of RPA members and senior members who volunteered as publishing coaches and who would read our papers before we sent them off for publication. I was elated to have our political struggle and point of view validated by Young, a senior, established philosopher of the RPA. Her seminal book Inclusion and Democracy (2000) begins with a narrative of collecting petitions on the streets, and shows junior scholars that it is not only possible, but that it is indeed necessary to combine a theoretical commitment to resistance (of “one dimensional man,” see Struhl, chapter 3) with a passionate engagement for speaking truth to power. Little did I, as a graduate student, know at that time how much she enjoyed a critical reflection of her own work to the point of generosity. At an APA conference, having heard my paper (Nagel 1993) on the critique of community ideal, which argued that her own approach did not go far enough in dismantling this ideal, Young calmly turned to another presenter and queried whether he would incorporate my ideas into his argument. What stays most vividly with me is her infectious laughter, her enthusiasm for life, whether it is good ideas, good food, or love of jazz music, Iris Young: Presente!

Ann Ferguson I have known Iris Marion Young since the late 1970s when we were both a part of a group called Marxist Activist Philosophers (MAP). In the early 1980s, this group transmogrified into SOFPHIA (Socialist–Feminist Philosophers Association), an American study group of men and women which still exists and meets twice a year. Young was one of the intellectual leaders of this group from the beginning, not only in creating and critiquing social theory, but also in making practical connections to that theory, which included encouraging the group to go to antiwar, pro-union, and other social justice demonstrations when they were in the venue of the conference. During the 1970s and 1980s, I was influenced by both Gayle Rubin’s concept of “sex/gender systems” (Rubin 1975) and the way that Heidi Hartmann had put that concept to work in conceptualizing the changing relationship between capitalism and patriarchy (Hartmann 1981). I was building on these two approaches, and busy developing my own socialist–feminist analysis of women’s oppression, which theorized capitalism and patriarchy as dual

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systems of domination (cf. Ferguson and Folbre 1981; Ferguson 1989, 1991). Even though Young also identified as a socialist–feminist, I was momentarily taken aback when she published her critique of just the sort of dual systems theory I was working on in the same anthology in which my first paper was published (Young 1981)! This was just the first of many friendly disagreements that we were to have over the next twenty years or so, but I always felt that we were basically in fundamental political agreement in spite of them. Partly this had to do with our mutual feminist activism, which forced both of us to juggle meetings of the autonomous women’s movement with meetings of mixed left organizations for social justice, such as the Rainbow Coalition, the antinuclear power movement, the civil rights movement, and the various antiwar movements, starting with the Vietnam war. We also for a time in the 1980s were members of a small group of women faculty and students called the Socialist– Feminist Group, which tried to combine a study group with feminist activism in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts where we both lived. I always admired Iris for the way that she was able to work in social justice coalitions as a local activist yet also continue her very important theoretical work on the feminist theory of gender and the body, justice, the politics of difference, democracy, and, in her last work, the implications of corporate globalization for global justice. Iris Marion Young was perhaps one of American feminist philosophers’ most prestigious public intellectuals: always a little ahead of the rest in grasping the implications of the political events and movements of the day, and undertaking to write analytic essays about them. I think, for example, of her excellent piece in Signs (2003) on the masculinist security regime perpetuated by the U.S. government under George W. Bush as a reaction to the 9/11 World Trade Center bombings, as well as her article on the U.S. government’s reaction to Hurricane Katrina (2006d). As I indicate in chapter 15, my own work continues to be influenced by her ethical and political insights, and I only wish that she were still with us to shine her clear light of analysis and activism on coming struggles. Fortunately, the seeds she has planted have taken root in diverse places and many, including the authors in this volume, continue the strands of her approach. In this sense we are all working in solidarity for feminist social justice along the path she began.

Dialogues with Iris Chapter 2, by Vlasta Jalusˇ icˇ and Mojca Pajnik, and chapter 3, by Karsten Struhl, reveal the personal, political, and international reach of Iris Marion Young. In the interview and the personal letter, we find a person who is committed to make political theory come alive and a scholar who is intensely engaged in political struggles. In her obituary, Seyla Benhabib (2007) notes that Young was deeply committed to the ideals of American democracy and her struggles against injustice were rooted in American city life—New York City where she

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was born; Worcester, Massachusetts, where she began her teaching career; Pittsburgh, where she gained international fame with her various publications; and her last city, Chicago, where she continued to be a political activist and gained fame as a political theorist. Young’s articulation of a politics of difference is very much indebted to these lived experiences, and thus, Benhabib surmises, Young does not comprehend the “murderous dimensions of ethnic, religious, national, and linguistic conflict” engendered by a politics of difference when it is not rooted in democratic constitutionalism (p. 442). We imagine that Young’s response to Benhabib would have been similar to the argument outlined in the epilogue on “International Justice” (1990a): Group difference is the source of some of the most violent conflict and repression in the world today. An essentialist and absolutist understanding of social group difference is often more pronounced and deadly in places outside of relatively tolerant Western capitalist societies. . . . An ideal of politics as deliberation in a heterogeneous public which affirms group differences and gives specific representation to oppressed groups is, I believe, immediately relevant to each of these situations. An ideal of community as shared final ends and mutual identification is even more absurd in these contests than in the context of any city in the United States (p. 260, emphasis added). Young (2000) answers her critics’ objections in detail in chapter 3, “Social difference as a political resource.” She contends that a politics of difference cannot be reduced to a logic of identity; rather, instead of having a substantive identity, groups have a relational logic (p. 82). Arguably, Young’s influence on political philosophers has spread beyond North America, which suggests that her analysis has global import since local scholar–activists have been encouraged to translate her U.S.-centered analysis into their own non-U.S.-based contexts. Young’s work has been translated into Italian, Spanish, German, and Swedish. Furthermore, Young’s teaching and conference schedule took her to all continents and many contested areas, including Palestine, and several of her writings are devoted to a philosophical analysis of issues relating to international justice and global democracy. It was during Young’s last travel to Europe in May 2006 that contributors Vlasta Jalusˇ icˇ and Mojca Pajnik were able to interview her at the Peace Institute in Ljubljana, Slovenia. In her interview with them she addresses Benhabib’s and other critics’ concerns about how best to address conflict and identity issues. Young discusses the political notions of gender, democracy, globalization, and the public sphere, defending her general claim that politics is not best understood in terms of identity. With respect to the European Union, Young is troubled by the rise of a new European nationalism and critiques Habermas’s and Derrida’s call for a European public space. They entirely overlook that there

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already exists a global public sphere, which contains more than the two powerful actors, the United States and the European Union. Given her cosmopolitan leanings, Young notes an increasing role of social movements for a growing global (not only European) public sphere. Although social movements are theorized in her earlier work on global democracy, Inclusion and Democracy (2000), they play even a more prominent a role in this interview and in her recent book, Global Challenges: War, SelfDetermination and Global Justice (2007). In particular, Young draws inspiration from the student-led anti-sweatshop movement, which propelled her to study accountability and responsibility in a more encompassing way than liberals (Rawls) or luck egalitarians (Dworkin) do. In several of her last writings, Young focuses on the ethico-political responsibility of global actors, emphasizing a social connection model of struggle and solidarity over a punitive liability model, which individualizes wrongs and apportions blame accordingly (cf. Chapter 11 by Nussbaum). Struhl’s “Letter to Iris Young” (chapter 3) notes that Young refuses to embrace the concept of blame and focuses on responsibility instead. Quoting Young from her last book project Responsibility for Justice, Struhl says “Rhetorics of blame can get in the way of taking action against structural injustices for which many of us share responsibility.” As always, he claims, Young’s theoretical reflections are aimed at allowing us to better understand our specific social reality, and they become tools for political intervention. He concludes by invoking the spirit of “Iris Young, presente!” as a way for those of us who shared her political goals to continue to be inspired by her life and work. In the next section, we present the meaning of praxis philosophy according to Young from a gendered perspective. What does it mean to experience—and perform—feminine embodiment as a feminist activist?

Embodiment, Phenomenology, and Gender Under the influence of her study of Merleau-Ponty and Simone de Beauvoir, Young started her intervention into feminist philosophy with her essay “Throwing like a girl” (1980), followed by “Pregnant embodiment: Subjectivity and alienation” (1984) and “Breasted Experience: The Look and the Feeling” (1990b). Taking the phenomenological starting point of these two authors, she accepts their metaphysical approach to the body that emphasizes its meaning as a lived experience and a situation one finds oneself in, rather than the classic empiricist or idealist reduction of the body into a collection of sensations or the Cartesian dualist separation of the mind as the active consciousness and subject and the body as a passive material object. While she accepts Beauvoir’s critique of Merleau-Ponty’s privileging of the masculine body as the quintessential human body, she rejects her characterization of the feminine body as

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inevitably experienced as “immanence,” or as hindering the human potential for “transcendence” in ways that the masculine body is not so experienced. Thus, while she argues that feminine bodily comportment involves restricting one’s space and mobility compared to masculine bodily styles, this has its source in the particular social situation of women conditioned by sexist oppression. She is less pessimistic than Beauvoir in her analysis of the potentials for the feminine body to escape such social alienation, since pregnancy and breasted experience may contain uniquely positive types of consciousness not reducible to the effects of social oppression. Young’s phenomenological analysis of feminine body styles and experiences has influenced trends in dance and performance theory, including the poststructuralist gender theory of Judith Butler (1990). Her meditations on the different type of self–other relations experienced among mothers as pregnant and breastfeeding caretakers of children has inspired thinkers formulating an ethics of care based on the gendered division of labor as in Hartsock (1983) and Ruddick (1989). Young’s analysis of the feminine habitus of spatiality was part of the inspiration for further feminist scholarship by corporeal feminists as evinced in Elizabeth Grosz’s work (1994). Susan Bordo (1993), also known for her philosophy of the body, acknowledges that Young’s study of pregnant embodiment . . . suggests pregnancy makes uniquely available . . . a very different experience of the relationship between mind and body, inner and outer, self and other than that presumed by Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, and other architects of the modernist subject. The conception of autonomy assumed by that model, for example, is challenged by an embodiment that literally houses ‘otherness’ within the self. (p. 96) In this volume, Susan Foster (chapter 6) explores Young’s impact on dance and performance theory, while Sandra Bartky explores the relevance of Young’s early papers on “throwing like a girl” and “breasted experience” for her early work. Influenced by Young’s analysis of femininity as a body style, Bartky herself has written an important essay (Bartky 1990) connecting this idea with that of Michel Foucault on disciplining bodies through the social creation of what he calls “power/knowledges” based in social sciences such as criminology, penology, psychiatry, education, and medicine. In this essay, Bartky extends the notion of self-disciplining of bodies to the daily practice of femininity through makeup, clothing, exercising, and bodily comportment in the service of creating a feminine body. Here, although she critiques aspects of Young’s phenomenological analysis of the feminine body, she nonetheless argues that her analysis is consistent with poststructuralist work on disciplining the body through material practices and social discursive gender norms. Young was a pathbreaker in terms of her use of personal experience as examples in her phenomenological writings. This was important to Western

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feminist activist theorizing of the 1960s and 1970s, which had rejected more mainstream leftist analyses of social oppression and exploitation that focused only on the public structures of the state and economy, and ignored the private world of the family, sexuality, and parenthood. The slogan “the personal is the political” came from the experience of political-consciousness-raising groups that allowed women to connect their personal experiences as lovers of men and mothers and workers with other women and to see the underlying common structures of oppression both in public and private life. Various theorists, including Young, were pioneers in applying the methodological insight that personal experiences could illuminate and show forth social structures that could support theoretical lines of thought. She used this insight in all of her phenomenological writings in ways not done by the more impersonal approaches of her mentors, Merleau-Ponty and Beauvoir. One of our contributors, Michaele Ferguson, shows the way that Young used the personal as an important source of theorizing, under the assumption that revisiting our past experiences deepens our theoretical understanding, and that telling our personal histories is crucial to cultivating identity and political agency. She argues that unlike Young’s later turn to the critical theorist concept of public recognition as a key demand of social movements based on identity politics, her earlier work supplies us with a important new method of argumentation that creates a resonance of the reader’s to author’s experience that is neither over-generalizing nor ignores differences between women. Toward the end of her short but amazingly fruitful career as a political philosopher and feminist theorist, Young was concerned that her earlier phenomenological approach to feminine subjectivity, following in the tradition of Merleau-Ponty and Beauvoir, was being used to promote an undue emphasis on women’s subjectivity and identity politics rather than attention to the social, political, and economic structures of power that create gender, racial, and class oppression. In the late 1980s, Western feminism suffered a crisis when mainstream activists and thinkers were accused by women of color of excluding their concerns about racism and class oppression (cf. Hooks 1984) based on an essentialist and additive concept of women’s nature (cf. Spelman 1988) that assumed all women had a common nature, whether biological or socially constructed, which would ground a feminist identity politics. Many liberal and radical white feminists had made the sex/gender distinction in order to assume that biological females are taught a gender of femininity that is used to perpetuate male dominance, and were using this theory as the basis for a feminist identity politics that assumed women have a common interest in uniting to fight sexist oppression even if they have racial, ethnic, class, or national privileges through their differences. But the development of a feminist intersectional analysis by women-of-color feminist activists (such as Moraga and Anzaldúa (1983) and the Combahee River Collective (1977) ) and theorists working in legal theory (Crenshaw 1991) and sociology (Collins 2000) challenged

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whether the gender identities of white women and women of color were the same because of their different positioning in legal, economic, political, and social/symbolic structures. Young had earlier supported the emphasis on a politics of difference against what she termed “gynocentric feminism” (Young 1985), and later in her important book Justice and the Politics of Difference (1990a). Young, however, takes a pro-gynocentric position in the republication of the essay. As she says Reflection on and revaluation of female gendered experience is uniquely empowering and provides important critical leverage. Gynocentrism seizes the meaning of sexual difference and femininity for women and by women, instead of acceding to patriarchal culture’s definition of women as lacking and deficient in relation to a humanist norm. A gynocentric approach also exposes how epistemologies, standards, and accounts of experience that claim neutrality and universality themselves express specifically masculine experience. (1990b, p. 7) It is clear from these essays that Young oscillates between trying to save some insights of radical feminism on the one hand, while rejecting its essentialist implications so as to take differences between women into account. She pursued a critique of mainstream feminist identity politics in two further essays, ten years apart, taking somewhat different approaches. Young’s essay “Gender as seriality: Thinking about women as a social collective” (1994) develops Sartre’s distinction between a series of things and a political group. The former is created by common relations of individuals to what he called the “practicoinert,” that is, to structures such as the sexual division of labor, normative heterosexuality, and male sexual objectification of women. However, such common relations do not create a common gender identity or political consciousness, particularly since family relations, racial/ethnic, class and sexual preference differences, not to mention nationality, may pit women in different situations against each other in positions of social privilege and oppression connected to these other differences. Young distinguishes between the relational commonality women may have due to gendered social structures, which makes them a series, and a common political consciousness of similar interests that would make them a political group. There is no way to get the majority of women to think of themselves as members of a collective political group without the conscious work of constructing coalitions and alliances, which negotiate women’s differing political agendas based on their social differences. Hence her analysis critiques feminist identity politics as too simplistic in its assumption that common gender structures will by themselves provide a common identity and feminist agenda. Young’s more recent article on the relation of gender to the lived experience of women is “Lived body vs. gender: Reflections on social structure and

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reflexivity” (2005). Here she responds to Toril Moi’s Sexual Difference position that rejects social science’s understandings of gender as socialized in favor of a lived body approach that rejects the sex/gender distinction. In contrast, Young pursues a middle path between the French and Italian Sexual Difference theorists, while also rejecting poststructural performative theories of gender, which seem to eliminate any separate effectivity of biologically sexed bodies in favor of a social construction of gender through stylized repetitions of gender norms. Young agrees with the phenomenological Sexual Difference approach in seeing body-based experience as involved with a gender that is experienced as binary, but her analysis gives an in-depth analysis of the lived body that also theorizes psychological gendered imaginaries that can explain transgendered and intersexed body situations. However, unlike the Sexual Difference approach, she argues that gender as a theoretical construct does not reduce to the lived body or its psychological imaginaries, but retains a use in analyzing the social structures mentioned in her previous article on gender as seriality. In her last public talks, Young went out of her way to critique Sexual Difference theory arguments that she worried used her own earlier phenomenological writings to reject the social structural concept of gender. Bonnie Mann, in “Iris Marion Young: Between phenomenology and structural injustice” (chapter 7), argues that Young’s theory has the resources to retain its theoretical mix of phenomenological and critical social structural analysis of gender in spite of Young’s worries. Her own approach develops farther than Young did with the Lacanian psychoanalytic notion of the feminine imaginary, and argues that it is Young’s implicit account of the feminine imaginary domain that makes her body essays the most important contribution to a feminist political phenomenology since Beauvoir’s Second Sex. Mann sees the connection between women’s lived bodily experience and gendered social structures to relate to the aesthetics of feminine body style, made possible by the unconscious psychological process of the feminine imaginary. She further links this notion of the imaginary to Benedict Anderson’s trope of imagined communities that connect individuals to potential collectivities. In this way, imaginary processes can be said to provide links for possible political identifications and dis-identifications, which explain the layers of difference in the lived experiences of women and women-identified people.

Theorizing the State: Method, Violence, and Resistance Toward the middle of the 1990s, Young marked a transition in her career by seeking to amplify the nonideal theoretical approach to the ethico-politics of justice, democracy, and the analysis of state power she had begun in 1990 with the publication of Justice and the Politics of Difference. In this book, she had critiqued the classic approaches to justice as a problem of fair distribution

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of goods, and argued for a paradigm of justice that involved government and public political and economic processes that allowed for the development of people’s capabilities for free and autonomous decision making, and involved inclusive democratic processes that acknowledged social differences and respected social movements. In her later work, Young tells us in her opening chapter on democracy and justice that “[d]emocracy is hard to love” (2000, p. 16). She proceeds to give us a nonidealist account of a deep democracy, which endorses inclusion, political equality, reasonableness, and publicity. Young offers ideals, for example, of differentiated solidarity, without resorting to idealist theory, that is, she does not bracket the “messiness” of deliberative decision-making that other democracy theorists are glad to do (e.g., Cohen, Gutmann and Thompson, Rawls, and Habermas). Young insists that in order to have a true commitment to inclusion, we must be attentive to different ways of seeing deliberation carried out, such as greeting rituals, story telling, and rhetorical styles, so that our theorymaking of inclusive democracy should not favor philosophers accustomed to rational, disembodied, and emotionally sober, argument construction. Young, unlike John Rawls, does not bracket social identities. She made this clear in Justice and the Politics of Difference (1990a), where she critiques Rawls’s distributive paradigm (Rawls 1971) for its social atomism. Using the tools of critical theory and phenomenology, she foregrounds intersubjectivity, group differentiated ideals, and class relations, which liberal idealist thinkers such as Rawls do not account for. In comparing the methods of John Rawls and Iris Marion Young (chapter 8), Alison M. Jaggar argues that Rawls’s theory is ideal in several interrelated methodological senses: he prioritizes principle over practice; he relies on a fictional reasoning process; and his theory is designed for an imagined world that lacks many problematic aspects of human nature and human society. By contrast, Young’s method is nonideal: it prioritizes practice over principle; it respects the reasoning of actual people; and it addresses the nonideal world of structural inequality and cultural difference. Jaggar argues that the nonideal aspects of Young’s methodology enable her to develop a theory of justice that is more comprehensive, relevant, and normatively acceptable than Rawls’. Young’s nonidealist approach also challenges Habermas’s rationalist deliberative ideals, in particular, in his construction of an ideal homogeneous public. In Inclusion and Democracy (2000), Young enlarges Habermas’s ideal public sphere with social, “messy” concepts, which have a productive role even as they reflect a struggle perspective. For instance, for democracy to be inclusive, state institutions must be in tension with civil society (p. 157) and public discourses are often “messy, many-levelled, playful, emotional” (p. 168). In “Thinking between democracy and violence” (chapter 9), Bat-Ami Bar On sheds light on the methodological similarities and differences between

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Habermas and Young. She examines the role of violence in Young’s later work by reviewing her essays: “Power, violence, and legitimacy: A reading of Hannah Arendt in an age of police brutality and humanitarian intervention” (2001), “Envisioning a global rule of law” (2002), which she coauthored with Daniele Archibugi, and “The logic of masculinist protection: Reflections on the current security state” (2003). What all three essays (republished in Young 2007) share is a very critical view of what Young comes to call “official violence,” the violence perpetrated by agents of the state as means to achieve their mission of law enforcement either domestically or internationally, and the rhetoric that is deployed to mobilize support for such violence. The criticism, Young points out, is motivated by a “hope for a regime of perpetual peace” that Young believes must never be abandoned, which Bar On reads as a hope for a global version of liberal democracy. Like Young, Habermas is committed to the possibility of “perpetual peace” and understands it in liberal democratic terms. While Bar On thinks that Young’s criticisms of “official violence” are insightful and cohere with similar criticisms developed on the Left, she argues that Young does not offer a way to think productively about violence when it is indeed a necessary means to legitimate ends. Young (2000, cf. chapter 7, “Self-determination and global democracy”) contests the traditional mold of liberal democracy theorists who cast the “decent” (Rawls 1999a) nation-state’s appeal to self-determination and sovereignty narrowly in terms of noninterference. While Young agrees that a people (a distinct cultural group) has a prima facie right of self-determination, she pursues a cosmopolitan argument that holds that the state ought to be divested from its political authority and local forms of government be empowered, at the same time that global regulatory regimes, that is, a global people’s assembly, ought to bring about peace and security for all. Importantly, to counter the popularity of “noninterference,” Young believes that the ideal of freedom from domination is needed to address self-determination of a people. They do not have the right to keep outsiders at bay or oppress them, because a key democratic and just value is the notion of inclusion. Thus, self-determination along a social justice framework invites open borders and interdependence of people, in other words, an ideal of relational autonomy. The model of noninterference relies on ideas (and myths) of homogeneity and closed borders that can hardly account for the realities of an interdependent world. Unfortunately, powerful contemporary security states such as the United States and the United Kingdom use these myths to block Young’s open border self-determination ideal. One of our contributors, Margaret Denike, also draws on Young’s paper “The Logic of Masculinist Protection: Reflections on the Current Security State.” Denike’s contribution “Engendering [in]security and terror: On the ‘protection racket’ of security states” (chapter 10) takes as its inspiration Young’s descriptive exposition of the “security state,” and the

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modalities of patriarchal power that characterize such current terror-fearing regimes. It draws and expands upon her analysis of the tactics of paternalistic protectionism (characteristic, for instance, of the security schemes of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada) through a consideration of the colonizing, racializing, and engendering effects of the tales of monsters/ terrorist “enemies” and the chivalry of their conquering heroes and humanitarian saviors. Denike follows the trajectory of Young’s analysis, tracing the implications of how security discourses locate and constitute enemies within and beyond its borders, and she links these implications to the resurgence of patriarchal/patriotic power of national sovereignty.

Justice: Ethics and Responsibility Concerns for justice permeate Young’s work, from her prize-winning book Justice and the Politics of Difference (1990a) to her recent books on global justice (Global Challenges, 2007, and “Responsibility for Justice,” unpublished). In Inclusion and Democracy, Young (2000) develops a concept of social justice which promotes self-development (countering oppression) and self-determination (countering domination)(cf. pp. 31–33). Most democracy theorists do not focus on self-development but instead build models of self-determination of a society’s members. Young’s work creatively weaves these two strands together. Young’s posthumously published book Global Challenges (2007) tackles conservative and liberal critics’ positions on (United States) welfare state policies. She is troubled by their atomistic interpretation of the distribution of goods to less fortunate members of society. True to her nonidealist position, outlined by Jaggar above, Young critiques Rawls, Dworkin, Murray and Mead, and Roemer for their myopic positions on the impact of social background. Young argues for far-reaching political and ethical responsibilities for people who are being treated unjustly as the result of social structures that were not caused by them. Our contributor Martha Nussbaum supports Young in her critiques of the limitations of these other theories, agreeing that they are either too narrow or too broad in their scope. Young distinguishes between the liability conception of justice, which puts blame on particular individuals for causing injustices due to their specific actions or inactions, as opposed to the shared political responsibility conception of justice: she also calls this a social connection model (2004). She argues that shared responsibility applies to anyone who takes part in a social, economic, or political process, which causally perpetuates outcomes of injustice to others, even if the intent of the participation is not to cause such harm. Young finds that judgments of blame should be downplayed since the accused would merely become defensive about something that happened in the past. In

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contrast, Young holds that asking the actor to take (shared) responsibility for future action has a more effective moral/political import. Nussbaum challenges the strict distinction Young makes between personal blame and shared political responsibility, on the ground that the existence of the latter condition makes individuals who share it more or less blameworthy, depending on their degree of complicity, privilege, and power in shaping or altering the relevant unjust structures and outcomes. Her conclusion suggests that we cannot make the distinction Young tries to make between the ethical duties of individuals based on avoidance of blame and their political duties to work with others to meet their shared political responsibilities to promote just social structures and societies. Young addresses a specific example of Black reparations in the final chapter of her unpublished book. Consistent with her view on eschewing blame, she rejects material restitution to individual descendents of slaves, but she considers the public accountability of insurance companies, which held policies on slaves, to be a good step in the right direction. Eschewing blame, for Young, does not mean to forget crimes against a people which happened in the past. However, remembrance, only for the sake of vengeance, is something to be avoided, because it, after all, does not raise the dead who had been wronged. If we ought to forgo casting blame, what implications does that political stance have for the question of evil? What might be said about oppressive evil encountered by marginalized groups? These are questions that Claudia Card wishes to pursue in her dialogue with Young on the topics of injustice, evil, and oppression. Card traces the development of Young’s views on the nature of groups, especially structural groups, from Justice and the Politics of Difference (1990a) through Inclusion and Democracy (2000) and Global Challenges (2007) with a view to laying out the development of her analyses of justice, domination, and oppression. Young’s view of the possibility of oppression as the product of structural injustice without culpability is contrasted with Card’s view of oppression as a moral evil, in a sense that does imply culpability. If Young is right that there can be oppression without fault, Card’s view of oppression as a moral evil will have to be qualified. While oppression does not constitute a major category in Young’s recent work—oppression received no entry in the 2007 book index as opposed to the category of violence—many theorists and teachers still find valuable Young’s (1990a) famous essay “The five faces of oppression” and are able to apply it to the different circumstances, from children’s education to community organizing. Young had hoped for just such wider applications of the analysis of oppression in her epilogue on international justice (1990a). In this vein, Lori Gruen discusses “The faces of animal oppression” (chapter 13) in this volume. In this chapter, Gruen explores the question of oppression beyond the species boundary by asking whether and how Young’s categories of exploitation,

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marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence feature in human relations to nonhuman animals. Gruen argues that to say that nonhuman animals are oppressed is not simply a metaphor but describes a reality for billions of animals in industrialized societies. In Inclusion and Democracy (2000), Young advocates making some changes to Habermas’ deliberative or communicative model of democracy. The deliberative model is based on inclusive discussion and the belief that everyone who will be reasonably affected by a decision should be able to participate in discussion around it. The deliberative model is not perfect, however, sometimes groups who should be a part of the discussion are “internally excluded”—a subtle, often unintentional exclusion on the part of privileged groups in which the manner of deliberation privileges some participants over others. Often, the excluded are minorities and those from other marginalized groups. Young suggests that some procedural and communicative changes to democratic deliberation will reduce the internal exclusion of minorities and other marginalized groups since internal exclusion often results from the fact that certain modes of communication (like dispassionate speech and rational discourse) are privileged over other equally effective ways of communicating. Since these privileged modes of communication are often used by privileged members of the democracy, groups that use other ways to communicate (like passionate speech and storytelling) are excluded from deliberating. With “Making character disposition matter in Young’s deliberative democracy” (chapter 14), Desirée H. Melton proposes that the procedural and communicative changes to deliberative democracy for which Young advocates will only allow for limited improvement to democratic inclusion between differently situated others unless deliberators are also attentive to how their character disposition in social interaction affects their political interaction. Melton suggests that communication can be enhanced and more genuine if deliberators allow themselves to become “dispositionally vulnerable” to the other in the social realm, well before and apart from, any political deliberation. Dispositional vulnerability involves an acknowledgement of one’s dependence on the other for dignity, a recognition of one’s lack of autonomy. Young acknowledges that genuinely greeting differently situated others before deliberation is risky because it is a vulnerable engagement that requires one to trust the other. In greeting one another, Young wants deliberators to acknowledge the dignity of political actors. Melton claims that before this kind of acknowledgement is achieved in deliberation, one must recognize how one’s self is “dispositionally dependent” on the other for dignity. Individuals from both privileged groups and marginalized groups must make this recognition, which cultivates vulnerable dispositions (although individuals will have qualitatively different vulnerabilities depending on whether they are privileged or underprivileged). This kind of deep acknowledgment of the dignity of the other happens in the social realm, prior to political involvement and without

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an agenda, and carries a greater chance for an enhanced, sincere, and genuine communication when one does enter into deliberation with differently situated others.

Justice: Democracy and Inclusion Young’s theoretical insights on the ideal of participatory democracy come from her deep understanding of U.S.-based social movements in which there is an attempt to set up forums in which a variety of personal expressions of opinion based on different racial, ethnic, gender, and class cultures are given equal voice and impact. This fuels her interest in adapting Habermas and Benhabib’s goal of communicative democracy to fit a multicultural model of power inequalities due to diverse cultural, economic, and political positioning. In her two articles “Asymmetrical reciprocity: On moral respect, wonder, and enlarged thought” (1997b) and “Communication and the other: Beyond deliberative democracy” (1997a), she argues against Benhabib and Arendt that the egalitarian communicative processes necessary for democracy require not merely cultivating a desire to sympathize with others by taking their point of view or putting oneself in their shoes, but a sense of wonder at and respect for their social and cultural differences. So while she agrees with the need for what she calls “differentiated solidarity” of political groups in different racial, class, gender, and other social positions to their members, she leaves open the door to what we might call, with bell hooks (1984), a “transformational solidarity” of those in privileged social positions with those in oppressed positions that is not simply based on a humanist disappearance of difference, but a mutual respect for difference. Ann Ferguson in “Iris Young, global responsibility, and solidarity” (chapter 15) develops this transformational solidarity concept further and argues that the preconditions for such a concept to be applicable in today’s globalizing capitalist world require an alternative global political economy of solidarity to be in place with its alternative paradigm of justice as solidarity. Rather than just exhorting individuals to take on social responsibility for others based on shared connections with them, as Young does, we need to understand that conflicting obligations to family, class, racial, and national groups will obstruct such a commitment or even the moral ability to acknowledge such a commitment, until people are able to reconceive their relations with distant others as a part of shared moral, economic, and political community networks. Fortunately, such networks are being set up as forms of resistance to the exploitation and oppression occurring through corporate capitalist and governmental economic and political policies that ignore harms to local communities, popular classes, and poor nations in favor of neoliberal policies favoring unrestrained growth of capitalist markets, favoring large corporations and wealthy nations. Ferguson teases out those strands of Young’s discussions of solidarity and the structural

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positioning of groups by institutional racism, sexism, class exploitation, and imperialism to show how Young’s work lays the base for the elaboration of the paradigm of justice as solidarity, which is necessary to supplement her paradigm of justice as shared responsibility due to social connections. Carol Gould claims in “Varieties of global responsibility: Social connection, human rights, and transnational solidarity” (chapter 16) that Young attempts to hold all actors socially responsible in shared global processes like market production and trade, whether or not they share equal power. This is problematic, since it excuses multinational corporations and powerful national governments that hold the major power to control, perpetuate, and benefit from these processes. She argues that although Young’s social connection model of justice importantly takes us beyond simple accounts of liability, it represents only one of the elements of a full account of responsibilities for global justice. Gould argues that a human rights perspective that focuses on economic and social rights supports positive global responsibilities to establish institutions to realize these rights. Such a conception of responsibility linked to human rights fulfillment thus importantly supplements conceptions for establishing global justice that emphasize either its political dimensions or its requirement of negative duties to avoid imposing harms or the rectification of structural injustices. Another aspect of a globalizing world is the problem of immigrants who bring their own cultural identities and practices to Northern secular democracies and raise questions of whether the nation state has a right to control or prohibit their practices with the claim that these practices violate rights of individuals within such groups. A glaring example is the practice of coercive female clitorectomy practiced on girl children in many African societies, which raises the moral and political question of whether girls and women fleeing such practices have rights as immigrants to be protected against such practices. Other examples include the practices of arranged marriages and polygamous marriages; neither practice is legal in most Northern secular democracies. From a cosmopolitan human rights perspective, such practices seem to violate individuals’ freedom of choice and right to self-development if imposed by their cultural group; and hence most thinkers have supported legal restrictions against the continuance of these practices by immigrant groups. Other concerns arise from practical contexts of integration of immigrant social groups in some European cities. Máriam Martínez in “On immigration politics in the context of European societies and the structural inequality model” (chapter 17) engages with one of the major concerns of Young’s last writings about the narrowing of multicultural conflicts to issues of nationality, ethnicity, and religion by applying Young’s definition of social justice as “the institutional conditions for promoting self-development and self-determination of society members” (2000, p. 33) to strategies of immigration politics in Europe. She focuses especially on gender issues, where religion in some multicultural conflicts has

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gained more attention than relevant questions related to structural inequalities such as the sexual division of labor or gendered processes of socialization. Martínez argues that a structural power analysis of immigrant groups’ positioning should trump considerations of differences generated by ethnic, national, and religious affiliations. Finally, it is striking how Young’s work on the politics of difference, since it was based on her activist work in U.S.-based social movements such as those for women’s and gay rights, African-American, Native American, and Chicano Civil Rights movements, and labor union rights supplements in a nonreductive way her critique of capitalist democracy. Young’s Justice and the Politics of Difference (1990a) provides a complex analysis of the historical social formation of U.S. white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist democracy that maintains a complex of intersecting structures of oppression (exploitation, domination, marginalization, cultural imperialism, and violence). Ibipo Johnston-Anumonwo in “Women’s work trips and multifaceted oppression” (chapter 18) applies Young’s idea of multiple oppressions to an empirical study of these different types of oppression that white and black women workers encounter while commuting, depending on their racial and economic location. Such an application is one of many that have been made using Young’s insightful analysis of faces of oppression, as has already been observed in our discussion on animal oppression by Lori Gruen (chapter 13) who uses this approach. As we hope to have shown, the authors in this volume engage in a fruitful exploration of the many facets of the work of Iris Marion Young, and in this process, they show how important her ideas continue to be for contemporary feminist phenomenology and political philosophy, particularly those concerned with the analysis of gender and male domination, global and national justice, democracy, and solidarity.

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When I Think about Myself as Politically Engaged, I Think of Myself as a Citizen: Interview with Iris Marion Young Vlasta Jalusˇ icˇ and Mojca Pajnik I (VJ) met Iris for the first time in Vienna, at the Institute of Human Sciences, in 1998. There she gave an excellent lecture on inclusion and democracy. As we spent time together in some of the Viennese cafes, I asked her whether she’d be interested in coming to Slovenia to give a talk at the Peace Institute. She liked the idea and promised to come. I kept sending her texts on Eastern Europe and feminism, and she was very interested in the topic. Time passed, however, and she had been obviously too busy. In 2004, when we exchanged some articles, one on violence and Hannah Arendt among them, she asked me if the invitation still held. But then she could still not come. In 2005, she sent me an e-mail saying that she’d be traveling to Europe in spring 2006, and that she’d love to come to Ljubljana before she traveled to a conference in Prague. We were really happy when she finally arrived in May 2006, yet she was quite weak due to the severe illness. Notwithstanding, she dedicated us as much time as she could: She was even so mindful that she brought with her the new edition of Throwing Like a Girl—On Female Body Experience. Her lecture on Structural Injustice and the Politics of Difference was a success, especially the way she was challenging some of the multiculturalist dealings with structural injustice (Parekh, Kymlicka etc.). While Mojca and I were taking Iris to the Alpine part of Slovenia on a sunny May Day, we had a break in my garden for a tea and she gave us the interview below. The next day she traveled to the Prague conference on “Philosophy and social science” to talk about her essay “Responsibility and global justice: A social connection model.” She sent me two additional mails commenting on one of my texts. In early summer we received the sad news that Iris had died, and we realized that we had most likely recorded the last interview with her.

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While doing transcription and preparation of this interview for publishing, we have made as little adaptation as possible. It seemed important to us to keep Iris M. Young’s own words and the oral flavor of the exchange. VJ My first question is connected with the recent debates around the importance of the category of gender, which show an ongoing dispute about its use and value. These debates give the impression of being already for or against the category of gender. In the new introduction to her book with Judith Butler, Feminists Theorize the Political (2000), even Joan Scott spoke about the abolition of the use of gender as a concept. Juliet Mitchell (2004) also published an article about this, a critique of the gender category as a “totally inclusive” term that now even includes biology but is at the same time, she claims, very particular and the trend towards blurring the “sexual difference” that is much more universal. And you wrote about the issue of gender and the lived body as well. You took Toril Moi’s discussion on this and then made a difference between the concept of the lived body as something that, as far as I understood it, can be still something useful for the process of subjectivization, on the one hand, at the level of the individual, as a question of corporeality, so to speak. On the other hand, you consider gender as something that can be used for, let’s say, for political mobilization, analysis, participation, and so on. What do you think about these discussions in general, and how do you see the future perspective of the category of gender? IMY I’ll talk about two things: It’s true that in the last fifteen years or so, at least in the United States, but I gather pretty much around the world among those who are interested in feminist theory, there has been a lot of debate about what gender as a category means, and whether it is useful. And some of that has been because people have feared that gender defined as the masculine, the feminine, is too gross a category and that it lumps too many men together in one category who have lots of differences, too many women together in one category that have lots of differences. At the same time, in the United States at least, in the academic setting, the use of the term gender has become more common to name programs, academic programs, and there is a good reason for this, I think. In the 1970s and 1980s when academic programs having to do with issues of women’s oppression and feminist visions were founded, almost all of them were called Women’s Studies. And they were women’s studies. Some of the theorizers of feminist theory began to see, though, that we should think in terms not just of women as persons, but more importantly the relationship that women as persons stand in to each other and to men. That the relationships are more important to theorize than the particular attributes of these being women. So gender has fulfilled that purpose of thinking about relationships between people across the structures of power and interaction.

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At the same time, the gay and lesbian movement, and then in the beginning of the 1990s, the queer movement, gained a place in the academic life. As with Women’s Studies initially, not too many years following behind, there were academics, both male and female, who began to research the history of same-sex relationships, and to do sociologies of same-sex life, and social movements. And as a consequence, at least in the United States, and I think it is also true in Australia, for example, and I don’t really know about Europe in terms of academic programs, but there came to be a point at which the question was: Shall we have Gay and Lesbian Studies, and Women’s Studies? Politically, this is not very smart. . . . And there’s a reason for these academic endeavors to be allied with each other. And if they can be academically in a unit, then they have more power in a university setting. But there are also intellectual reasons to see them as allied. So there came to be debates about academic programs in the United States as to whether to call them “gender studies,” and usually that was understood as inclusive of gay and lesbian and queer, eventually queer theorizing, as well as what historically had been feminist theory and Women’s Studies. And I’d say that now the majority of universities that I’m familiar with in the United States have made this shift between an old way of thinking about this disciplinary issue of women’s studies or feminist theory to naming it gender studies, where that is explicitly including queer theory. The University of Chicago where I am, I think actually when they founded it—it was founded before I came there, which was late in the game as these things go—in the late 1980s they had this debate and said: “No, it must be called gender studies.” So it is kind of interesting, on the one hand there was a debate about the usefulness of the category theoretically; at the same time, there was this movement on the ground in academic life for a broadening, in a way, of the academic enterprise of thinking about relations between men and women and sexuality that needed the category of gender as a way to be inclusive. So that’s the first point. Then about my own effort to make a small contribution to the debate about the meaning of gender as a category: we had in the 1980s in the U.S. context, anyway, a debate about woman as a category as being too unspecific, and also that when people would talk about the attributes of a woman they would have a bias in the definition that would often be toward those who were more privileged in the category. So there was a big debate about whether white feminism was really dominating the definition of woman, as distinct from Latino or black feminism, black women and so on. Then Moi (1999) takes it up from there and discusses Judith Butler’s important questioning of the category of woman as necessary for a feminist movement. As I read it, Butler argues that a movement doesn’t require a single category around which

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homage to iris marion young to rally and have banners, and Moi then traces debates about gender and woman as becoming more and more abstract. Butler deconstructs gender, deconstructs women; Moi reviews this and says: “The more we deconstruct, the more abstract the debate becomes.” And she argues that the critique is good, but ending up in the clouds isn’t good. She argues that we could replace the category of gender with the category of the lived body which she derives from Simone de Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty. First of all, one of Butler’s critiques was that the effort on the part of feminism to distinguish sex, that is embodiment, from gender, that is what is cultural, is problematic. So Moi accepts this and says: “This is one good thing about the category of lived body. You can talk about culturally inscribed material embodiment, so we can have sex and gender together. And, another important element or function of the category of lived body: it’s a category that most refers to experience, and how it is that you describe the experience. And there is no reason then, with the category of lived body, to generalize the experience of kinds of bodies to say that all women have the same lived body experience, or all men do, so that it has more plural possibilities descriptively for the variation in the experience of living the body.” And I agree with all this. I found it though, that the debate had been about how to think of individuals in the way they look at the world; that is what I would say subjectivity means, and the debate had turned away from thinking about positional relationships in social structures. And to understand our relations in all societies, and between all groups, it is necessary to have a theoretical way of thinking about largescale social structures. So I argue, as far as the debates on lived body vs. gender are concerned, that we should retain and reconceptualize the category of gender in terms of social structure. And that means that there are certain very simple definitions of social structure or variables about social structure that position people and make understandable the opportunities they face. And I argue that those are, I think I say three: there is the gendered division of labor, normative heterosexuality that affects everyone—people are located in different positions in the structure of normative heterosexuality—and what Rob Connell1 calls hierarchies of power as gendered. And with those three we can make more macro descriptions of the relationships between people and explain, and give an account of power, opportunities, material deprivations that continue and that are reproduced over time. And that are still the problem, the set of problems that feminist theory has begun questioning. 1 Robert Connell is now Raewyn Connell or R.W. Connell (editors' note).

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VJ I have an additional subquestion, or rather a comment. While thinking about the category of gender, and trying to trace it back—we see that it actually evolved, as you mentioned before, out of the category of woman. I was talking to Susan Brownmiller some years ago, here in Slovenia as well, and I asked her how it was with this category of woman, in her opinion. Because the women’s movement or let’s say feminist movement in its very beginning strongly referred to it, at least in the United States . . . , and she said something like: “being women, for us, was distinguishing ourselves, it was a category which brought us to certain stages in the public. We were chicks before, we were not women. Being a woman meant to be something, to have an identity which was important.” That made me think of the category of gender as something with “a priori” inclusiveness, as an identity category, including women and men, femininity and masculinity; then it goes for structures of sex and gender, and then we have the issue of sexuality, homosexuality, etc. So, it’s been evolving with some kind of adding on, and you were describing this process in academia. By the end it seems as if it really encompasses so many, and such complicated relationships that intersect with other structures and problems that you can hardly figure out what gender is all about because it is so much intersected with class, race, sexuality, etc. And one can easily say that it’s becoming almost indistinguishable. Joan Eveline and Carol Bacchi (2005), while discussing this, propose to talk about “genderization” instead of using the frozen noun “gender,” and thus to talk about the process connected with experiences and with structures that are evolving. In the European Union as in the United Nations, there exists a category of gender mainstreaming—in the United States you don’t have this—which has become a public policy issue. And it can be an empty signifier, so to speak. It can be filled with anything. It’s usually filled with femininity and masculinity. Politicians usually understand this kind of “gender” as “women,” and policies as those where they “add” a bit of women. That is, it’s interesting to see how the concept travels through structures and through different countries and how its meanings are very much changing, although feminist theorists fight hard to push forward a distinctive definition. IMY I guess I’m not convinced that it has become so encompassing that it has become meaningless, or tending to become meaningless, which seems to me what your remark is suggesting. It seems to me that it [gender] has two settings: the academic and the political. And I don’t think there are particularly other settings for the use of the term. It’s still a kind of specialized term. It’s not a term that affects much of ordinary life. You wouldn’t go to the movies and say: “I want to see a good gender film,” right? If we take that apart, as your remarks were, in academic life, I do think that the function of the term is to be able to

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homage to iris marion young have a way of describing relationships across issues of sexual division of labor, sexuality, and intimacy, and care relationships, and so on, that are often between men and women, but also between women and women, and men and men having to do with those issues. It is a category that tries to describe those possibilities apart from class as a category or race as a category. I think we need those distinct categories. If we don’t have them then all we can talk about is individuals and their specificity. And if we talk only about individuals and their specificity, then we can’t give an account of why it is that some people are advantaged and others disadvantaged. So in the academic ground, I think it depends on how clear people are, academically, in their research and theorizing about how they are using the term and what function it is serving in their theorizing and research. And that will vary, but that doesn’t have to do with the category of gender. It has to do with how good academics they are. And then, in the political sphere, it does seem to me that it is a victory for women’s and gay and lesbian’s movements for politicians to think they have to use the term at all. And, of course, it is an empty signifier. Just about everything in politics is an empty signifier. It’s up to people who are in the struggle for certain results to fill it with the meanings that they think are most important. But I don’t see that as unique to gender as a category. Democracy would have the same function. It means everything to everyone. So how you feel the category of democracy depends on the social movements and what they demand, how they try to struggle together. For example in the World Bank there is a thing they call the “gender desk.” Many people regard it as a little thing that was thrown to feminists who demanded something, some attention to relations between men and women in World Bank development projects. And it is relatively empty, except when people try really to insist: “Hey, you have to analyze it this way, not that way.” And here are the implications and consequences, and I would say, the same goes for gender mainstreaming in the European Union. We can’t ever rely on the politicians to do the “right thing”; we have to make them do the right thing. MP You mention the issue of democracy and I think we can see some similarities in conceptualizing democracy in contemporary feminisms. From the late 1990s and up to the present, books have been published by feminist authors who fill in democracy as an empty signifier, for example, with issues of migration, let’s say, Bonnie Honig in her book Democracy and the Foreigner (2001), or Seyla Benhabib in The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents and Citizens (2004). I sense one trend in feminist theory that goes from addressing gender to other categories and themes, migration being one of them.

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IMY In the examples you give, even though perhaps the authors have contributed to feminist theory in their work prior to the books that you are mentioning, and none of them would reject being called feminists: I don’t see, for example, Bonnie Honig’s book Democracy and the Foreigner (2001) or even in my own book Inclusion and Democracy (2000), or, say, in Seyla Benhabib’s book The Claims of Culture (2002) or even Anne Phillips’s book The Politics of Presence (1995); one could name a whole list of books that are by women authors, who somewhere in the course of their career, have made contributions to feminist theory—that doesn’t mean that the books that they’ve written about democracy are attempting to give a specifically feminist account of democracy. I don’t see that any of those books are claiming to do so. Now, Anne Phillips wrote a book in the early 1990s called Engendering Democracy (1991), which is an attempt, but I wouldn’t say that that book offers a theory of what democracy is that is going to be specifically feminist. But it is a book that took democratic theory to task for not having attended enough to gender difference, in both the history of political thought and contemporary life. I think that all the books you mention are contributions to theorizing democracy, that they are intended to be, if you will, compatible with claims that feminists make in the public sphere but they are not claiming to distinguish a feminist conception of democracy from other possible conceptions. MP Still, there are some similarities, for example, in addressing the exclusion–inclusion elements in the concept of democracy. IMY But you can have numbers of writers that aim to do that, who don’t think of themselves as feminist, though they are probably not against feminism, Will Kymlicka, for example. He supports feminism, he is certainly interested in exclusion–inclusion, and one could name a whole bunch of others, for example, James Bohman’s books Deliberative Democracy (1997) and Public Deliberation (1996). I don’t think there is the word “women” . . . well they might refer to women as an example, once or twice in the book. But it’s all about, or significantly about, inclusion and exclusion. What makes an issue feminist, in my view, is still that we’re calling attention to specific oppressions of women who suffer because of their social location. And if we start to extend the term feminist to everything that’s challenging marginalization, then I think it loses its meaning. And I also think that has happened to a significant degree, more than it should, and so we risk that people will stop focusing on the specific oppressions of women. VJ Would you then say that gender theory is something that is not covering itself, of course, with feminism necessarily, so the gender theory might be—feminism might be a part of it—something that grows larger or . . .?

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homage to iris marion young IMY But I would also say that gender theory is not equivalent to theories of marginalization. VJ Of course. Because usually . . . there is a kind of opinion, that gender theory and feminist theory are the same, in principle. IMY

They’re very close.

VJ Still close to this—you’ve been really fighting for the issue of women as a social group, but can it be a category that is defensible in theoretical terms or not? What I really liked when I was reading your work on this issue was—as I understood it—your insistence on the fact that political identity is not necessarily essentialist, or to a certain extent it must be essentialist because to act politically you must make claims and if you want to make claims you have to. . . . IMY I actually don’t like thinking of politics in terms of identity. Most people who write about my work say that I think about identity politics. But I challenge them to find me theorizing identity. I think when I talk about women as a social group—both in the essay that I wrote “Gender as seriality” (Young 1994a) and the more recent essay that we’ve just discussed, “Lived body vs. gender” (Young 2002)—I’m saying: It’s not an identity. An identity is about . . . you can make a list of attributes that a person has, and then you compare it—this is Aristotle, right—you compare it with this other person, and the list of attributes, and if it all matches up then they all have the same identity. But if you think of it structurally, then it’s not about the attributes that a person has, as such. It’s about the positioning of individuals within relationships. And that’s how I think about women as a category and women as a group. And that’s why in “Gender as seriality” I distinguished between the series and the group where I argued that a group could be thought to have identity, but it’s always going to be something much more specific than “women.” It will be a specific group of women who do have something in common in addition to being women. And that will be much smaller than the category woman. VJ This is actually very much connected to the third question that I have and that’s the issue of European identity you tackled in the article where you were criticizing Habermas and European philosophers, where they were stating that a European identity is necessary in order to balance the U.S. unilateral position. You challenge them, ask them whether what one has to talk about in these times is really a European identity, and whether the public space that was opened with the antiwar demonstrations all around the world before the attack on Iraq was a European public space opening itself or a global public space. You claim that it was a global public space, that it was not a European issue but a global issue and that there were the same demonstrations in the United States and elsewhere,

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as well. Against the claim for European identity and European public space, you strive for a cosmopolitan democracy. You say that European identity can only be something particularist and not universalist. How do you see relationships between this growing European attempt to build a kind of identity and the leftists and circles around, let’s say, those who consider themselves progressive political theorists and philosophers, who claim that it is exactly such an identity that is going towards reformulating of the global order? Even within feminism now there are these debates—in Undoing Gender (2004) Judith Butler is replying to Rosi Braidotti, and there is a kind of transatlantic discussion about gender there, whereby it seems that “gender” is increasingly seen as mainly an American, U.S. category, and that European feminism needs its own, not so much “traveled” categories. IMY There are theorists of the European Union who have argued that the European Union can evolve as a strong political entity only if, first the individuals who are citizens of member countries of the European Union can develop an identity as European. As I understand it, this means the evolution of a kind of European nationalism. That’s what it’s calling for. This assumes that you can only have a strong political entity if you first have a political identity that’s like a nation. It seems to me that this has always been problematic especially when we’re talking about the possibilities of the European Union as a political entity. It’s especially problematic here. It’s calling on members, citizens of the European Union or citizens of member states of the European Union to say: “OK, I’ve grown up Slovenian, or I’ve always thought of myself as German. And maybe that in the course of my life, has gotten to be a more loose understanding than it was for my parents, but even so. And I want now to put that aside or let it shrink and develop a sense of myself as European, which has the same weight as it used to have for me to be German.” Such a project seems not likely to succeed, as far as I can tell, and is not terribly desirable. It’s one of the resistances that we’ve seen in recent months and years to the evolution of this political entity in the form of resistance to the constitution. I think that the European Union ought to become a stronger political entity, that it would be good for the world if it does, that it’s evolving with some of the best laws in the world, and also ways of dealing with international relationships that are potentially very important for the future. And that this evolution should continue. And there’s no reason why the citizens of the member states need to evolve any conception of European Union identity. That could be distinct from the existence of European citizenship and is important, although it has its exclusive characteristics.

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homage to iris marion young I want to address what you say, about my response to Habermas’s particular intervention at the time of the invasion of Iraq by the United States and the United Kingdom and a few other countries. In that short essay of Habermas’s on May 31, which was cosigned by Jacques Derrida, he calls upon Europe—I don’t remember that Habermas actually in that essay calls for European identity or thinks that it is a requirement of what he’s recommending. But he calls on Europe as an entity, as a political entity to be strong, to be stronger, to serve as an important counterweight to the hegemonic power of the United States in the world. And he claims that Europe should, as a single political entity, develop a foreign policy that can try to confront the United States hegemonic power when it’s appropriate to do so, that is when it’s doing something wrong, as he thought, and I think, that the invasion of Iraq was wrong. And try to promote global justice. I think that Habermas was right about that and is still right about that—the project that only Europe has the economic wherewithal as an entity to be a counterweight to the United States. Soon China will also be able to serve as such, and there are a lot of international relations theorists who think that that’s where it’s going. Because China is not shy to be military, and Europe is. So, I think that Habermas was right to call upon Europe to take more responsibility for global affairs as a single entity. What I criticize that essay for was suggesting that the political, or the public sphere in which international relations is being played out is one in which there seems to be only the United States and Europe, and the rest of the world is witness to it but not part of it. Now, this is only by implication, in one little place in that essay where he says: “We saw the existence of a European public sphere when people are marching in the streets in London, and Paris, and Rome—and probably Ljubljana”—and he just didn’t mention another single city outside Europe, where there were on the same weekend hundreds and hundreds of similar protests. Everyone in the world, in every place in the world there were social movements: in Johannesburg, and Delhi, and all over, in several places in Africa, Nairobi, Latin America, Buenos Aires, Rio and so on—the list goes on. He says in his piece that Europe is the origin of cosmopolitanism with the French Revolution. This is the place where rights are born and the place that preserves rights. And that I found very Eurocentric. It’s not true in the world today, and so I wanted to criticize and claim: “No, we don’t have to wait for there to be a global public sphere.” Sometimes it exists now, and it includes social movements, very politically savvy, and where people from all over the global south gather; the movement of the World Social Forum is probably the most progressive and most interesting social movement in the world. And people who joined it from the north generally understand themselves as

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followers more than leaders, and properly so. So that is the point I was is trying to make there. VJ Here Habermas and Derrida are somehow entering the public space as philosophers, for example, in the manner of those who are wise men and who, so to speak, can speak the truth for us, so that we can “see” what it is actually about. How do you see such jumps into politics by philosophers, when they engage themselves? This was an engagement in everyday politics—it was a strong claim, so to speak. How do you see this jumping from, let’s say, from the sphere of thought to the sphere of politics? IMY If it’s done well it is not . . . philosophy when they do it, I would say. It’s a political speech spoken from a position of fame, if you will. But I don’t think it’s that different when Jacques Derrida makes a comment than when Bono makes a comment. You have a celebrity, and we hope that people will pay attention to what they say, and then you hope that they are intelligent politically in what they say. In most cases Derrida and Habermas, when they have spoken in public, as public intellectuals, have been intelligent. And sometimes they’ve been wrong, but they’ve been intelligent. And I think Habermas himself has always distinguished between his newspaper columns and his philosophy. And it seems to me that this is proper; there’s a different kind of discourse involved: you have a purpose, you are partisan. There’s no point in speaking as a public intellectual unless you are going to be partisan. As a theorist, there is also nothing wrong with being a partisan, but there is a different way that you might be an advocate. When I think about myself and my life as a theorist and teacher, and then my life as someone who is sometimes politically engaged as an activist or sometimes making political commentary, I think of myself as behaving as a citizen when I do the latter. MP In the context of your critique of Habermas for not extending his argument beyond the European borders, what would you say about the potentialities of the concept of the public sphere? Also, Habermas has responded before to critique about [his] Eurocentism—taking him to task for not mentioning the Indian context, for example, or the protest of movements in Latin America, saying that, of course, the public sphere is not only applicable to the European context and that he was using it as an example. Isn’t it true that such criticism applies to Western philosophy in general terms? In the sense that the concepts, for example, the public sphere, inclusion–exclusion, democracy, always carry an implication that they might be misused from a centralized European or American perspective. And probably what actually has the potential to go beyond this is what you’ve referred to before, i.e., transnational movements and activities.

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homage to iris marion young IMY Certainly the concept of democracy has been taken over by people all over the world and they think it’s theirs. They don’t think that the Europeans have a monopoly on the concept of democracy. I think the concept of the public sphere is similarly useful and unique. It is a concept developed by Habermas, still not very well understood by most other democratic theorists, except those who take up Habermas in one way or another. And I think that, for example, in Between Facts and Norms (1996) there is a further development of the idea of the public sphere that is quite explicit, and owes a lot to what Andrew Arato and Jean Cohen (1992) did in their book on civil society, where the uniqueness of the concept is to name possibilities of speaking and being heard, and criticizing as well as the formation of a generalized or widespread mass, if you will, public opinion that isn’t of the sort that is manipulated by public opinion polls, and where social movements help develop it, public intellectuals can intervene and help develop it, and it takes place outside state institutions, but in relation to them. I think this is a unique concept; it is descriptively accurate of what sometimes happens in politics and— it’s my understanding from reading Habermas, but even if I’m wrong this is what I think—the public sphere is evanescence: it comes to be, it surfaces and then it floats down. And it surfaces again, and then it sinks down. And it would be unrealistic to expect that you have a permanent public sphere. Maybe it would be great if it did exist, but . . . when you do have public sphere emergence then you have a kind of promise of accountability, answerability, and criticism for those in power, not only government officials, but international organizations, for example, in the contemporary context, or even multinationals, occasionally. As in the early 2000s in the struggle about making anti-retroviral drugs available to the poorest people of the world; this was a direct struggle with both the World Trade Organization and the major drug companies who manufactured drugs, and I think that was a moment when there was a global public sphere, particularly in the south, but it was global because you had connections between people in South Africa and people, say, in the United States who wanted to raise this issue. And it made a huge difference. I don’t think there is any other concept that helps describe the phenomenon of social movement that exists across a large segment of a mass society, raising issues and being able to call power structures to account, and shifting public opinion. I think that’s what the concept is about. Everyday politics isn’t usually like that, but there are moments, not infrequent moments, when you see the public sphere. And it does depend on civil society as a phenomenon and the freedom that the civil society makes possible.

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Letter to Iris Young Karsten J. Struhl

Dear Iris, We have known each other for almost thirty years, but the last time I saw you was at the World Philosophical Conference in Istanbul, which was in August of 2003. I heard you give a talk entitled “Modest Reflections on Hegemony and Democracy,” in which you argued, among other things, that human rights could only be defended if there is a global system of democratic dialogue. Later that week we had dinner at a restaurant some distance from the center of the city— you, David, a friend of yours who lived in Istanbul, my wife Olga, and myself. David, whom I had not seen for many years, had remarked to you earlier that he wondered if he would recognize me, and you answered that I seemed very much the same, only a little grayer. And in a very important sense you were also the same, the same loving, argumentative spirit that I knew so well. You had become a political superstar by then, but there was nothing in our conversation that evening, or for that matter any other time that we were together, which betrayed an air of self-importance. You were always the quintessential exemplar of the dialogic ethos which you had analyzed so deftly in your writing on justice and democracy. We talked about many things that evening—the political situation in Istanbul, banning the veil from public places, your invitation to spend the next semester in Princeton working on your new project, which was to be a critique of the mainstream concept of responsibility and the construction of a new way to understand political responsibility. You were very excited about this project. When we said goodbye, it was assumed that we would see each other soon on the east coast. But it was not to be. How easy it is for time to pass quickly with too many necessary commitments to fulfill. But

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I was not concerned. We would always, I assumed, meet at some conference. But it was not to be. We had spent considerable time together when you lived in Northampton. That was when you were first beginning to formulate your thoughts on what became your book on justice. That was when David was getting his PhD in economics. That was before you moved to Pittsburgh. But we continued to see each other at conferences, especially at Radical Philosophy Association (RPA) Conferences. In 1998, we were both on a panel on Marcuse at a Radical Philosophy Conference in San Francisco. I revisited Marcuse’s Soviet Marxism, which, for me helped to explain not only why the main internal opposition to the Soviet system did not take a socialist form but also why, when the first blush of Perostoika faded, the prevailing mood in Russia was one of cynicism. You revisited Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man and argued that today the one dimensionality of the “happy consciousness” had been replaced in America by a cynical consciousness. We had written our respective talks without conferring, but we had reached similar conclusions about each of the two empires that had been the poles of the cold war. Afterward, we spent some time talking about the problem of cynical consciousness as a world phenomenon. In a number of ways your life has been dedicated to confronting cynical consciousness and overcoming it both in your theoretical work and in your political activity. I recently reread some of the things you wrote. I had not fully appreciated the deep continuity that permeates you writings, a continuity which in large part comes from the political praxis in which you have been engaged. Your “Throwing like a girl” came out of your deep commitment to feminist political practice. In that essay, Merleau-Ponty’s “body subject” became a gendered body. The body-subject is not simply a body subjectivity. As female, it is a subjectivity whose spatiality and motility are constrained by the way that gender is constructed. Difference is already present in the movements of the body and in the sense of identity that is the body. Your understanding of difference also developed from your activities with various political coalitions, and it informs all your work. Difference is often seen as a negative feature of a social situation. But in your Justice and the Politics of Difference you insist that the recognition of group differences is essential to our understanding of justice. As there can be no ideal model of justice, which is abstracted from the concrete realities of domination and oppression, the remedy for injustice requires the full inclusion of all groups into the democratic polity. Thus, in your Inclusion and Democracy, you analyze the way that lack of inclusion undermines democracy and promotes injustice. As your work progressed, you turned to the problem of democracy on a global scale and the way in which we share responsibility for the oppressive structures within which we participate. In an article which was published in the Winter 2006 issue of Dissent, you applied your analysis of responsibility to the effects and aftermath of Katrina. You wrote: “The events and discussions around Katrina revealed shared responsibilities that existed long before—and

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still exist. Rhetorics of blame can get in the way of taking action against structural injustices for which many of us share responsibility.” As always, your theoretical reflections were aimed at allowing us to better understand our specific social reality and become agents for political intervention. One of my most significant memories of you was at another RPA Conference in Chicago. When we met there, I was on my way to a panel that I had particularly wanted to hear. You persuaded me that I could always go to one more panel but that having time to reconnect with an old friend was far more important. We talked for hours about our lives. You told me about your daughter, Morgan, who was now an activist for the Green Party. I remembered that when Morgan was born, you sent out an announcement which said “another socialist feminist has come into the world.” You had only recently become a full professor in the political science department at the University of Chicago. Your degrees were all in philosophy, but you explained how you had more purposefully immersed yourself in the methods and the discourse of political science. Your decision to do so, you said, had a conscious political intent—to be able to talk to people in a discipline which was closer to the mechanisms of governmental power and to spread your socialist feminist analysis to another circle of academics. It was a natural move for you, as your work on political theory has always crossed disciplines. We talked about arranging a special visit to your home in Chicago, to have time to talk leisurely with you and David. But it was not to be. I had heard that you had cancer but that it was now in remission. Then, very recently, I heard that the cancer had come back. In July, during a short stopover in New York between conferences, I made a long list of things to do when I returned from a conference I would soon attend in Mexico. The second item on my list was “call Iris.” But on the very day that I returned from that conference, I received an e-mail which announced your death. I was devastated. I called David who told me that the cancer had spread so far that you had decided to stop medical treatment, that you had left the hospital and gone home. It was anticipated that you would live at home for some time in a hospice situation. David said that when you were home you did not talk but simply smiled sweetly. And then, suddenly, without warning, you were dead within several days. The item “call Iris” on my list of things to do now becomes a painful reminder that I never said “goodbye.” I’m trying to say “goodbye” now, but finding it very difficult. Here I am at another RPA Conference, and it is very hard to accept that I won’t see you here. “Iris Young Presente!” That was the original call for this plenary. “Iris Young Presente!” You are still with us. You are part of our thinking about gender construction, about justice, about democracy, about globalization, and about political responsibility. “Iris Young Presente!” This room is filled with people who learned from you, who were engaged in dialogue with you, who taught your books in their classes, and who

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love you. Your spirit is with us. But you who wrote “Throwing like a girl,” know the importance of being embodied. Perhaps your spirit can live on in our bodies, in our political practice. But is that enough? We can try a thought experiment. Philosophers like to talk about other possible worlds. Quantum physics suggests the possibility of parallel universes. Is there a parallel universe where you are still alive? Perhaps in such a parallel universe, the United States Congress did not vote to abolish habeas corpus and sanction torture. Perhaps in such a parallel universe, George Bush never won the vote in Florida and, therefore, never became President. Perhaps in this parallel universe, terrorism, including state terrorism, is a rare phenomenon and the response to a terrorist attack is not war but, as you have urged, the implementation of the rules of international law. Perhaps in this parallel universe the environmental pollutants that provide the trigger for cancer have been greatly reduced, which is why you are still alive. In this parallel universe groups negotiate their differences in coalitions and in the body politic at large. How did all this come to pass? In this parallel universe, people overcame their cynicism and accepted the idea that another world is possible. Your writing and political activism have been, in that universe, an important part of that process. Now, let us return to this universe. The first step is the overcoming of cynicism, and, as you, Iris, have taught us, the validation of difference. Still, although you may exist in your embodied form in that parallel universe, here your being present takes the forms of our memories, of our political activities, and of our theoretical praxis. We can continue your work, drawing courage and understanding from your example as well as from your writing. But we can no longer ask you to further explain what you mean by something you have written; we can no longer have those delicious arguments with you; we can no longer see that wry smile. Simone de Beauvoir, at the funeral for Sartre, is quoted as saying, “we will not meet again; that is the way of it.” And so Iris, I must say goodbye to you, here among your colleagues, your comrades, and your friends. “Iris Young Presente!” Yes, when I reread what you have written. “Iris Young Presente!” Yes, whenever I come to this and future RPA Conferences. But we will not meet again. That is, sadly, the way of it. There is no philosopher’s heaven, and, even if there is a parallel universe, I can never enter it. I feel your loss deeply. Goodbye, my teacher, my colleague, my comrade, and my friend. Goodbye, sweet Iris. P.S. September 11, 2007. Ten months later. Dear Iris, I am writing you again on a day which has special significance in New York City, where I live. The papers are full of discussions about what happened on this day in 2001 to people in the Twin Towers, but I have not yet seen any mention of another September 11—September 11, 1973, when the American CIA intervened in Chile to enable the military fascists to overthrow the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. Nor does it mention an earlier September 11—September 11, 1906, when Gandhi initiated his first nonviolent campaign in South

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Africa. Your life has involved the aftermath of all three September elevenths. You have been directly involved in organizing forms of nonviolent resistance to the American Empire, as it destroys people’s lives both inside and abroad. Very shortly after the most recent September 11, you wrote an article with Damiele Archibugi which appeared in Dissent (Spring 2002) and which offered a reasoned alternative to the Bush administration’s open ended “war on terrorism.” A year later you published an article in Signs, which analyzed the legal changes as a manifestation of the logic of masculinist protection. What would you say today as we watch the Bush administration openly destroying habeas corpus, sanctioning torture, and continuing the war in Iraq which, as one documentary puts it, has “no end in sight?” What would you say as over two-thirds of the American public oppose this war and have voted in a democratic majority in Congress who continues to fund the war? I think I know, but I’m not sure. As I reread some of your articles, I am constantly aware of the subtle nuances of your thinking, your willingness to challenge even the assumptions of those with whom you ally yourself in struggle, your willingness to rethink your own previous thinking. We can respond to your voice as it was then. But what would it be now? I miss hearing that voice now. I recently read for the first time something you had written in your Intersecting Voices (Young 1997). It was entitled “House and Home: Feminist Variations on a Theme.” In that article, you recognize the merit of the feminist critiques of home but nonetheless insist that there are a core set of values embodied in the creation and maintaining of a home, values which should not be discarded and which can even provide a grounding for radical social critique. Among those values is the recognition of homemaking as preserving personally significant objects and organizing space, endowing these things with a living meaning that can help to support both personal and social identity, even as these identities are changing, and which can provide a material anchor for a sense of agency. There is something remarkable about the way you weave together the analyses of Irigaray, Beauvoir, Heidegger, Honig, etc., with a set of reflections on women’s ordinary life at home and on your own life. But it was the interlude in the middle of this article which especially moved me. You present your own mother’s story as a housewife and with it your own story growing up, a story which we had never discussed. After your family moved from Queens to the suburbs of New Jersey, your father died. Your mother, both out of her grief and her temperament, never maintained the physical appearance of her home in the way that was expected of a suburban housewife. And so, as a single Mom, she was arrested twice for neglect, and you were sent for the first time to a teen-reform home and the second time to the foster care of family friends. And yet, by your own account, she nonetheless did provide you with some of the values of a home. Was this the beginning of your sense of women’s oppression? Did the bureaucrats who had your mother arrested and removed you from the home become the prototypes of the systematic injustice

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of our society? Did your mother’s being arrested because she did not fulfill the standards of home cleanliness demanded by the suburbs, because she and your family were different, begin the seeds of your affirmation of the value of difference that so informs your own theorizing of justice? What did it mean to the 12-year-old Iris to be twice taken from your home? I often sensed the vulnerability of that 12-year-old behind the intellectually developed, independent, mature Iris, although I did not know then its source. I wish I could talk to you about this now. Perhaps others can fill in some of the answers that go beyond the theorizing that you do in this article. That is in part the point of a Festschrift. As a community who knew you as a feminist political thinker and as a friend, we can tell each other many of the things which we each as individuals never knew about you. In so doing, we construct “Iris Young,” from your writings and from our memories of you, even as we have lost you. But this construction, which helps our collective mourning process, cannot replace the loss of your living presence. I began this letter with the idea of having last seen you at the World Philosophical Conference in Istanbul. After I read this letter at the RPA Conference ten months ago, I was reminded by a mutual friend that I was mistaken, that, in fact, I did see you again at the RPA Conference in November 2004, which took place at Howard University. Why did I not remember this last time? Perhaps it was because we only had a chance to speak briefly with each other after that conference. Perhaps I wanted my last memories of you to be the last time we connected on a number of levels. Memory never gets it quite right. Even our collective memory can never get it quite right. I went back to my notes of that 2004 conference. You spoke then at a plenary on ethics and international relations. The theme of your talk was the way in which structural processes constrain our social interaction and produce outcomes that are unjust beyond the borders of the nation-state. And you posed the following questions. How can we recognize ourselves as agents within those structures? What is our responsibility for producing those unjust outcomes, and how can we transform those structures? These questions motivated you throughout your theoretical and politically active life. They will continue to haunt us, especially as we confront the injustices and ecological problems at the planetary level. Your writings and your example will continue to inspire us, and me, to ask these questions. Goodbye again, sweet Iris. I know that you cannot respond to this letter. But I will write to you again.

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PART II

EMBODIMENT, PHENOMENOLOGY, AND GENDER

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Iris Young and the Gendering of Phenomenology Sandra Lee Bartky

Western philosophers have until very lately assigned a lower ontological status to the body than to those other aspects of the person which have the task of holding this body, prone as it is to epistemological error and moral weakness, in check; higher than the body, hence authorized to police it, have been nous, mind, spirit, soul, rational intuition. Women, thought to be more in thrall to the body than the mind, have been correspondingly depreciated. The classical tradition in phenomenology has tried to rehabilitate the body and embodied experience generally (Heidegger is an exception); insofar as philosophy can be said to advance, this seems to be an advance. But phenomenologies of the body have regarded the body as if the body were one—surely an example of the “logic of identity” of which Iris Young has been so critical—i.e., as if the bodies of men and women were identical. In fact, this “neutrality” in regard to the sex of bodies has ignored the specificities of woman’s body: the body of the sexually mature woman bleeds periodically; it has breasts, it can become pregnant. Insofar as these specificities have been ignored, it seems clear that the classical tradition has taken male embodiment covertly as emblematic of embodiment per se. If this is so, then it too has recapitulated the male bias that is endemic to the Western philosophical tradition. It is now generally conceded that embodied experience is always socially and historically mediated. Hence, to try to unearth, in the style of classical phenomenology, the a priori necessary structures of any embodied consciousness whatever, is a futility. Iris Young has been a leader in this transformation of phenomenology. If she had done only this and not challenged the established paradigms of theories of justice, her reputation would be secure. First, she has ended the silence surrounding the specificities of female embodiment: Iris has produced memorable essays on the breasted body, the pregnant body, and the

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lived norms that have governed the style of movement and the relationship both to space and to objects in space of the properly “feminine” body. Second, recognizing the socially constructed character of embodied experience, Iris has rejected the pretensions to universality of the older tradition. Her phenomenologies are situated, i.e., they search for structures of meaning embedded in the experience of some group of embodied subjects, here and now. The careful reader discovers that the claims made are not intended to extend to all women everywhere. Nevertheless, in regard to the culture of the industrialized West, the phenomenologies are meant to have a certain generality, if not in all cases as descriptions, then as norms of female embodiment, “we are identified with our breasts . . . should be with our breasts.” I shall discuss three papers: “Breasted experience: The look and the feeling,” “Pregnant embodiment: Subjectivity and alienation” (1984) and the much anthologized “Throwing like a girl: A phenomenology of feminine body comportment, motility and spatiality” (1980) (all published in Young 1990b). While my principal aim in this discussion is let Iris’ voice to be heard and her ideas expressed, I shall allow myself occasional comments, some critical, some reflective. I am continuing the philosophical discussions I had with her for many years, discussions that matured my thought and helped me to grow philosophically. First, “Breasted experience.” “The chest,” says Young, “is importantly the center of a person’s being (1990b, p. 189).”1 When I point to myself, it is to the chest I point, not the brain as the seat of consciousness. Most women’s chests have breasts, hence our mode of embodiment as well as our sense of self is quite different than that of men. Androcentric culture fetishizes breasts: the best breasts “are like the phallus: high, hard and pointy” (p. 190). “They are called boobs, knockers, in the total scheme of the objectification of women, breasts are the primary things” (p. 190). This reification of breasts is at the heart of the reification of women: we are identified without breasts (I’m an ass man, says one; I’m a tits man, says another). “Breasts are the most visible sign of a woman’s femininity; the signal of her sexuality” (p. 191). Young characterizes briefly but eloquently the range of women’s responses to our breasts as objects of the male gaze, responses that range from pride to shame; common to all is the centrality of breasts to the female sense of self. I myself developed quite young, a circumstance to which my parents seemed oblivious and to which I was also oblivious until the day that a nice boy, indeed a friend, made a jocular but by no means cruel remark about my “boobs.” I realized, in a flash, that my breasts were clearly visible under my t-shirt. I felt a powerful rush of rage and shame; I slapped the boy’s face so hard that his head twisted about on his shoulders, then, weeping, I bicycled home as fast as I could. I did not understand my reaction then, nor do I understand 1 Iris Young (1990b). Unless otherwise indicated, all page citations to this volume will appear in brackets in the text.

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it fully now. Did I know, at that age, the power that the male gaze was to have in the continuing formation of my identity? Or was the shame a mark of the shame that attached to virtually all things sexual in the repressive environment in which I was raised? Young’s treatment of the fetishization of the breasts suggests that since most women fail to have the “best” breasts, the dominant response to this fetishization is female anxiety. All kinds of exercises are recommended and brassieres advertised to remedy these deficiencies; the proof of the enormous social importance attached to women’s breasts is the willingness of tens of thousands of women each year to go under the knife for breast reduction or, more commonly, breast enhancement. In spite of the widely publicized dangers of breast implants, the number of women who are willing, nay, eager to undergo this surgery has not diminished. But as Iris tells us in various introductions to collections of her work, she wants to call attention not only to those aspects of female embodiment that cause women pain and shame, but also to the pleasures that flow from female embodiment as well. These pleasures are direct, i.e., they are not mediated by the male gaze; often they stand outside the canon of acceptable pleasures and so they have never been properly articulated, much less theorized. “Without a bra, most women’s breasts do not have the high, hard, pointy look that phallic culture posits as the norm. They droop and sag and gather their bulk at the bottom . . . the ‘fluid’ being of breasts is more apparent. They change their shape with body position. Many women’s breasts are much more like a fluid than a solid; in movement, they sway, jiggle, bounce, ripple even when the movement is small” (1990b, p. 195). Young identifies the fetishized breast with a “metaphysics of solids,” of self-identical objects, a patriarchal metaphysics that privileges sight over touch and that prepares the way for the domination of nature, conceived as an object sphere that one can act upon, and, of course, the domination of women. She follows Irigaray in suggesting that the metaphysics of solids be replaced by a metaphysics of fluids, that such a metaphysics is more reflective of female sexuality and the female body and that the privileging of sight that accompanies an experience of the world as a congeries of objects should give way to a privileging of touch. Hence, the idea that phallocentrism has its own metaphysics and epistemology is a prominent feature of her paper. I myself remain unconvinced. I think that we can do the conceptual work her paper does without recourse to metaphysics, nor do I see any necessary connection between solids and sight or fluids and touch. “For many women, breasts are a multiple and fluid zone of deep pleasure quite independent of intercourse, though sometimes not independent of orgasm” (p. 194). For a phallic sexuality, this is a scandal. It is quite acceptable for women to show cleavage, indeed, as much cleavage as possible, but there is a taboo on the display of nipples. Nipples are indecent; nipples “show

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the breasts to be active and independent zones of sensitivity and eroticism” (p. 196). The taboo on the display of nipples reveals what, for patriarchy is the worst scandal of all: the relationship of sexuality and motherhood. Indeed, much of patriarchal culture is founded on the separation of motherhood and sexuality—e.g., the double standard, the focus on female purity, the sanctity of motherhood, the division of women into madonnas and whores. There are two spheres in which women can have access to the pleasure of breasted embodiment unmediated (in any direct way) by patriarchal taboos. One is in certain lesbian spaces. In a context in which women are naked from the waist up, a woman might at first stare—treating the breasts as objects. But gradually, “in a woman space with many women walking around barebreasted, the variability and individuality of breasts becomes salient” (p. 196). As fetishism recedes, the breasts become just another mode of the expressiveness of the female body. The second sphere in which women can have access to the pleasure of breasted embodiment is in the nursing of a child. Here the separation of sexuality and motherhood falls away; hence the centuries-long silence on the eroticism of breast-feeding. Young draws from her own experience of motherhood: After some weeks, drowsy during the morning feeding, I went to bed with my baby. I felt that I had crossed a forbidden river as I moved toward the bed, stretched her legs out alongside my reclining torso, me lying on my side like a cat or a mare while my baby suckled. This was pleasure, not work. I lay there as she made love to me, snuggling her legs up to my stomach, her hand stroking my breast, my chest. She lay between me and my lover and she and I were a couple. From then on I looked forward with happy pleasure to our early morning intercourse, she sucking at my hard fullness, relieving and warming me, while her father slept. (1990b, p. 199) Young has here succeeded in deconstructing the opposition of motherhood and sexuality. What the fusion of sexuality and maternity clearly threatens is the idea that woman’s sexuality, and by extension, her loyalty and her service belong to the man, and not to herself or even to her child. The woman “cannot be perfectly giving if she is wanting or selfish” (p. 199). Iris’s essay “Pregnant embodiment: Subjectivity and Alienation” also breaks new ground. Pregnancy: how could Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, etc. not have noticed? As far as I know, this is the first phenomenological study of pregnancy in the philosophical literature. What Iris chooses to make primary in the pregnant woman’s experience of her own body is the way in which it defies the positing of a unified subject: pregnancy, she claims, challenges the assumption, so prominent, perhaps even definitive of the Western philosophical tradition, of a transparent unity of self. In pregnancy, a woman’s consciousness is split, decentered or doubled, in a variety of ways: first, she experiences

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her body as split between herself and what is not herself; second, the experience of pregnancy blurs the distinction of transcendence and immanence; third, the woman “can experience an innocent narcissism fed by recollection of her mother’s body”; fourth, her bodily boundaries alter rapidly so that the pregnant body-subject has difficulty locating her own boundaries and fifth, “pregnancy has a unique temporality of process and growth in which the woman can experience herself as split between past and future” (p. 160). “Pregnancy,” says Young, “challenges the integration of my body experience by rendering fluid the boundary between what is within myself and what is outside, separate. I experience my insides as the space of another, yet my own body” (p. 163). The first movements of the fetus “produce this sense of the splitting subject; the fetus” movements are its own, yet within me.” I have some difficulty with this analysis: while it must be the case that early in pregnancy one doesn’t know whether internal sensations are entirely one’s own or are due to the developing fetus, surely this stage must pass into another in which the movements of the fetus are clearly its own. Why describe this as a “splitting” of the pregnant woman’s consciousness? Early on, the pregnant woman doesn’t know whether what she feels is herself or another; this seems to me to be uncertainty, not splitting. Later it must be clear what motions are the fetus’ motions. Why isn’t the experience described in this way: there is something or someone else living in my body? How does this “decenter” me? I am still myself and this is still my body. Imagine the case of an unwanted pregnancy. Here the “something within” is something alien, something she doesn’t want there, indeed, a parasite living within her body. She wants it expelled. Nothing as structural as “splitting” occurs within her consciousness: if the pregnancy continues, this sense of housing an alien and unwelcome other might well grow. The fetus is hers in a physiological sense, but not necessarily in a psychological sense. “The integrity of my body is undermined in pregnancy . . . by the fact that the boundaries of my body are themselves in flux. In pregnancy I literally do not have a firm sense of where my body ends and the world begins” (p. 163). I find this perplexing too. Wouldn’t the pregnant woman know where her body ends and the world begins when she bumps into a hard object, such as a door or a table? Iris, in this essay, is clearly influenced by the poststructuralist characterization of the subject as split or “decentered.” I have always felt that the poststructuralist insistence on consciousness as multiple or “split” carries the suggestion that we are all suffering from multiple personality disorder. On transcendence and immanence: In the classic phenomenological literature, says Young, transcendence is associated with one’s projects: the body is a transparent medium, an instrument for the enactment of these projects; but when I am aware of the materiality of my body, its weight, massiveness, and balance—its immanence—this awareness is understood for the most part as cutting me off from the enactment of my projects. Iris takes issue with this

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view. “Contrary to the mutually exclusive categorization between transcendence and immanence that underlies some theories, the awareness of my body in its bulk and weight does not impede the accomplishing of my aims” (p. 165). Iris has here somewhat changed direction. In spite of earlier claims about pregnancy splitting consciousness, she is here claiming that the duality of transcendence and immanence is not a split that would in most ways keep me from realizing my ends. Pregnant women are given a certain precedence that women ordinarily lack. This may contribute to a woman’s sense of power. Moreover, the “culture’s separation of pregnancy and sexuality can liberate her from the sexually objectifying gaze that alienates and instrumentalizes her when in her nonpregnant state” (pp. 166–67). Young identifies what she takes to be still another split in the consciousness of the pregnant woman: this has to do with the innocent narcissistic pleasure with which she notices every change in her body. Here, Iris follows Kristeva in speculating that this narcissism signals a renewed connection “to the repressed, preconscious, presymbolic aspect of existence. Instead of being a unified ego, the subject of the paternal symbolic order, the pregnant subject straddles the spheres of language and instinct. In this splitting of the subject, the pregnant woman recollects primordial sexual continuity with the maternal body which Kristeva calls ‘jouissance’ ” (p. 166). I am skeptical of this claim too because I find it difficult to believe that an adult woman or anyone can remember experiences which were preconscious and presymbolic. It seems to me that more cognitive development is required before anything like memory can occur; moreover, there are some observers of neonatal life who have challenged the claim that the neonate has as its first experience of life a primordial continuity with the maternal body. Furthermore, it is worth noting that a woman who is unhappily pregnant (say, through rape) will not experience the changes in her body with narcissistic pleasure. She may well experience them with profound distaste. Finally, the question of the temporality of pregnancy: Young’s description of labor in general and especially its temporality is striking and moving. There is in labor “the cessation of time. There is no intention, no activity, only a will to endure. I only know that I have been lying in this pain, concentrating on staying above it, for a long time, because the hands of the clock say so or the sun on the wall has moved to the other side of the room” (p. 168). But is there not an experience of “the cessation of time” for those who experience prolonged, acute pain, say, migraine sufferers? Iris ends the essay with the “alienation” suffered by the pregnant woman. The critique she offers is a locus classicus of the feminist critique of the medicalization of childbirth. A woman’s experience in pregnancy is often an experience

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of alienation because her condition tends to be defined as a disorder, needing medical intervention. So a process that is rightfully hers is taken away by a medical establishment. Sometimes her birth is scheduled for the convenience of the doctor. The position in which she gives birth is not hers to choose; she must lie flat, feet in stirrups, again for the convenience of the medical staff, even though a half-sitting, half-reclining position would bring gravity to her aid. Traditionally, no friend or family member could be with her, for the sake of “sanitation.” This has recently somewhat altered. But for most hospital births, language tells it all: the doctor, not the pregnant woman, is said to have “delivered” the baby. I come now to my favorite of the phenomenological essays, “Throwing like a girl: A phenomenology of feminine body-comportment, motility and spatiality” ([1980] 1990b). This is one of the most widely read and frequently anthologized papers of Second Wave feminist theory. Young does a phenomenology of the basic modalities of women’s style of comportment and movement in space. From some of the more ordinary ways in which women comport themselves in the world, she will derive certain “structures” of feminine being-in-the-world, namely inhibited intentionality, ambiguous transcendence and discontinuous unity with the environment. When a girl throws a ball, she doesn’t bring her whole body into the motion. Unlike the boy, she does not “reach back, twist, move backwards, step out and lean forward” (p. 145). Girls tend to remain somewhat immobile; they throw with the arm, typically not even the whole arm, but just the forearm. Not only is there a typical style of throwing like a girl, but there is a more or less typical style of running like a girl, climbing like a girl, swinging like a girl, hitting like a girl. They have in common first that the whole body is not put into fluid and directed motion, “rather, the motion is concentrated in one body part and second, the woman’s motion tends not to reach, extend, lean, stretch and follow through in the direction of her intention” (p. 146). These features can be seen in other aspects of women’s movement; for example, in walking, the female stride is shorter in proportion to her body size than is the male’s. He swings his arms when he walks and is generally freer and looser in his whole manner of moving. When sitting, women keep their legs together, their arms close to the body, while men often take up all available space. Women frequently do not perceive themselves as capable of lifting and carrying heavy objects, shoving something with significant force, pulling, squeezing, grasping, or twisting with force. We do not put our whole bodies into the doing of a physical task: “In lifting something women often fail to plant themselves firmly and make their thighs carry the major portion of the weight” (pp. 145–46). Often we experience our bodies as fragile burdens we need to protect, rather than as instruments of our transcendence; hence our engagement with things is often marked by timidity and hesitancy. Female spatiality is complex. Young follows Merleau-Ponty in claiming that the subject constitutes space: space is the organization of things that is

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produced by human transcendence. But women’s spatiality is inhibited. “Feminine bodily existence is an inhibited intentionality which simultaneously reaches toward a projected end with an ‘I can’ and withholds its full bodily commitment to that end in a self-imposed ‘I cannot’ ” (1990b, p. 150). A woman’s inhibited intentionality disrupts what Young, following Merleau-Ponty, believes should be the body’s unified and unifying being-in-the-world. The subject, in realizing its intentions reveals the world’s possibilities: they are coeval. But too often, women are not subjects constitutive of space and spatial relations, they are objects located in space. Hence, feminine transcendence is ambiguous. Woman is not just a body-subject but an object as well; much more so than men she is a target of judgments about her appearance. The male gaze is often internalized, in which case women become objects for themselves. “Feminine bodily existence is self-referred in that the woman takes herself to be the object of motion (and attention) rather than its originator” (p. 150). A woman’s spatiality is contradictory insofar as feminine bodily existence is both constituting and spatially constituted. Now none of this is biologically based: women are taught how and how not to move. It is not only woman’s status as object but also her restricted intentionality, i.e., her restricted freedom, that produces in us a sense that we are confined within space. This is one of the most striking insights of the paper. “For many women, a space surrounds us in imagination that we are not free to move beyond” (p. 146). And again, “Feminine existence appears to posit an existential enclosure between herself and the space surrounding her, in such a way that the space that belongs to her and is available to her grasp and manipulation is constricted and this space beyond is not available to her movements” (ibid.). This sense of constriction in space is overdetermined: women’s space is frequently invaded by inappropriate touching, nor is any woman entirely free of the threat of rape. In sum then, she argues: Women in sexist society are physically handicapped. Insofar as we learn to live out our existence in accordance with the definition that patriarchal culture assigns to us, we are physically inhibited, confined, positioned and objectified. As lived bodies we are not open and unambiguous transcendences that move out to master a world that belongs to us, a world constituted by our own intentions and projections. (1990b, p. 153) In her introduction to the collection (1990b) that takes its name from this essay, written ten years earlier about a period of time earlier still, Young concedes that many things have changed for women and girls over the years. Many little girls wear pants almost all the time: this makes for far freer motion than was possible before. Due in large part to federal legislation that responded to prodding by the women’s movement, girls’ and women’s participation in sports has expanded enormously. Since the passage of Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments

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Act, the number of U.S. high school girls who participate in sports has jumped from one in twenty-seven, to one in three. “The effects are visible everywhere: an explosion of female Olympic stars, college and professional women’s teams playing to packed stadiums, new magazines aimed at female athletes” (Conniff, 1998, p. 26). Nevertheless, Young makes clear that she stands by what she has written: “Many girls and women still live a confined and limited experience of space and movement” (p. 15). I agree. The appearance of a woman’s body has still substantially more cultural importance than what it can do.2 While Iris endorses the central claims of “Throwing like a girl” she is still, in retrospect, highly critical of it. In that paper I follow Beauvoir’s analysis of femininity as the doubled experience of being an objectified subject. The analysis in the paper thus assumes the humanist feminist framework that I later criticized. It constructs femininity only as a liability, expresses female experience only as victimization and implicitly assumes masculine styles of comportment and movement as a norm. (1990b, p. 15) Strongly influenced by French poststructuralism, an influence that begins in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Iris understands humanism as positing a universal subject whose essence is not altered by gender differences between men and women or differences among women. Moreover, humanists believe in gender neutral standards of excellence. “I invoke the term ‘humanism’ in order to side with postmodern critics of Enlightenment humanism . . . who regard commitment to humanist ideals . . . of (say) the universal human community as contributing to modern structures of domination” (p. 6). Existential phenomenology which also posits a universal subject, is subject to the same critique. Flawed though it may be, Iris nevertheless, perhaps even paradoxically, defends the project of the paper and thus, tacitly, its methodology. She offers these essays as claiming some generality, though not universal validity “as descriptions of femininely gendered or female sexed experiences and not just reports of my own case” (p. 16). She continues: Once philosophy climbs down from its universalist rationalism to muck about in the ambiguities of the lived body, it would appear natural to describe the specificities of the lived body . . . I have no doubt that my descriptions are partial. In some ways they may express only my experience; in others they probably express the experiences specific to white Anglo heterosexual middle-class women like myself. Yet I refuse to circumscribe these descriptions within this string of identities. I believe that these descriptions can resonate, at least in some aspects, with the experiences of differently identifying women but I cannot know without their saying so. (1990b, p. 16) 2 See, e.g., Sandra Bartky (1990); see also Susan Bordo (1995).

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What Iris seems to be saying is that while the language of some of these essays appears to be humanist (in the sense defined above), their intention is not. I am strongly inclined to defend “Throwing like a girl” from some of Iris’ own charges against it, first that it construes women only as victims. Women are, sad to say, often victimized, hence the need for a women’s politics of liberation. One of the differences between feminism and the black liberation movement is that women’s victimization is disguised, hence opaque to women themselves, in a way that the victimization of Afro-Americans is not at all disguised from Afro-Americans themselves. One of the ongoing tasks of feminist theory is to reconfigure “nature,” “bad luck,” “individual failing,” or “neurosis” as victimization. Feminist theory must sometimes “speak bitterness.” One is not obliged in every essay, given the limitations of the genre, to sketch a politics of liberation or to find a silver lining in every cloud. The pleasures of femininity, at least as mass culture configures them, can be seen in the magazines one reads while waiting in line at the supermarket. The aim of feminist phenomenology as in feminist theory generally, is to show the things themselves, i.e., to reveal what has been distorted or suppressed. In addition to the raising of consciousness, another quite legitimate aim of feminist writing is to generate anger, a cleansing anger that will, in time, begin to invent alternatives to the established order of domination. Finally, on her charge that “Throwing like a girl” assumes implicitly the superiority of masculine styles of movement: I do not draw this conclusion from the paper at all. There is no endorsement here of masculine body language simpliciter. One can decry women’s spatial restrictions without recommending the tendency on the part of many men to monopolize the best chairs in the household (Daddy’s chair), to have space in the home (Daddy’s study, or workshop) to which children do not have automatic access even while they have such access, whatever she is doing, to Mother’s space. Nor are we invited to allow ourselves to sprawl into more than our share of space on public conveyances. There is much in this essay that is suggested but not developed. Whether or not Young’s descriptions actually apply to all women in Western societies, they function very efficiently as norms. The “ladylike” woman whose movements incorporate these norms is a privileged woman, a paradigmatic woman of the upper classes; the “unladylike” woman, whose movements are too “loose” or too masculine merits mostly disapproval. Hence, heterosexism and the gender ideology of class society have been inscribed in our very bodies. I believe that Iris Young’s phenomenological essays can be defended against poststructuralist claims that they are “humanist,” i.e., essentialist. A historicized phenomenology of gender could, like psychoanalytic approaches, see the gendered self as having been created by the bodily norms which bring

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it into existence in early childhood. Thus, to the extent that industrial and postindustrial societies have similar family structures which socialize children in similar ways across class lines, Iris Young’s suggestion that there is a historically specific feminine phenomenology of the body in our and other similar societies is consistent with the poststructuralist rejection of the universal human subject. In any case, her work is valuable for having presented to many women and girls a way to understand and hence to begin to refigure the limiting and disempowering ways in which our bodily subjectivity has been formed.

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Resonance and Dissonance: The Role of Personal Experience in Iris Marion Young’s Feminist Phenomenology Michaele L. Ferguson As a philosopher deeply influenced by phenomenology and by feminist consciousness-raising activism, personal experience plays a very important role in Iris Young’s feminist and democratic thinking. Even so, I find that reading her very personal narratives makes me uncomfortable. In this essay, I use this discomfort as an occasion to think more deeply about what role experience plays in her philosophizing. I have in mind two extraordinary personal stories that she tells. The first is about her experiences of post-pregnancy embodiment and dreaming at a philosophy conference. She opens her essay “Humanism, gynocentrism, and feminist politics” (Young 1990b) with this story and revisits it in a later piece, “Menstrual meditations” (Young 1990b). This story makes me uncomfortable for several reasons. It recounts a very subjective set of experiences, without attempting to speak to me as a reader who cannot possibly share in them. Young never really explains what this story is doing in either essay, and it is at odds with the detached philosophical prose that surrounds it. She is not obviously making any claim beyond, that “a woman named Iris Young had these experiences.” But what are they to me? Why do I need to hear about her bodily functions and her idiosyncratic dreams? The second personal narrative is the deeply moving story of her childhood experience of home in the middle of “House and home: Feminist variations on a theme” (Young 1997a). It is a tragic story about the unexpected death of her father, her mother’s struggle with grief and suburban isolation, her family’s encounter with a bureaucratic welfare state that sought to protect Young and her siblings by punishing their supposedly negligent mother and placing them in foster care, and her brave confrontation with the authorities in an attempt to hold onto some kind of home for her family. I find this story uncomfortable

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to read for different reasons. It makes me angry at the suburban welfare state bureaucracy that felt entitled to punish Young’s mother for failing to conform to its expectations of proper maternal behavior, expectations that are shaped by an unjust gendered division of labor. These two stories have long stood out to me in Young’s work because of how they made me feel. That drew me to ask: What are these very personal narratives doing in her work? What can we learn about the role of experience in Young’s philosophy by thinking about what role her own personal experiences play in these essays? Within these three pieces, I argue that Young’s personal narratives function as synecdoches—representing each essay’s larger argument. Yet they also model a particular understanding of the role of personal experience in the practice of feminist theorizing: that the personal is an important source of theorizing, that revisiting our past experiences deepens our theoretical understanding, and that telling our personal histories is crucial to cultivating identity and political agency. Appeals to personal experience have long been important to feminist theory and practice. In particular, the disjuncture between our lived experiences of being women and the ideological messages we receive about what a woman should be has been a significant source of critical analysis and calls for action. Yet despite this usefulness, appeals to personal experience also have been subject to sharp criticisms. On the one hand, some feminists have been criticized for making the unsubstantiated leap from individual accounts of personal experience to generalized claims about the experiences of all women. On the other hand, some feminists have been criticized for treating personal experience as a kind of trump card that has the power to single-handedly authorize or de-authorize theoretical claims. In the aftermath of such criticisms, anyone hoping to claim a role for experience in contemporary feminist politics has to negotiate the tricky extremes of a false universalism (“all women share these same experiences”) and a depoliticizing subjectivism (“each woman’s experiences are unique”). Among the most important contributions of Young’s work in feminist theory is that she gives us an account of the political importance of personal experience that avoids both of these extremes. Young suggests that personal experiences become political when they resonate with others. Stories that resonate are not merely subjective—they sound familiar to us. Nor do they lay claim to universal validity—we can only generalize from these experiences for those with whom they resonate. Therefore, we make our idiosyncratic, personal experiences public in the hope that they will resonate with others, triggering the energy to engage in political theorizing and action. This, I suggest in conclusion, is an additional source of the discomfort I experience when I read her work: stories that are meant to resonate with us—even when they fail to do so—demand that we do more than read; they demand that we act to create a more just world.

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Personal Matters Young frequently makes reference to her own personal experiences of embodiment in her essays on female body experience. For instance, she notes that her essay “Throwing like a girl” “arose from my experience of learning to play tennis when I was in my mid-twenties” (Young 1990b, p. 15). Here, her personal narrative affirms her choice of subject matter and lays bare her motivations for pursuing a particular line of inquiry. Insofar as her experiences confirm the validity of her theoretical claims, it is easy to treat these mentions of personal experience as consistent with an approach to feminist theorizing that privileges the epistemological value of experience for feminism: its ability to prove or disprove generalized claims about women. The cases that I want to look at more closely reveal the very important political role of experience for Young.1 In these instances, her personal narratives disrupt the style and conventions of traditional philosophical discourse and so command our attention. Experience has a function in these stories that is not about proving or disproving some theory.2 Rather, I argue that the personal experiences Young relates in these cases function as a rhetorical appeal to potential political allies. Their role, that is, is to build political community and generate collective action. The first example I want to consider is the peculiar first-person narrative with which Young opens her essay “Humanism, gynocentrism, and feminist politics” (Young 1990b). It is a strikingly peculiar opening passage for a philosophical essay. She writes: December 1978. At a mostly male conference I hug, chat, eat, drink, listen with my sisters in philosophy. My body avalanches from its recent maternal swellings to the plateaus of a folded uterus, milkless breasts. I left my baby daughter in Chicago, who used to suckle for ninety minutes at a time while I read The Women’s Room. For the first time in fifteen months that warm red flow moves through my clitoral canals. No quiet transition, but a body revolution throbbing my back and neck. Clouded in this private woman-state, I glide around the chandeliered ballroom finding one woman’s face and another and another. Fervently we converse about the day’s papers and one another’s questions. We catch up on the news about one another’s lovers or children or jobs. 1 Linda Zerilli (1998; 2005) has argued for shifting the focus of feminist theory from epistemological to political questions in the context of debates about the category of women. My reading of Young suggests that the two theorists share this move in common. Nonetheless, I believe that Young’s response to debates over the category of women—the concept of gender as seriality—is importantly different from Zerilli’s insofar as it focuses on structural commonalities rather than political claims (Young 1997a). 2 In one of her regrettably few moments of reflection on how she understands the term “experience,” Young herself suggests that she does not use it to privilege a particular way of knowing (1990b, pp. 12–13).

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embodiment, phenomenology, and gender That night in my restless sleep, I dream. A ballroom filled with women, hundreds under the chandeliers, a reception after business at the Society for Women in Philosophy. I flit from one group of women to another in smiling comfort. As I turn to find another friend I see her tall figure across the room, as though overlooking the sisterly crowd: Simone de Beauvoir.—Then, just before I wake, a single object, shimmering: a glass of milk. (Young 1990b, p. 73)

Right after this passage, the essay proceeds in a more distant academic voice almost as if these deeply personal experiences of embodiment had not just been articulated. Young never comes back to discuss this episode later in the essay, and she makes no effort to connect this story to the more abstract reflections of the remainder of this piece. And it is a story—not a simple piece of anecdotal evidence to prove or disprove a point, but an idiosyncratic set of lived and dreamed experiences. Indeed, it is not entirely clear what it could prove beyond that a person called Iris Young claims to have had these experiences. So, what is it doing here? Why start an essay about the competing values of humanist and gynocentric feminisms with such a personal story? The most straightforward reading of this bizarre introduction would suggest that it is a kind of synecdoche, a part standing for the whole of the argument of the essay. In this article, Young repudiates what she calls “humanist feminism,” a position which she associates with Beauvoir among others. Humanists hope to overcome the limitations of femininity and female bodies in order to aspire to universal values, values which are mistakenly linked with men and masculinity. Consequently, the aim of humanism is to eradicate gender difference and enable women to participate along with men in traditionally male pursuits. “The goal of liberation,” according to humanists, “is for all persons to pursue self-development in those creative and intellectual activities that distinguish human beings from the rest of nature” (p. 74). Young’s deeply personal experiences of her undeniably female body call into question the usefulness of a humanist feminism that wants to erase differences between men and women, and to treat both sexes equally. She experiences the physical and emotional changes in her body after pregnancy, she experiences herself as a woman in contrast with the mostly male philosophers attending the conference, and she experiences herself as a woman among other women. Eliminating these lived differences would be not simply impossible, but also undesirable. Her personal narrative suggests, then, why she herself has moved from a purely humanist to a more gynocentric approach to feminism. Indeed, in the paragraph following her extraordinary introduction, Young implies that Beauvoir’s own humanist stance is attributable in part to her never having been pregnant and given birth (p. 73). Had Beauvoir only had a child, she never could have written The Second Sex. The undeniable difference of irreducibly female bodily experiences, it seems, would have undermined her steadfast commitment to humanism.

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However, just as in the opening story, Young in the essay does not reject Beauvoir’s humanism altogether in favor of a gynocentric feminism that revalues femininity and the particularities of women’s bodily experiences. Even after a delightful gynocentric day, Young finds herself dreaming of Beauvoir, the milk-giving mother. She cannot reject the dream of humanism altogether, but must modify its aspirations to move beyond gender with an appreciation of some of the positive values to be found in femininity and in female bodies. In the conclusion, therefore, Young stakes out a middle ground between a purely humanist feminism that would overcome bodily difference, and a gynocentric feminism that risks reinforcing patriarchal inequalities by uncritically revaluing femininity and female bodily experience (pp. 85–86). Young’s opening narrative is doing more, however, than standing as a summary of the whole piece. After all, she could have told any of a number of stories to introduce this essay that could prefigure its larger argument—none of which need involve her own personal experiences. She could have begun with a more traditional statement of her thesis. Why then start with a story, and such a very personal story? I suggest that we also read this personal narrative as a kind of argument in and of itself: an argument about the role of personal experience in the practice of feminist theorizing. The story’s position at the very beginning of the essay models how personal experiences can be an important starting point for theoretical reflections and innovations. Young suggests that Beauvoir’s lack of experience with pregnancy and childbirth shaped Beauvoir’s theoretical vision. Similarly, Young’s own more embodied experience of herself as a woman demands that she take a different philosophical path. Our personal experiences, she suggests, have an impact on what we can imagine as feminist theorists. We can and should use them as opportunities to reflect on, expand, and criticize the theories we have inherited.

Periodic Returns Peculiarly enough, this same very personal episode reappears in a later essay, “Menstrual Meditations” (Young 2005a, p. 98).3 In this article, as in other articles examining female body experience, Young attempts two levels of analysis (see 1990b, pp. 13–14). On the one hand, she argues that menstruation is an occasion for women to feel alienated from their bodies, whether because menstruation is treated as something about which we should feel ashamed, or whether because it is a sign of a failed pregnancy (2005a, pp. 99–103). On the other hand, she engages in the difficult task of recovering some positive aspect of the periodic experience of menstruations. Drawing inspiration from 3 Suggesting a connection with my theme, the section heading under which the story reappears is entitled “Experience: Beauvoir and contemporary feminism.”

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Beauvoir’s writings about periods, Young suggests that the (more or less) punctual return of our menstrual flows gives women a particular experience of their own temporality. She writes: Just because the event returns monthly, it affords an experienced discontinuity that prompts gathering oneself to look back and forward. The monthly flow mundanely organizes our everyday adult memory. Without meaning to, I find myself remembering which event occurred before which according to my last period. Sometimes we feel we should schedule our appointments around anticipation of our periods, or rather, their absence. I try not to meet that special lover when I am menstruating. I arrange to travel to places where managing menstrual secrecy is difficult during times when I hope I will not be menstruating. (p. 121) The repetition of periods orients women towards a kind of mundane selfreflection on temporality. This makes possible a deeper kind of meditation (that is available in principle to both men and women) focused on awareness of our selves as beings with pasts, presents, and futures. The menstrual meditations Young calls for in the title of the essay are self-conscious, periodic reflections on how we have developed and will continue to develop as selves over time. The episode that begins the earlier essay appears here as a periodic reminder of a younger Iris Young that punctuates an essay already in progress. Revisiting that essay is an occasion for Young to revisit herself, and to reflect on how she has changed and developed since writing the earlier essay. She notes that “Remembering her own younger bodily self and capacities as well as a sedimented set of events of her life, the older person brings to her future more layers of meaning than the younger” (p. 122). Older and wiser, the Iris Young who writes “Menstrual Meditations” can read Beauvoir more evenhandedly, as a philosopher who is not a pure humanist, but who “describes the embodied experience of being a girl, adult woman, and an old woman, with unparalleled depth of detail and tenderness that continues to inspire young and not-so-young women with recognition” (p. 99).4 Beauvoir is no longer the mother to be overcome, but the mother to come home to after the youthful urge to rebel has subsided (p. 99). Like a period, then, revisiting this personal narrative serves as an occasion for Young to reflect on her own temporality as a feminist thinker.5 Again, her narrative of personal experience here mirrors the larger argument of the essay.

4 I problematize this language of recognition in the final section of this chapter. 5 Young’s three collections of essays in feminism also provide her readers with a similar opportunity. She invites us to reflect on the changes in her thinking over time in the essays she collects, as for example in the introduction to On Female Body Experience: “If nothing else, the collection exhibits a trajectory of thinking of one idiosyncratic feminist critical theorist over several decades of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century; they may also reflect an evolution in the way a number of theorists have approached themes of gender and sexual difference” (2005a, pp. 4–5).

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Personal experience, this episode suggests, is not only a source for theorizing in the present; insofar as it becomes a part of our self-narrative, it is something we can periodically revisit and meditate on into the future. It is the disjuncture between the younger Iris Young who wrote “Humanism, gynocentrism, and feminist politics” and the older Iris Young rereading this essay twenty years later that generates the reflections about Beauvoir that form the basis for much of “Menstrual meditations.”

Coming Home The other personal narrative in Young’s work that I want to consider appears in the middle of the essay, “House and home: Feminist variations on a theme” (1997a, pp. 144–47). In the midst of a discussion of dwelling and being-in-theworld, she interjects an “Interlude: My mother’s story.” This story is several pages long, so I cannot include it in its entirety here. However, I know that my attempt to reconstruct its main elements will necessarily undermine the power of the narrative, so I encourage my readers to experience it for themselves. This is the story of “one bad housekeeper”: Iris Young’s mother (p. 135). Her mother did not work; she stayed home and read books, took correspondence courses, and played with her children, but she did not keep house. As an adult, Young “read her refusal to do housework as passive resistance” to a gendered division of labor that confined her to the home (p. 145). Her family moved from Flushing to the suburbs of New Jersey. “Then,” Young tells us, “my daddy died—quickly, quietly, of a brain tumor” (ibid.). Now a single mother consumed with grief and isolated in the suburbs, Young’s mother’s refusal to do housework coupled with her drinking became a matter of public concern. For “[a] woman alone with her children is no longer a whole family, deserving like others of respectful distance” (p. 146). From the perspective of the welfare state, her mother was not the caring, loving mother that Young knew; but a deviant, failing to live up to its expectations of proper maternal behavior—narrowly understood in terms of keeping house and maintaining sobriety. Her mother’s failure to conform to the state’s norms of femininity authorized its intrusion into their home and the breaking up of their family. Young and her siblings were taken away from their mother and placed in a teen-reform home; their mother charged with child neglect. Two months later, they were allowed to return home. Her mother hired a 14-year old black girl as a maid to manage the housework; she lasted only two weeks. The family managed to escape further notice for a few months, until the day when Young returned home from school to discover that there had been a fire. “There was not much damage to the house, they had caught the fire early, but when breaking in to douse it they had seen the papers strewn about and dust on the floor and beer cans. My mother was arrested again” (p. 146). This

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time, however, Young took the initiative to provide herself and her siblings with a temporary home while her mother was in jail. “I used [a neighbor’s] phone to call a family friend to come and get us kids—I wasn’t going to any reform school again” (ibid.). A year later, the family was again reunited. “[M]y mother wasted no time packing up and moving us all back to the safe indifference of New York City” (p. 147). This story encapsulates all the themes of the essay: the oppression of a gendered division of labor that assigns the drudgery of housework primarily to women, the differential privilege of an inviolate home assigned to some groups over others, the disciplinary and invasive character of the welfare state, the importance of home as a site for the support of identity and political agency, and the value of a stable home. However, I think this story does more than provide yet another “feminist variation on a theme”—as the subtitle of the essay suggests. The story, after all, is a story about home: the home that Young’s family made in the suburbs of New Jersey, the home that was declared unsuitable because her mother “passively resisted” the gendered division of labor by failing to do the housework expected of her, the home that Young was deprived of when sent to reform school, the intermediate home that she found with a family friend, and finally the home that she found with her rehabilitated mother. Home—fraught, incomplete, unstable, unkempt, but home nonetheless—is at the heart of this essay, we might say. It is a resting point between the bookends of theorizing in the first and second halves of the essay. Yet the home we stop in is no idealized home, designed to give us comfort and release from the difficulties of thinking and acting in the outside world. This is a troubled, invaded home that is simultaneously the site of love, relationships, and celebrations. In the midst of her thinking, Young stops home for a bit, not in order to stop thinking, but in order to remind herself of her complicated, lived experience of home. Personal experience, then, serves to ground the exercise of theorizing in specific social situations. As we know from Justice and the Politics of Difference, Young vehemently rejects grand theories that aim at producing universal, atemporal truths. “If the theory is truly universal and independent,” she argues in the Introduction, “presupposing no particular social situations, institutions, or practices, then it is simply too abstract to be useful in evaluating actual institutions and practices” (1990a, p. 4). The periodic return to the home, to the personal, to experience keeps our theoretical investigations grounded in the here and now, where philosophy can be of use. She continues, “In order to be a useful measure of actual justice and injustice, [theory] must contain some substantive premises about social life, which are usually derived, explicitly or implicitly, from the actual social context in which the theorizing takes place” (p. 4). The return to her home in this essay, then, serves to expose the “actual social context” that forms the basis for her theorizing.

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That it should be specifically a story of home that plays this role in her work should not surprise Young’s readers. In “House and home,” she defends a conception of home that, while also the site of inequalities, is the site of material support for the development of temporalized personal identity (pp. 149–50). Home is therefore not just an actual social context in which theorizing takes place; it is the actual social context that makes theorizing possible. While Young agrees with other feminists that some housework is mere repetitive drudgery, an impossible quest to rid the home of dirt, she also finds in certain kinds of housework a more positive value. This is housework that involves preservation, which “entails not only keeping the physical objects of particular people intact, but renewing their meaning in their lives. Thus preservation involves preparing and staging commemorations and celebrations, where those who dwell together among the things tell and retell stories of their particular lives, and give and receive gifts that add to the dwelling world” (p. 153). Consequently, “home carries a positive core meaning as the material anchor for a sense of agency and a shifting and fluid identity” (p. 159). The relative permanence of the things in our homes, the changing and periodic commemorations of the meanings of these things, and of our relationship to them together provide a kind of grounding for identity (albeit an identity that is always temporally situated and in flux). The preservation of things in the home gives us a sense of self that makes it possible for us to act in the world. In other words, the materiality of the home is what “make[s] the political possible” (p. 159). It is the experience of home, after all, that turned a young Iris Young into a kind of political activist—resisting the invasive and patronizing welfare state to ensure a home life for herself and her siblings. And it is precisely because home is so important to a self with identity and agency that the older Young calls for a political project of extending the ability of all people to have a home (1997a, pp. 160–64; 2005a, pp. 155–70). But even if specific stories have the home-like function of grounding our theoretical reflections in the here and now, why should it be important that the story that provides the interlude in this essay is a personal one? Why make such a personal story public? Her home is a site of political struggle over the gendered division of labor, it is the site of so-called impartial bureaucratic intrusion by the welfare state into the personal lives of a family, it is a space whose preservation propels a young girl into personal activism—ensuring that she and her siblings have a home to go to when their mother is jailed for child neglect, and it is the commemoration of these events of home that motivates Young to engage in the theoretical reflections surrounding this narrative. Yet surely Young is doing more in this moment than just laying bare for her readers what her own personal motivations are in this essay. As she describes it in the essay’s introduction, “The purpose of this gesture is to commemorate”—a motivation which is deeply personal—“but also to describe in concrete terms how disciplinary standards of orderly housework

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and PTA motherhood continue to oppress women, especially single mothers” (1997a, p. 135). Taking what would ordinarily be a private commemoration— sharing stories of home with her family—and making it public turns this story of home into a political claim. Young is suggesting that her story is neither idiosyncratic, nor universal. She tells this story in the hopes that it will make her abstract argument about the value of home concrete for her readers; but she never entertains the thought that it will do so because her experience is somehow typical of the experience of all women. Nor is her hope that we will somehow come to feel particular concern for the individuals mentioned in her story; she does not tell this story to arouse our compassion. Instead, she hopes with this interlude to expose the “disciplinary standards of orderly housework and PTA motherhood.” She tells her personal story here, then, in order to help her readers to see these disciplinary standards at work. Yet we could only see disciplinary standards for what they are if we are able to see in Young’s story something more than simply a unique personal narrative. The purpose of telling the story, then, is neither to convey the particulars of her personal life, nor to present her experiences as representative. Rather, it is to remind us—we who have no personal memory of Young’s history of home—of the real, lived experiences of our own homes. In reading her story, we might be reminded of our own stories; or maybe we are struck by the dissimilarities between her home and ours. And in thinking of our own stories, we perhaps may start to see with her that our homes are similarly structured by the same disciplinary standards. As I argue in the next section, I believe she tells her personal stories because she hopes that her story will move others. Her story moves us to think of our stories—which will be different to be sure, but which may nonetheless resonate with parts of her story and reveal these disciplinary standards at work in our lives. She hopes then that our return to commemorate our own home histories will motivate us to move from reflecting on our own personal experience to seeing structures that constrain and enable us differently, which in turn calls on us to engage in collective political action.

Politics, Not Autobiography When Young invokes personal experience—whether in these deeply personal stories or in more general terms (such as when she describes her disorientation as her body changed during pregnancy (1990b, p. 164)—she does not claim that her experiences of female embodiment or the constraints of femininity are in any way authentic experiences of femaleness and femininity. She is always very careful to qualify any general claims she makes about female body experience, for example, by pointing out that they may be rather limited in validity. In the cases I have just examined where she tells her personal

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narratives, Young makes no claim that her experiences are typical, or somehow have validity for anyone beyond herself at all. She just presents them as deeply particular experiences. Where Young has stopped to reflect explicitly on her phenomenological method, she has given accounts in two different vocabularies of what she is trying to accomplish. In On Female Body Experience, she explains that “One of [the] purposes [of the essays in the book] is simply expressive: to give words to meanings often unspoken, in ways that I hope evoke recognition and even a little bit of pleasure” (2005a, p. 3).6 This language of recognition is repeated in “Menstrual mediations,” the newest essay included in the book (p. 99). But in the earlier collection Throwing Like a Girl (1990b), Young describes the goal of talking about experience in musical terms that I believe are more apt. There she talks in terms of her writing resonating, striking a chord, hitting a key with others. A characteristic passage that captures the nature of the kind of claims she makes about experience is in the essay “Women recovering our clothes.” There she argues that there are “three pleasures we take in clothes: touch, bonding, and fantasy” (1990b, p. 182). But who is this “we”? When I speak, then, for whom do I speak? For myself, of course. But this is politics, not autobiography, and I speak from my own experience, which I claim resonates with that of other women. My own experience is particular and limited, and it is possible that it most resonates among white, middle-class, heterosexual professional women in late capitalist society. At least I can claim to speak only for the experience of women like me. I believe that some of the experience I express resonates with that of other women, but that is for them to say. The differences among women do not circumscribe us within exclusive categories, but the only way we can know our similarities and differences is by each of us expressing our particular experience. I offer, then, this expression of women’s pleasure in clothes. (p. 182) There are at least two ways we might read this passage. First, we might understand her to be making a qualified epistemological argument about experience. Perhaps she cannot claim to know how all women experience their clothes, but she can make the more limited claim to know how all “white, middle-class, heterosexual professional women in late capitalist society” experience their clothes. As such, her claims about experience would not challenge the fundamental assumption that experience gives us access to knowledge. Her move to particularize the knowledge claims she can authoritatively make on the basis 6 At the end of the Introduction, Young hopes that her essays “communicate with the thoughts and feelings of readers” (p. 11). This is closer to the language of resonance, but still lacks its physical connotations.

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of her own experience would then mirror the kind of move made by María Lugones and Elizabeth Spelman in “Have we got a theory for you!” (1983): instead of making imperialist claims about “women,” we can claim a more limited validity for our claims by simply circumscribing the audience to which they apply. However, given Young’s vociferous critique of the use of experience to claim authentic knowledge in the introduction to the volume containing this essay, I find this reading implausible. Drawing on postmodern critiques of the traditional subject of philosophy—who is figured as a self-transparent and authentic source of knowledge—Young problematizes our ability to derive knowledge directly from experience: “No experience or reality is unmediated by language or symbols” (1990b, p. 13). Consequently, “Talk about experience expresses subjectivity, describes the feelings, motives, and reactions of subjects as they affect and are affected by the context in which they are situated” (p. 13). When we share our experiences with one another, each of us does not have access to any particular truth. We share our experiences with one another, then, in order to see through that exchange whether we can identify the context and the structures that shape our lives in related (although probably different) ways. Experience does not reveal truth; rather, the telling of experience is a part of the process of revealing the structures that constrain and constitute us as people who have certain experiences.7 This is what, in her democratic theory, she calls the production of “social knowledge” (see 2000, p. 76). This process of revealing the structures that shape our different experiences of the world is political. While I believe that Young thinks there is a right and a wrong answer about what these structures are, the fact of the matter is we have no access to unmediated, authoritative, and objective knowledge of these structures. We only have access to them through our mediated experience. Consequently, claims about their existence have the features of political rather than epistemological claims. In the passage cited above, Young claims that her comments about women’s experience of clothes are valid for a certain group of women who are similarly structured (being white, middle-class, heterosexual professional women in late capitalist society). Whether it has any broader relevance is “up for [other women] to say.” Her claim has no independent validity. The test of the validity of the claim is whether it resonates with others, whether they see it as valid in their own experience (see 1990b, p. 16). Our knowledge of social structures is not absolute, but is instead a function of consciousness-raising efforts to get others to reflect on their own experiences and test the validity of claims made about these structures. 7 This idea of structure receives its most mature formulation in her work in the essay “Gender as seriality” (1997a, Ch. 1).

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Resonance Now I want to offer an argument in favor of the language of resonance to describe what Young aims to accomplish with her stories of experience and her theoretical offerings, and against the language of recognition that she used in later essays included in On Female Body Experience (2005a). My concern here is that her use of the language of recognition is likely to produce misreadings of the role of experience in her work.8 The word recognition evokes cognition, a kind thinking that need not be connected to any form of embodiment.9 Of course, Young uses this language in the context of a phenomenological tradition that rethinks cognition as always already embodied (see, e.g., Kruks 2001, pp. 159ff ). However, for readers unfamiliar with this tradition, this language risks encouraging us to fall back into precisely the philosophical habits of abstraction that Young’s body of work demands that we reject. By contrast, the language of resonance is embodied. What is resonance? It is literally resounding, the repetition of sound. One dictionary definition of the word, however, draws attention to the embodiedness of this repetition: it defines resonance as the “sympathetic vibration of air in certain cavities and bony structures.”10 When a sound resonates in us, it triggers energy or movement or vibration within our lived bodies. Similarly, when I read Young’s descriptions of female body experience, they trigger something in me: memories of my own experiences, experiences of my female friends, related experiences of my male friends, stories I have read, theoretical analyses I have come across, something in the news last week—the movement here is not always one that can be described as recognition (“that’s it!”), but is often one of thinking of my different experiences and the ways in which my lived body does not quite map onto the ones that she describes. As she indicates in the passage I quoted above, she is interested in provoking these experiences of disjuncture as well as ones of recognition: this broader set of responses, of fertile and creative thinking born from reading her accounts of embodied experience, is better captured by the idea of resonance.

8 In a different context, Young herself notes the ambiguities of the language of recognition (2006, p. 95). In this essay, however, she is critical specifically of the use of this language to characterize certain kinds of claims about justice, e.g., that misrecognition or a failure of recognition is a form of injustice, or that justice requires recognizing certain forms of group difference. In place of a language of recognition to describe these kinds of harms, she recommends using the language instead of normalization. Her rejection of the language of recognition in this particular context should not be understood as a sign that she would reject the language of recognition in all contexts. 9 Patchen Markell (2003, pp. 39–41) delineates two different senses of recognition: one he calls “cognitive” and the other “constructive.” Both of these, he suggests, ultimately express an aspiration to sovereignty that Markell finds troubling (and I think Young would, too). I would add that both of these senses of recognition are not necessarily connected to embodiment, and so both risk encouraging abstraction. 10 Cf. www.dictionary.com.

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However, the languages of recognition and resonance both seem to point to an authentic origin—an original thought that is recognized, an original sound that is resounded. This notion of the origin is at odds with Young’s own postmodern commitments. Perhaps, then, we might say that both languages are equally problematic to describe the phenomena she is after. Yet we could also say that the idea of an original sound does capture something important in her work. There is a sense in which the point of sharing experiences is to locate some common sound resonating in each of us. The same sound waves will act differently in different contexts. A voice may echo down an empty hallway, but will be dampened if that hallway is carpeted. Similarly, the same structure—say a disciplinary standard of orderly housework— will differently resonate in the lives of women of different classes, races, ages, and nations. One of the political goals of sharing experience for Young is—we could say—to triangulate: to locate in the vibrations in our different lives what the sound is that we all hear. She writes, “I think of the description of experiences as being like musical notation; it is the ‘same’ for each instance of its performance. But the music exists only in the particulars, and the particular performances vary in innumerable ways—in tempo, timbre, rhythm, phrasing, dynamics” (1990b, p. 16). We work to characterize the structures that affect our lives by thinking through how they reverberate in different circumstances. Furthermore, even if it somewhat problematically implies an authentic origin, I believe that the language of resonance better attunes us to attend to dissonance, and so anticipates the fact of our plurality. What we cannot recognize we may miss entirely. But what does not resonate with us can generate dissonance. Dissonance, while often irritating, is hard to ignore altogether. This musical language resonates with an observation Young makes in Justice and the Politics of Difference: “The sense of justice arises not from looking, but as Jean-Francois Lyotard says, from listening” (1990a, p. 4). In that book, she calls on philosophers to listen in particular to the varied claims and voices— and with Inclusion and Democracy (2000), ways of expressing meaning—of the new social movements of the twentieth century. We might add that Young also calls on us to listen to ourselves, to what our bodies tell us about the structures that constrain us and about the overlooked sources of pleasures our embodiment offers. When we listen to others, we hear commonalities and differences. Listening is an activity that in its structure (if not always in its practice) maintains plurality, rather than collapsing it by assimilating other voices to my own. Listening is not only about listening for resonance, but importantly for dissonances as well. There is one final advantage of this language of resonance. When a sound resonates, it generates vibrations, movement, and energy. This, too, is the goal of recounting personal experience. When stories resonate with us, they generate movement in a localized way: They get us to reflect on our own stories. Yet ideally these stories also move us in another way. When we come to see

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through our sharing of experience the structures that constrain and enable us, this moves us to engage in collective action. Young’s personal stories are, therefore, attempts at political persuasion: is it like this at all for you, too? Then let us work together to fix the injustices and to celebrate the overlooked values we discover when we share our different, idiosyncratic experiences with one another. Her hope goes beyond recognition: that we see something of ourselves in her stories. She wants us to act. Young’s personal stories are uncomfortable to read, I think, because they make a persistent, inexorable demand upon us. If they resonate at all, they call upon us to do more than feminist theory or democratic theory. They demand that we engage in the world and act politically to change it for the better. That call is one that many of us heard from her lived example of engaged scholarship and activism. She set a very high bar for all of us. Let us hope that we can do her justice.

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Throwing Like a Girl, Dancing Like a Feminist Philosopher Susan Leigh Foster

This chapter comments on the visionary insights articulated in Iris Marion Young’s “Throwing like a girl: A phenomenology of feminine body comportment, motility, and spatiality,” initially published in 1980.1 I argue that Young’s theorization of a feminine physicality broke radical new ground in the discipline of philosophy, and it also provided a strong foundation for emerging studies in performance and corporeality. In that essay, Young offers an innovative approach to the analysis of bodily motion, one that integrates movement patterns with psychological orientations and social roles. Building on the work of Simone de Beauvoir, she also proposes to consider the feminine as a set of “structures and conditions that delimit the typical situation of being a woman in a particular society” (Young 1990b, p. 141). It was Young’s unique and perceptive insight to consider movement patterns as part of those structures and conditions that define the feminine. In “Throwing like a girl” Young argues that feminine experience, marked by a fundamental contradiction between subjectivity and being a mere object, can be observed in woman’s distinctive engagement with spatiality. Composed of both an apprehension of and response to space, this spatial awareness permeates female daily life, quotidian actions and cognitive calculations alike. Young identifies three principal features of this engagement with space: first, an ambiguous transcendence evidenced in the lack of forthrightness in women’s gait and stride, and in a smallness in extending toward the limits of their reach; second, an inhibited intentionality, exemplified in a characteristic failure to commit the whole body to a particular task; and third, a discontinuous unity in which the feminine subject is unable to coordinate motions from different 1 Young’s essay was reprinted in 1990. All quotations are taken from this latter publication.

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parts of the body toward a single intended action. In identifying these features of spatial engagement, Young implements criteria of size—the length of the stride—as well as of effort—the concentrated energy mobilized to execute a task. And she distinguishes between the whole body’s interactivity with its surroundings and the organization within the body of its various parts. Citing Merleau-Ponty’s claim that it is “the body in its orientation toward and action upon and within its surroundings that constitutes the initial meaning-giving act,” (p. 147) Young asserts that women are not given access to the kind of an unambiguously purposeful sense of themselves in the world that Merleau-Ponty claims as a universal given. Instead, it is the masculine subject that actualizes as a fully confident and willful being who experiences the body as a medium for the enactment or realization of aims, whereas the feminine subject experiences the body as a “fragile encumbrance” (p. 147). Women, she asserts, constantly vacillate between experiencing a primordial oneness with the body and a sense of distance from the body, prompted by the feeling that the body and its motions are “not entirely under her control” (p. 150). Furthermore, they experience themselves as embedded within a system of spatial coordinates that does not originate in their own intentionality. According to Young, this “inhibited, confined, positioned and objectified” sense of female identity is the direct outcome of sexist oppression in contemporary society. Such an identity is produced by girls’ sedentary play, the assimilation of a feminine style of comportment in walking, standing, sitting, and gesturing, and in the generalized timidity inculcated by being told not to get dirty, not to get hurt, not to go too far from home, etc. It is equally the product of society’s obsessive emphasis on female appearance, in which women learn to mold, groom, and decorate their bodies in conformance with a patriarchal standard of beauty. In the same way that she de-centers Merleau-Ponty’s claims for a singular relationship between body and consciousness, Young also insists on the historical specificity of the patriarchal authority that pressures women’s physicality. She further grounds her observations in her own bodily experience, relating two anecdotes about her own tentativeness in crossing a stream and her juvenile efforts to learn a feminine walk. These reflexive comments on her own situatedness within the contemporary first-world patriarchy infuse her inquiry with modest particularity and also a lively sense of curiosity about one’s own life in relation to the world.

Locating “Throwing” Young’s essay, from this early twenty-first century perspective, can now be located in relation to a twentieth century lineage of studies in corporeality prompted, in part, by sociological interrogations of the body in society, and in

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part, by phenomenological accounts of body. Where scholars such as Marcel Mauss (1973) in his famous essay “Techniques of the Body” or Michel Foucault’s study of the penal system (1977), Discipline and Punish, represent the former strand of inquiry, studies of perception, such as those of Merleau-Ponty represent the latter. Typically, these fields of inquiry are seen in opposition to one another, yet Young’s visionary approach provides a model for synthesizing these two distinctive forms of inquiry.2 In her analysis, she builds out from the individual’s perceptual experience, while at the same time observing general trends in socialization. By focusing on the body’s movement repertoires as a kind of interface between perception and action, she is able to integrate the external and internal structures through which identity is constructed. Looking more specifically at the decades just prior to the essay’s publication, the feminist movement of the late 1960s and 70s gave new momentum to studies of the body as did the emerging field of nonverbal communication. Feminist scholarship instigated a profound new interest in the body, yet the focus of most publications was to unearth repressed or neglected aspects of female anatomy and sexuality, to celebrate women’s unique biological capacities, and to claim the rights to speak about the body publicly and without shame. Feminist inquiries focused on women’s experience as a sexual and procreative being, with much research interrogating the body’s status in intercourse, pregnancy, birth, motherhood, etc. The rest of woman’s repertoire of physical behaviors and movements received very little attention. Young was among the first to investigate movement as one of the specific propensities of female physicality. During these same years in the allied fields of psychology and sociology, nonverbal communication studies identified various repertoires of gesture and action as means for communicating. Typically, these repertories of behavior were construed as manifestations of subliminal or unconscious needs and desires. Researchers seldom conceptualized these repertoires as genderspecific or as manifesting a style of execution that was allied with a particular gender. Furthermore, the body’s movement, always conceptualized as the effect or execution of the psyche’s will, was never accorded agency. It remained a mute and dumb thing, capable only of exhibiting the results of a person’s thoughts or feelings. In contrast to nonverbal communication studies, Young refrains from assigning movement a purely mechanical function. Nor does she invoke the binary that typically aligns speech with conscious, cognitive experience and movement with the unconscious, the libidinal, or the emotional. She does not enter into debates as to the conscious or unconscious valence of these movement vocabularies. Instead, she recognizes them as simply a part of the socialization process. 2 Young expands on the complementarity between phenomenological and discursive analytic approaches such as those of Foucault and Bourdieu in On Female Body Experience, pp. 7–9.

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Catching “Throwing” Focusing on the construction of gender, Young anticipates the work of three more recent and influential philosophers concerned with corporeality, Sandra Bartky, Susan Bordo, and Judith Butler. Writing a decade after Young’s essay, all three scholars pursue the hypothesis that gender is constructed by sets of behaviors which women assimilate and for which they are responsible. Yet none of them focuses on movement repertoires with the analytic depth that Young does. In Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power, Sandra Bartky (1990b) provides an impressive overview of society’s diverse mandates for realizing proper femininity, connecting ways of moving to the grooming and appearance of the body specified in a variety of social settings. She locates these practices of femininity in the sinews of the social, arguing persuasively that it is the system itself—the fashion and beauty industries, physical education, the media, popular culture, and all those who participate in them—that maintains and perpetuates the specifications of the feminine. In this regard she strengthens Young’s assertion that socialization includes the assimilation of movement practices. She does not, however, offer any categories for the observation and analysis of movement. Examining the pressures on women’s bodies to perform slim vitality, Susan Bordo (1993) surveys the prevalence of anorexia and bulimia, especially in young women. By analyzing advertising, merchandizing, and consumerist practices within popular culture, Bordo elucidates the simultaneous pressures on the female body to add and subtract, dramatically, from its physicality. She associates these contradictory impulses of binging and abstinence with the anxieties permeating late capitalism. Bordo argues persuasively that it is women’s bodies that bear the brunt of late capitalist inequities, within contemporary U.S. society and more globally. Like Young, Bordo connects psychological pressures to achieve a certain physical appearance with large-scale social pressures to perform as a good consumer. Unlike Young, she looks to the shape of the body, its ideal size and look, and at the set of behaviors that women learn in order to produce that size and shape. Young, in contrast, envisions movement as inherently significant in and of itself. It does not merely produce a discursive effect, but is itself a discourse. Judith Butler (1990) establishes a persuasive case for gender as a set of reiterative behaviors, whose repetition functions to create discourse. The gendering of the subject occurs, she argues, through the performative acts that signify maleness and femaleness. Butler, however, focuses almost exclusively on speech and the status of the speaker in relation to utterances. She explores only minimally the potential for movement to function as performative utterance. Only in the case of drag, where gender is fabricated from the borrowed vocabularies of the other sex, is movement examined as significant. And here it functions tacitly, as a potential site of resistance to the normative.

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Young, in contrast, looks at daily, pedestrian motifs as the locus of gender construction. These ordinary, recurring patterns, without specialized vocabularies or uses, could conceivably be invoked for purposes of resistance, a claim made by Michel de Certeau (1980, 1984) the same year that Young published her essay. Young’s concern, however, is first to establish awareness of how these patterns summon women into, and at the same time, provide the sense of forging a gendered identity that serves the patriarchy. Like Foucault, she finds it necessary to excavate the hegemonic structurings of power before theorizing resistance to them. Reflecting back on her essay twenty years later, Young (1998) takes issue with the way that she associated women with lack or absence of skills. By invoking de Beauvoir’s distinction between immanence and transcendence, Young casts the feminine into a subordinate relationship with the masculine, one that is defined only by its negation of the transcendent nature of male identity. Indeed, Young’s characterization of the feminine as “ambiguous,” “inhibited,” and “discontinuous” depends upon the oppositional and “positive” categories of straightforward, forthright, and integrated. Young verges on discovering adjectival referents for feminine movement that do not negate the masculine when she discusses psychological studies that explore spatial perception. In summarizing these studies, she describes feminine perception as marked by a tendency “to regard figures as embedded within and fixed by their surroundings” (Young 1990b, p. 153). This apprehension of the relationality between self and world casts feminine experience as distinct from masculine experience without invoking positive–negative valence. By suggesting that her own observations might be paired with these investigations to further elucidate the feminine, Young demonstrates the hypothetical status of her own categories of analysis. She is searching for ways to analyze movement, rather than asserting standardized or universal categories within which all movements must be located. As she herself observes, such an analysis “ . . . brings intelligibility and significance to certain observable and rather ordinary ways in which women in our society typically comport themselves and move differently from the ways that men do” (Young 1990b, p. 143).

Choreographing “Throwing” For the emerging field of dance studies, it is the constructed and historically specific status of Young’s claims about movement that is so theoretically pertinent. As early as the 1930s, movement analyst Rudolph von Laban identified primary features of movement, its directionality, speed, tensility, and flow through which any and all motions could be analyzed and categorized (Bartenieff 1980, pp. 58–59, 92–93). For Laban these features—its uni- or multi-focused direction, its quick or slow speed, its light or bound tensility, and its restrained or free flow—constituted universal attributes, self-evident in all

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motion. Laban further asserted that maleness and femaleness could be identified according to their distinctive propensities to move according to these features. Male movement for Laban is inherently uni-focused, quick, bound, and restrained, whereas female movement is multi-focused, slow, light, and free. Subsequent scholarship in dance studies has taken issue with Laban’s universalist claims, arguing that his framework exhibits a fundamentally Western and modernist orientation toward movement. His assertions that masculine and feminine attributes are tied to deep psychic structures of mind have been called into question, yet his system of analyzing movement continues to be implemented, often as a universal rubric within which all movements can be analyzed and compared. A team of computer scientists and dance anthropologists, Golshani, Vissicaro, and Park (2004), is currently working to collate all the world’s dances using criteria inspired by Laban to analyze motion capture documentation of various performances. Where Young looks at the extent of reach given a specific body’s capacity to extend itself, they are measuring the height of the arm according to the degree of angle from the torso. Where Young is concerned to assess how any given body organizes its movement smoothly and coherently or with breaks and ruptures, they are comparing all bodies according to standardized geometric shapes and forms. Although Young may not have anticipated the intervention that her essay would make in dance studies, her insistence on the historically constructed circumstances of feminine movement contributes a crucial argument to scholarship that attempts to resist the “universal dance” and the universals in dance. Furthermore, her willingness to report what she sees using vocabulary that is available to her, rather than any specialized terminology, provides a crucial counter-methodology to systematic efforts to establish a single framework to account for all movement. And finally, although her analysis is specific to gender and does not go so far as to identify other markers of social constituency such as white, or middle-class, or heterosexual, her method does not preclude such analysis. Indeed, much dance scholarship has gone on to analyze dance’s significance along just these lines.3

Reading a Feminist Choreographer’s Dance as a Feminist Philosopher Might In her essay from 1998 reflecting back on “Throwing,” Young comments on the massive changes in social behaviors that distinguish her generation from that of her daughter. Able to wear jeans and take full advantage of athletic 3 See, for example, Albright (1997), Burt (1995 and 1998), Castaldi (2006), Chatterjea (2004), Daly (1994), De Frantz (2001 and 2006), Desmond (1997), Foster (1998 and 2002), Franko (2002), Gere (2004), Gottschild (1996 and 2005), Graff (1997), Jackson (2002), Manning (1993 and 2004), Martin (1998), Novack (1990), O’Shea (2007), and Tomko (1999).

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opportunities, Young’s daughter and “her friends move and carry themselves with more openness, more reach, more active confidence,” than many of Young’s cohort (1998, p. 286). Yet, Young finds that her essay remains pertinent to a significant number of undergraduate readers. How might the feminine have transformed so as to allow more “openness” yet still exercise the oppressive influence that would make a new generation of feminists enthusiastic about Young’s critique? For one answer to this question, I turn not to the everyday pedestrian events for signs of gender’s construction that Young analyzed, but to a highly staged event, Yippee!!!, a dance concert by British feminist choreographer Lea Anderson. Choreographed in 2006, this dance provides a provocative and deeply insightful critique of the status of the feminine today.4 In reading Anderson’s dance, I implement the kinds of analytic perspectives that Young developed in her original essay. The dancers traipse in, exuding a sultry glamour. Their arms poke at space with such ennui. They stare at the audience with a practiced, bored blankness. Striking a statuesque pose, they slouch along in parade, their long mink stoles revealing a glimpse of a shoulder here, of a lower back there. Of course, any frisson that we receive from such a glimpse is dripping with irony, since all the bodies, male and female, are similarly naked—covered only with a translucent unitard that holds delicately in place massive quantities of fake pubic and underarm hair. They glide into ballroom couple poses and swirl gently around the stage. As they exit, a solo male dancer bends coyly to display his naked backside. Gingerly groping his way across the floor, his buttocks and thighs become abstract shapes of sculptural interest, disassociated from any sexual connotations. Other dancers pull on fur stockings and saunter in a circle. A more lively group wiggles their way onstage in grid formation, their complex rhythmic gyrations pulsing with fake euphoria. By the time the dancers return with their arms thrust through the sleeves of little blue Shirley Temple dresses, the genre of this masquerade becomes identifiable: each scene is a takeoff on filmed production numbers from Broadway-style entertainments. The dancers execute versions of the original choruses and follow their formations onstage, yet they break radically with the gender codes of those early twentieth century productions. Male and female bodies, sometimes indistinguishable with their slicked back hair and similarly muscled physiques, both inhabit the same roles. In scenes where male and female dancers would typically partner one another, men dance with men, women with women, and women with men. In scenes where the traditional chorus line consisted of all female dancers, both male and female dancers engage equally in 4 Anderson is an internationally recognized British choreographer who has achieved renown, in part, through her salient analyses of gender. Maintaining two companies, the all-female Chomondeleys and the allmale Featherstonhaughs, Anderson has launched a number of humorous and insightful critiques on traditional gender roles in society and in dance. For a good overview of her earlier work, see Dodds (2001) and Briginshaw (1995–96). And for a lucid analysis of her choreographic strategies, see Hargreaves (2002).

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the same feminine repertoires: broad smiles, mincing steps, gracious displays of the body, and daintily bound gestures. The performance of such strongly gendered actions by both male and female bodies offers up a powerful representation of the feminine as a gendered construct. Anderson deepens this interrogation of the feminine through her choreographic strategy of faithfully copying sections from film or photographs. Even though the dancers precisely execute eighty-year old choreography, they lack the accoutrements of the filmic scene that would ensure their reception as realistic actors. Either the movement sequences are not used in their entirety and thereby disrupt with their glaring beginnings and endings. Or they lack the setting that would give them narrative coherence. Or they are cobbled together in an absurd sequence. Or they are repeated excessively such that their staging of exaggerated happiness becomes a most uncomfortable joke. All these choreographic manipulations deconstruct the feminine. They take femininity’s parts apart. In all the obsessive repetition that overflows from the performance, what the dancers repeat most is the wiggle. They wiggle as their feet move from side to side in parallel. They wiggle as they skip. They wiggle as they shrug away any intimation of anxiety. Their wiggling is not quite naughty, not at all frenetic. Instead, the body pulls back from completely stretching one way and then the other. As a result, the figures look apathetic, even as they perform cheerfulness. Both the quality of the wiggle and the way it directs motion to one side and then the other signify a profound ambiguity. As in Young’s initial observations about female comportment, these dancers can’t decide which way to go, and even if they were to decide, so what? From the beginning, the performance makes a convincing case for its artifice. The main action takes place within a set of lights on movable poles that the dancers rearrange for different sections of the piece. Outside the lights dancers meander among racks of costumes, changing clothes, warming up, and watching the action. At one point, a seeming intermission, the dancers break to drink deeply from bottles of water stored in the open wings. At another, a dancer’s fake dentures, enforcing his grotesque smile, pop out, and he fumbles frantically to reinsert them. Later, another dancer pauses to shake rocks out of her shoe. Throughout, dancers stand in full view awaiting their entrances to the “performance” inside the lights. As they stand ready to make their entrances, each dancer’s body musters all the concentration necessary to make the transition from “off” stage to “on,” all the necessary energy that normally would explode with the vitality of “dancing.” Yet instead, their onstage presence hails the viewer with an unbearable lack of zeal. So soft and subdued, so precisely directed yet fully lackluster, each gesture underscores its own failure to show the audience vigor, excitement, the sheer joy and gusto of engaging with physicality. The driving rhythms of the live band upstage emphasize even further this restrictedness of motion.

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How to describe this peculiar quality of restraint? Normally, restrained movement signifies an internal struggle in which opposing motivations vie for control over bodily expression. Restrained motion is full of tension and drama as the body seems to proclaim simultaneously, “I will,” and “I won’t.” The restraint evident in this performance does not suggest a willful subject. It is, to use Young’s term, inhibited. These rubbery, resilient wigglers never extend themselves fully either toward effortful exertion or lackadaisical relaxation. In part, this inhibited exertion into space reproduces the qualities of effort evident in the production numbers that Anderson has copied. Without the full costumes or bubbly music of the original performances, however, and in contrast to the extreme exertion so prevalent on the concert stage today, these dancers purvey a remarkably fettered physicality. Anderson’s choreographic process of copying and then splicing together movement sequences from other sources also produces Young’s third principle of feminine movement—discontinuous unity. Because of the process of copying the action, the dancers appear to wear the movement. Motions do not originate in the body’s interiority, but instead get placed on the body’s surface. The bodies execute the next action, as non-sequitur as it might be, without any organic flow, any sense of movement’s purposefulness. The second half of the performance turns darker. The happy jumping becomes obsessive, meaningless—a kind of consumer frenzy on display. Now wearing black unitards with silver tap shoes, the dancers’ formations become more austere. A “Ballet Masteress” enters wearing a dark fur coat and using a prosthetic foot as a cane. He rehearses the corps, adjusting posture, repositioning the dancers, counting and drilling them, then pronouncing their execution “nice.” Anderson’s critique of Tiller girls or Rockettes-type repetitive movement grinds forward, implementing the tyranny of 8-count phrase. Even a pregnant woman exercises: right, left, right, left, only a few more reps . . . keep going, you can do it. This nightmarish alternation between emphatic carefreeness and statuesque strutting summons up the underbelly of the beauty industry. Yes! women have more access to athletic pursuits in this culture of nip and tuck, where there is no gain without pain, and every repetition potentially enhances one’s image. Yes! we can have our gain; it only takes a little pain. Alternating between grid formations and the parade, the dancers never touch one another. Only one couple, adorned with red velvet vaginas over their noses and mouths, ever sustains physical contact. They perform failed versions of gags, then reappear dancing to the sounds of a tap dance, making reference to an African-American duo such as the Nicholas Brothers on film. Cavorting, buffooning, they counterpoint the vacant monumentality of the larger production numbers. As if commenting on the checked-out status of the partying crowd, a single dancer enters with a large black hole hung around her neck. She stares forlornly at the audience and the whole production stills for a minute or more.

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Her bleak absence of a center comments on the mindless writhing throughout the piece. In the next scene the hole shape returns, but this time held by two dancers who use it to frame a third. They present a bizarre theatre of rhetorical gestures as the urgent hand motions poke through the disc and its fun-house mirror opening distorts facial expressions. The dancer behind the disc urgently beckons to the audience then wrings his hands, as if the codes of interiority themselves are being eviscerated. For the finale, the dancers return to the ballroom, partnering up with partial tuxedos and strap-on feather boas in a last parade. Their fanciful strutting culminates in a single decorative tableau where all the dancers artfully drape their bodies across the front of the stage. Yet this final image produces no climax, no ta-da. As if to reassert, once again, the irony of the dance’s title, the ending is as lame as the femininity which it celebrates is oppressive. Yippee!—we can be any gender we want. Yippee!—it’s so much fun to play with the codes. But the trope of the feminine, now uploaded into a sci-fi future where hybrid creatures with prosthetic smiles roam across the stage, continues to be celebrated. Perpetuating itself on and through billboards, television commercials, and each season’s fashions, this trope of the feminine, Anderson seems to be claiming, is just as ambiguous, inhibited, and discontinuous as anything Young ever observed. Yippee!—one episode of glamour after another, each offering the consumer of gender construction a slightly different flavor of the feminine. Anderson’s pungent and incisive critique of the feminine in contemporary society, like Young’s earlier analysis, integrates psychological and sociological formations within the dancing body. Together, Young’s visionary insights into movement and Anderson’s choreographic argument allow us to see how gender is a performance, but one that these bodies are required and destined to execute. Despite the many achievements of the Women’s Movement since Young’s essay, Anderson shows how women’s experience of bodiliness remains ambivalent in a male dominated world. Like the globally circulating flow of capital, feminine corporeality, equally pervasive through commodities and mediatized images, appears glamorous even as it pins the bodies who participate in it within the constrained, dislocated ambivalence of having to throw like a girl.

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Iris Marion Young: Between Phenomenology and Structural Injustice Bonnie Mann Opening A few months before her death, I had the honor of hosting a visit by Iris Marion Young to the University of Oregon. Young was focused, luminous, and generous presenting two papers on the topic of structural injustice; and annoyed by our department’s interest in her phenomenological work on embodiment. I, in turn, was somewhat impatient with her annoyance. Many of us considered her to have done more in her essays on female body experience than any other philosopher since Beauvoir to force open the question of female embodiment. Young was clearly more concerned with how her phenomenological work might have contributed to a tendency that closed certain feminist questions. There had been a narrowing of feminist interest, she worried, to “issues of experience, identity, and subjectivity” (2005a, p. 19), to the exclusion of “theorizing social structures and their implications for the freedom and well-being of persons” (p. 19). Articulating her criticism through an analysis of the rejection of the notion of “gender” in favor of the “lived body” of phenomenology (particularly in reference to Moi 1999), Young concluded that the concept of gender does work that the lived body cannot “as a tool for theorizing structures more than subjects” (p. 22). Young was interested in “structures” in the big sense, in other words, in the “large-scale systemic outcomes of the operations of many institutions and practices which . . . constrain some people in specific ways at the same time that they enable others” (2005a, p. 20). If gender is a way of describing something important about these structures, rather than about identity, then “what it means to say that individual persons are ‘gendered’ is that we all find ourselves

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passively grouped according to these structural relations, in ways too impersonal to ground identity” (my emphasis, p. 22). Such structures precede subjects; they “are historically given and condition the action and consciousness of individual persons” (p. 25); we experience aspects of these structures “as facticity” (p. 25). At the end of her essay Young suggests that what we may need is to work much harder to make political sense out of the ways that gendered macrostructures like “the division of labor, hierarchies of power and norms of sexuality” are “lived through individual bodies” (p. 26). Time did not afford me the opportunity to argue when Young was still with us, to say “but that is, in fact, just what you did.” Neither did I get the chance to point out that it is strange to say both that gendered macrostructures are lived through individual bodies and that these structures are impersonal. Surely such strangeness calls for an explanation; how is it that “impersonal” structures are so personally animated in identities? To my mind Young’s own work on embodiment had already come closer to making sense of such questions than that of any other contemporary feminist thinker. But Young clearly wanted more than that. She recognized that such accounts too easily feed a tendency toward subjectivism that fails to tell the truth about our shared political world. This is the feminist version of the longstanding worry that phenomenology too readily devolves into a subjectivist enterprise that cannot give a meaningful account of politics and power, of the unfreedoms that structure our lives in heinous ways. Further, the poststructuralists argue, it can’t give a meaningful account of the advent of the subject in the context of the social. Yet to give account of these structures without attention to how we live them is to risk an equally abstract objectivism that can’t grasp the lived meanings of structural injustice. But Young’s worries aren’t to be dismissed. I think she is correct in saying that feminist theory, having become fascinated with the question of the subject, has too often lost its footing in the social/political world. The problem, I will argue, has to do with how we locate gender, so while I support Young’s reclamation of “gender” from the phenomenological trash bin, and I agree that the term is politically meaningful, I will not agree with her effort to simply move gender outside the subject and attach it to external, impersonal structures of power.

The Sex/Gender Distinction Before I say why, I think a brief review of the debate about the sex/gender distinction is in order, since it has been the ground on which the tension and movement between subjectivist and objectivist accounts have played themselves out for feminists. Initially, it was a way of distinguishing psychological gender from biological sex, and allowed feminists to claim that the first

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was socially constructed while the latter was brute nature. “Gender” opened up the freedom of the woman-subject, and infused a movement with hope in women’s collective agency.1 The sex/gender distinction soon came under attack from several different perspectives. First, French materialist feminists (Wittig 1992; Guillamin 1995) argued that what we understand to be biological sex is itself the product of social relations of dominance and subordination between men and women, of the appropriation of women’s physical, emotional, and sexual labor by men. Inheriting some of the foundational assumptions from this group, feminist poststructuralist Judith Butler claimed that sex was a function of gender, since “sex” is discursively constituted as an imaginary pre-social realm at the same time that “gender” is discursively constituted as a political/social product. Here sex collapses into gender (Butler 1990, pp. 3–49). Feminist phenomenologists decried the distinction for other reasons, claiming that the mind/ body split was reorganized and redeployed through the notions of sex and gender, and that nature and culture are dichotomized in ways that do not match our lived experience. The “body” that is operative in such formulations is the same old mechanistic, causally implicated, object-body of the naïve sciences that phenomenology had long since recognized as an abstraction from the lifeworld (Moi 1999, pp. 3–120; Heinämaa 1996; Mann 2006, pp. 113–129). These feminists have insisted that the “lived-body” is what feminists need in order to overcome the entrenched tendencies toward the objectification of the body, as well as the poststructuralist’s inability to affirm a biological world that is neither mere social product, nor brute mechanism.

Where Is Gender? Young formulates the project of feminist theory as: to “identify certain wrongful harms or injustices, locate and explain their sources in institutions and social relations, and propose directions for institutionally oriented action to change them” (2005a, p. 20). Young suggests that we understand terms like “caste, class, race, age, ethnicity, and, of course, gender” as names for “axes of structural inequality” rather than subjective identities (p. 21). Gender inhabits institutions and relations of power that situate the subject externally. My worry is that Young favors “gender” as a term for naming external relations of power which precede subjective action and consciousness (2005a, p. 25) to such an extent that she risks turning the subject into an impersonal product of social/political forces. Influenced by poststructuralist treatments of

1 For a more complex account, see Heinämaa 1996.

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the subject, she comes close to exchanging an idealized subjectivism for an abstract objectivism.2 But as soon as we insist that gender is also lived, we are pressed up against the old question of how what is outside gets inside, which has long been a preoccupation of all liberatory movements. In response to Young, I want to try to find another way of talking about gender that affirms the inner life of the subject, defending a notion of situated freedom, and at the same time recognizes gender as a primary structure of the subject’s entanglement with the unfreedoms of institutionalized power. Certainly gender is a deeply personal structure of individual subjectivity, and, more certainly, it structures the material relations of a culture, but most significantly it is one dimension of the very structure of the relation between them. It continually mediates the distance and the relation between the one who says “I” and her culture. While sometimes having the quality of inside or outside, gender is more primarily in between the subject and the social world, not in the manner of a boundary, but in the manner of an aesthetic relation. Gender keys the subject into the social world even as it animates culture in and through the lived commitments and practices of individual subjects. When I call this relation aesthetic, I am trading on an old definition of the word. This is a relation that is sensual and sensory, affective and perceptual, before it is thoughtful or considered. It is lived through the body first. It plays an active role in how we make sense of things, what we commit ourselves to, and who we understand ourselves to be. There is already a turn to the aesthetic in Young’s descriptions of female body experience, which disclose an imaginary domain that is the place of the relation between our living of gender and gender’s life in the broader social and political apparati. It is in this domain that the sensualities and passions of gender, the perceptions and bodily modalities of gender, are first animated.

Young’s Imaginary Domain In Young’s first and still most well-known phenomenological essay on female body experience, she sets out to describe a “feminine style” of “body comportment and . . . movement” particularly in actions like throwing a ball, which require a very specific bodily intentionality aimed at a particular object (2005a, p. 28). Her claim is that “there is a particular style of bodily comportment that is typical of feminine existence, and this style consists of particular modalities of the structures and conditions of the body’s existence in the world” (p. 31).

2 Elsewhere I have argued that poststructuralist accounts like those of the early Judith Butler amount to a kind of idealism (Mann 2006). Young’s account is dissimilar, in that she stresses institutional and material conditions and practices, but similar in that “gender” is abstracted from our living of it.

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Following Merleau-Ponty, she notes that “it is the ordinary purposive orientation of the body as a whole toward things in its environment that initially defines the relation of the subject to its world” (2005a, p. 30), so her descriptive account of these modalities will reveal something important about women’s situation and lived experience as a whole (p. 30). What they reveal, Young claims, is that women’s particular situation, understood in Beauvoir’s sense of the term, is at the root of the modalities of body comportment and motility that we recognize as feminine. The most significant characteristic of this situation is that a cultural requirement mandates that women’s very self-identification as women requires us to take our bodies to be subjects and objects at the very same time, i.e., that “for feminine existence the body frequently is both object and subject for itself at the same time and in reference to the same act” (p. 38), or in other words “feminine bodily existence is self-referred” (p. 38). My claim is that Young’s account discloses what we might call a feminine imaginary domain. By using this term I am, of course, placing myself in the context of a complicated history. In existentialist thought, the imagination is taken to be a capacity of an individual person, what makes it possible for her to live in relation to what does not yet exist, and thus hope for a future different than this present (Sartre 2004). The imaginary, in psychoanalytic accounts, is the force of the image of an individual in the mirror, or in the eyes of others, which make it possible for her to imagine herself as a singular, unified “I” (Lacan 1996). But the imaginary is also understood to be a structure of sociality in a grander sense, what enables us to imagine ourselves in relation to others whom we have never met, yet with whom we stand together in some particular way; (Anderson 1983; Taylor 2004).3 I will suggest that we should understand these various accounts to disclose distinct dimensions of the same relation between individual subjective experience, intersubjective entanglements, and broad social identities. In the end, I will suggest that the imaginary is the net which binds bodily awareness and social meaning, and the imagination is the acrobat that climbs back and forth between them. To enliven my discussion of Young’s account, I will use examples from my own recent experience as the volunteer coach of my 8-year old daughter’s beginning volleyball team. These examples are anecdotal, but I hope (the readers will decide) exemplary in some modest way. I had four girls and two boys on my team, none of whom had ever stepped onto a volleyball court before. Some parents had imagined volleyball would be an “easier” sport for less athletic kids, but the ways of using one’s hands and arms for passing, setting, hitting, and serving are more precise and less familiar than those required to play a passable game of soccer or basketball. I found myself thinking of Young’s early essay in practice after practice, as I tried to teach my six third-graders their volleyball basics. 3 I am already leaving out other feminist uses of the term, see Le Doeuff 1989; Cornell 1995.

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At the heart of Young’s account are certain “modalities” of feminine bodily comportment and motility which she identifies and describes. Feminine motility is to be recognized in an action that “simultaneously reaches toward a projected end with an ‘I can’ and withholds its full bodily commitment to that end in a self-imposed ‘I cannot’ ” (2005a, p. 36). This inhibited intentionality is evident when a girl projects “a [physical] aim to be enacted but at the same time stiffen[s] against the task” (p. 37). In serving practice, most of my players consistently leaned back or jumped backwards as they attempted to hit the ball forward over the net, so while their arms moved forward, the rest of their bodies’ energy very effectively counteracted any forward momentum. When they were able to consciously resist this tendency the ball sailed easily over the net, but as soon as they lost focus and leaned backward it fell far short. The behavior didn’t follow a neat gender line: three out of four of the girls and one of the boys struggled with this throughout the season. Yet even the boy looked like a girl when he served in this way.4 There was something awkward, comical, and fragmented about the movement, as if the body performing it related to itself in pieces, i.e., was strangely unaware of itself as a whole body. Since, following Merleau-Ponty, Young believes that bodily motion is “the most primordial intentional act” (2005a, p. 35), which synthesizes a bodily unity and a world at the very same time, she argues that the unity that is synthesized in feminine motility is a discontinuous unity, while masculine bodily motility will more simply organize the world as a unitary field of the “I can” (p. 37). For these eight-year-olds, serving was only one skill in which this discontinuous unity manifested itself. I had to convince them that they could move decisively toward the ball. At first they stood stock still. Later the girls would run toward the ball only to stop or hesitate just before they got there. When I insisted they call out “mine” to claim the ball from their teammates, they would start to say the word then almost swallow it, move toward the ball, then turn away from it. “I want commitment!” I said over and over again, making the good natured parents on the bench laugh. The first time I used this phrase, one of the parents joked that the boys wouldn’t have any idea what it meant. Yet when it came to having a bodily sense of “commitment” it was all four girls who lagged behind. Soon both boys were all over the court, practically pushing their teammates out of the way and shouting “mine,” sliding dramatically in their all-out efforts to get to the ball (even when they didn’t need to). The first and only girl to really “get” what I meant in an embodied way, was my own daughter, who again had more experience in athletics than the other three (and whose latest nickname is “baby rhinoceros,” to give you an idea of her

4 “Like a girl,” is one of those phrases we wish didn’t make sense, and hope one day will not. We are, of course, thoroughly schooled in the meaning of this attribution, which is why we can continue to apply it across gender lines, instead of recognizing the behavior in question in more neutral terms. Any female athlete who advances in a sport ceases to hit, run, throw, etc. “like a girl” very early on.

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particular character). But even then, she did not blast her way into her teammates’ space on the court like the boys did.5 What I kept trying to figure out, as a first-time coach, was what was stopping the girls? Those who were most stereotypically feminine in their body movements seemed to have a set of invisible walls around them. If my toss required even a step or two, they watched the ball fall, as if it simply had nothing to do with them. My smallest player often seemed startled to see the ball coming to her in a game. Her eyes would grow big; she would flinch and awkwardly allow the ball to hit her rather than hit it, as if the volleyball were the agent and she its object. Young tells us that as the body-subject moves, she gathers the world around her into lived relations of space (2005a, p. 39) and particular modalities of feminine spatiality emerge. Following a study of boys’ and girls’ drawings by Ericson, Young concludes that enclosure is one modality of feminine spatiality, since the space of the “I can” for women tends to be gathered tightly and held close, and is represented by girls as enclosed by high walls. Feminine space is thus severed into a dual structure, in which a tightly drawn “here” is cut off from a “yonder” into which the body-subject can see, but into which she cannot move (p. 40). Whereas, in Merleau-Ponty’s account, the body is never positioned in space, because the body is the very power of positioning that effects the “laying down of the first coordinates” which constitute phenomenal space (Merleau-Ponty 1962, p. 100, cited in Young 2005a, p. 41), feminine spatiality is characterized by the positioning body-subject experiencing herself at one and the same moment as a positioned body-object. For Young, all of these modalities of feminine body experience are rooted in femininity itself, which she defines as the entangled network of “structures and conditions that delimit the typical situation of being a woman marked by the mandate to take oneself to be simultaneously object and subject” (2005a, p. 31). In agreement with other feminist accounts, Young is asserting that femininity requires women to internalize a male gaze, which is to say to take up in the imaginary the position and interests of the masculine gaze over and against an objectified self.6 At the same time, she is noting that this being positioned in space disrupts and disorganizes the “I can” that lays down the coordinates of spatiality in a way that has deep consequences for the body-subject’s relation to the lived world in general. What we recognize to be feminine styles of body comportment are constituted in the midst of this disruption. This splitting of the subject/object body and space is constituted in the imaginary. I imagine myself here, author of my perceptions, and yet over there,

5 Young argues that feminine body comportment is characterized by movements outward toward the world that are disrupted or fragmented, so that the transcendence experienced in the self-world relations constituted by these acts is an ambiguous transcendence. “Feminine bodily existence . . . is overlaid with immanence,” Young claims, even in its most simple acts of transcendence (p. 36). 6 See Sandra Bartky’s (1990a) development and extension of Iris Young’s thinking on objectification.

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looked at and judged by an alienated masculine gaze, which I myself co-author.7 I am the author of my movement in space but it is constrained to the “here” I hold tightly around myself, self-constrained in a way that seems to be imposed from the outside—as if my imagination binds itself close to home, leaving me not free to move between here and yonder. In a key passage, Young makes this explicit: “For many women as they move in sport, a space surrounds us in imagination that we are not free to move beyond; the space available to our movement is a constricted space” (my emphasis 2005a, p. 33). Yet the space of my little volleyball players, feet rooted to the floor, was not really restricted in any way. I had no doubt at all that they were physically capable of getting to the ball. But neither were they “making up” the restriction; it bound them physically.8 Today, perhaps even more than in 1977, woman-imagined-as-object literally saturates our social world and demands the same habitual self-reference or self-objectification as it did at the time of Young’s essay. The feminine imaginary domain is both related to and distinct from that common condition which requires all persons to recognize themselves as existing in a reversible relation with others, as the seer who is also seen, the toucher who is also touched. As a preliminary definition, we might say that the feminine imaginary domain is that materially and socially constituted matrix of meanings that keys into and animates the imagination of those who would be women, and demands engagement as a condition for the very possibility of assuming such an identity. Though it is of course the case that there is a masculine imaginary domain that demands such engagement of those who would be men as well, it is even more certain that the meanings that circulate in the two domains are not the same. These meanings are neither singular nor unconstrainedly plural, neither fixed nor arbitrary; neither wholly determined nor simply contingent; neither mandated with pure success, nor voluntary.

Imaginary Commitments: Social Theory, Psychoanalysis, and Phenomenology This preliminary descriptive encounter with the imaginary domain of gender isn’t yet the account of gender as an aesthetic relation between lived experience and social structure that Young’s work points toward. How is it that deeply held personal commitments are put to work in the factory of structural injustice? After providing a description of such commitments, I draw on three distinct

7 It seems to me that for those that resist more than affirm femininity as prescribed to women, it is precisely this co-authorship that is refused. 8 But to say that modalities of feminine body experience rely on structures that are constituted in the imaginary domain is not to say that they are not rooted in the material realities of women’s situation. For many girls an extensive process of re-habituation through continued practice is the only thing that is effective against such imaginary barriers.

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traditions—social theory, psychoanalysis, and phenomenology—to begin to fill out an account of gender as an aesthetic relation between the subject and her social world. When we think of gender as structural injustice, we are hard-pressed to give an account of why it is that the identities “man” and “woman” inspire such deep-seated and personal loyalties in most of us. I have in mind the continued visceral efficacy of gender slander in the lives of children and adults alike, so that calling a boy or man a “bitch” or “pussy” or “fag” or “little girl” still seems to inspire a deep fear of nonexistence that is constitutive of the experience of coming to manhood for so many. Such misattributions need not be intentional to evoke a powerful response. This phenomenon is often described and has, to choose the most extreme example, been key to the actual legal use of, and also analyses of, what is called the “homosexual panic defense.” Here men have defended themselves against charges of hate-crimes against gay men, who supposedly flirted with or propositioned them, by arguing that their sense of their own gender identity was so severely threatened by the sexual attentions of another man that the ensuing violence was, psychologically considered from the perspective of the perpetrator, self-defense. These examples show that the lived experience of gender involves commitment, loyalties, even terror. Yet if gender is structural injustice, as Young insists, feminists need to be able to articulate the relation and process between macrostructures of gender and lived experiences of gender such as these. My claim is that these relations and processes belong to the imaginary domain, which is, like other aspects of our lives, saturated with gendered meanings that function precisely to inspire such life-or-death loyalty. Two social theorists, Benedict Anderson and Charles Taylor, have raised just such life-or-death questions in regards to other sorts of loyalty. Anderson (1983) attempted to understand nationalism as a kind of viscerally lived commitment animated by “an imagined community.” Taylor (2004) expanded Anderson’s notion to talk about other kinds of commitments animated by a more generally conceived “social imaginary.” In Anderson’s classic definition of the nation as an “imagined political community” (1983, p. 15), he sets out to explain how notions such as nation and nationality “command such profound emotional legitimacy” (pp. 13–14), why “these particular cultural artifacts have aroused such deep attachments” (p. 14). Communities are distinguished by “the style in which they are imagined” (1983, p. 15). He does not mean that nations are mere fictions, but rather that nationalism and national identity depend on a process of imagining and creating that also obfuscates actual structural inequalities. “The nation is always conceived as a deep horizontal comradeship,” he argues, “a fraternity” (p. 16). “Ultimately,” Anderson claims, “it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die,” in the interest of nationalism (p. 16).

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Taylor’s “social imaginary” expands Anderson’s work on the nation to include other kinds of imaginary formations which mobilize broad social meanings. These meanings are carried in stories, images, and legends (2004, p. 106). This “largely unstructured and inarticulate understanding” (p. 106) is how we make sense of the practices of our society. The social imaginary denotes “something much broader and deeper than the intellectual schemas people may entertain . . . I am thinking rather of the ways in which people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations” (p. 106). The social imaginary is responsible for a widely shared sense of legitimacy that makes our common practices possible. It gives us an “implicit grasp of social space,” which allows us to orient ourselves in the social world without consulting a map or rulebook (p. 26). While Taylor calls the social imaginary “an inarticulate understanding,” I’d like to suggest that it is not yet an understanding at all, but rather a deeply felt sense of legitimacy, normalcy, rightness and their correlates, illegitimacy, abnormality, wrongness—broadly, but not monolithically or seamlessly, shared. Taylor is interested in the sense of moral order that emerges in the social imaginary in modernity, while I am interested in the sense of sexual order that animates our social lives. This felt sense is the seat of more or less deeply held commitments that legitimate themselves through stories, images, and everyday interactions. They also legitimate, too often, the structural injustice that is gender, in which they arise and are situated. The social imaginary that does this work does not do it in a distant, impersonal way. It relentlessly animates deeply personal aspects of lived experience, which are, in turn, the seat of its power. To say how this “animation” occurs is another matter. By posing the question, we have already, in some sense, stepped out of the domain of social theory and into that of psychoanalysis. Particularly, we find ourselves asking a familiar Lacanian question: what are the processes by which a relationship is cemented between the inner world and the surrounding world, such that the very identity of the individual is at stake in that relation? This was the question Lacan posed in his 1949 address on the “mirror stage” of human development. For Lacan there is no identity prior to the emergence of an imaginary relation to a specular image. He argues that the infant, beginning as early as 6 months of age, enters the “mirror stage” of development when she catches sight of her image in the mirror and becomes fascinated by this. This experience “situates the agency known as the ego, prior to its social determination, in a fictional direction” (Lacan 1996 p. 76). She misrecognizes herself in the image. The moment of a splitting that ensues becomes decisive for the formation of the subject. The baby in the mirror experiences himself from the inside as a chaotic and fragmented existence, animated by “turbulent movements” (p. 76).

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Seen from the outside he is something else entirely. Before him in the mirror is a wonderfully autonomous creature. But this is a familiar story by now. What I want to stress here is that the infant is not only recognizing (misrecognizing) herself in the mirror, she is also making a commitment. The advent of identity occurs in an imaginary formation forged in the act of commitment that, if spoken, would take the form of an impassioned declaration: “That is me!” This conviction will need to be repeated, will require frequent reiteration in fact, and each reiteration is a renewal of loyalty against a backdrop of betrayal: the body continues for some time to be chaotic and uncontrolled, helplessly weak and dependent, at the mercy of others for even the most basic needs. Her loyalty is passionate, not only in what it affirms, but in what it expels as well; those fragmented, vulnerable, chaotic nursling movements.9 For Lacan, gender comes afterwards. On the scaffolding that is put in place during the mirror stage, the Oedipus complex builds its sexual identifications. These secondary identifications, too, are forged in the fires of a conflagration of desire and betrayal. They, too, have their moments of advent in acts of commitment which are aesthetic in the sense that I use the term here: entangled with perception, affective and sensual, rooted in the kinesthesia of the body. A feminist account will insist on politicizing Lacan, recognizing that the singular image the baby confronts in the mirror will be followed over the course of a lifetime by millions of images. They will confront the subject in the marketplace; in the eyes of those she respects, despises, or loves; in the claims made on her by her womanhood, her race, her class, and her nation; in the situations carved out for her by structural injustice. The phenomenologists will insist on this recognition: She acts as a singular and unique existence, and her action will come to characterize her in ways that are particularly hers, called “style.” She will develop her own style of being a woman, for example, that will be hers alone and yet collectively shared at least to the extent that others (usually) will readily identify her as such. One collectivity will be marked by others, race, religion, or profession, which she will also commit to or refuse in her own way. This is to say that the claims of such collectivities will be singularly lived, and that this singularity will not reduce in the least the force of these claims as collective. Style is gesture from the inside, as lived by the subject, and style is gesture from the outside as perceived by others.10 Gesture is, in fact, the gateway between my lived cenesthesia and your perception of me. Singer writes, “style emerges from and appears as

9 “The Urbild of this formation is alienating . . . by virtue of its capacity to render extraneous” (Boothby 1991, p. 58), but it is this capacity to keep the extraneous expelled that enables action that “mobilizes the most primitive forms of intentionality” (Boothby, 1991, p. 65). 10 Singer tells us that the body “radiates significance” through style. For Merleau-Ponty, the “lived body is unified in its style.” “I . . . have received with existence a manner of existing, a style. All my actions and thoughts stand in relation to this structure” (p. 455).

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an expressive gesture, which is an extension of the body’s basic capacities to intentionally intertwine with the world” (Singer 1993, p. 238). We learn from our discussions of the “imagined community,” the “imago” and “style” that the imaginary domain is a space of seduction and response. It collects and pools passionate investments in certain places, around certain themes. A feminist reading will insist that the energies that are put into play in this process of seduction (which the psychoanalysts call instinctual but we prefer to call passions, commitments, loyalties) are prepared for social usage.11 Here we can make sense of a phenomenon like gender panic, in which the passions which gather around the ideational element of our social world called “gender” are threatened with unbinding or dissolution. Gender is at the heart of all such passions, not as an impersonal structure of inequality or injustice, but as one of the structures of my enmeshment in the world. My most passionate identity commitments arise in the first place in the interface with the world—which is to say, in the body. A phenomenology like Young’s discloses structural injustice when it explores female body experience, whether or not this disclosure is explicit, because such injustice is parasitic on the imaginary domain. Just as the most successful parasite alters its host’s biology to make its own stay more comfortable, structural injustice alters the imaginary domain by feeding on it, often implanting just what it needs to nourish itself there. If phenomenological accounts of female body experience have contributed at times to a subjectivism that makes us inarticulate in the face of structural injustice, we have not practiced phenomenology rigorously enough. Beauvoir realized that in order to give an account of herself she had to begin by saying “I am a woman”—and was catapulted into a socially engaged phenomenology of oppression. Those of us who would continue her work can only do so if our descriptions of female body experience and subjectivity move us to account for the structure of their emergence. Young’s essays on female body experience came first, after Beauvoir, in providing such an account. For Young, the concrete situation she called, along with Beauvoir, “femininity” both feeds on and produces an imaginary domain which seduces the subject, and keys her into the social world. As she has shown, the seductions of this domain are powerful enough to erect imaginary walls that delineate spatial experience, reverse motion, and turn the kinesthesia of a body-subject into that of a body-object. The passions that gather around gender make it incongruous to talk about gender as structural injustice, in the impersonal sense that Young advocates in her late essay. Instead, gender is one of those structures that personalizes such

11 I am both following and distorting Boothby’s claim that “Binding appears to be the process by which psychic energy becomes definitely attached to specific mental representations. The function of such binding of energy with definite ideational elements is presumably to prepare instinctual energies for controlled discharge (1991, p. 82).

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injustice in the most radical sense, by entangling it with the very processes associated with the advent of the self. Because identity emerges amidst desire and betrayal, between the body-subject and the body-object, and because it continues to be seduced by the imagos of a culture obsessed with dichotomous sexual difference, gender will tend to be lived as a matter of life and death. Such passionate commitments will be reanimated in the social imaginary under particular historical situations, when a nation needs soldiers, or mothers, for example, in service to a cause. Only by understanding the depths of the aesthetic relation that keys the individual into various collectivities, will we begin to give an account of what structural injustice means, rather than just how it functions. By disclosing the feminine imaginary domain, Young didn’t distract us from the project of thinking structural injustice, she led us into it.

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PART III

THEORIZING THE STATE: METHOD, VIOLENCE, AND RESISTANCE

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L’Imagination au pouvoir: Comparing John Rawls’s Method of Ideal Theory with Iris Marion Young’s Method of Critical Theory Alison M. Jaggar After Iris Marion Young’s untimely death, celebrations of her life and work were organized by many philosophical communities of which she had been a beloved member. At one celebration, organized by the Radical Philosophy Association in November 2006, Kevin Graham observed that Young had come of age in the philosophical world that Rawls had built but that her work had transformed Rawls’s world. In this paper, I suggest that Young’s transformative contributions were made possible—though certainly not guaranteed—by her method of critical theory.

Rawls’s Method of Ideal Theory The 1971 publication of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice revived normative political philosophy after a period in which it had been declared dead. In his landmark work, Rawls utilized a philosophical approach that he called ideal theory. His theory not only advocated certain political ideals, as normative political philosophy always does; it was also ideal in several interrelated methodological senses. I will identify three of these senses, although I think that when Rawls speaks of ideal theory he has in mind mainly the last sense. First, Rawls took his primary philosophical task as that of developing prescriptive principles of justice able to serve as a “standard” for assessing the basic

My thinking on this topic has been clarified by discussions with Hye-Ryoung Kang and with audiences at the University of Colorado Center for Values and Social Policy and at the biennial conference of the association for Feminist Ethics and Social Theory (FEAST).

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structures of existing societies. Rawls’s assertion that “the nature and aims of a perfectly just society is the fundamental part of the theory of justice” lends itself to the idea that philosophical reflection on real world injustices takes the form of “applying” general principles to particular perceived wrongs (Rawls 1971, p. 9). Rawls certainly does not say that practice can be deduced from principle; indeed, his method of reflective equilibrium, which tests the adequacy of general principles by reference to their practical implications, denies the primacy of principle over practice. Nevertheless, the philosophical priority that Rawls gives to articulating general principles suggests that ideal precedes nonideal in the sense that particular injustices can be properly recognized only in the light of a comprehensive conception of justice. Rawls’s methodological approach is also ideal in the sense that he argues from a hypothetical reasoning situation, which he calls the original position. In this fictional situation, the reasoners or “parties” are imagined to be free, equal, and motivated exclusively by rational self-interest. Their reflections occur behind a “veil of ignorance,” which limits their information about the future society they are planning and deprives them of all knowledge about their own positions in that society. The original position is intended to ensure that the parties reason impartially and that the obligations they undertake may be thought of as self-imposed or autonomously assumed. In A Theory of Justice, Rawls asserts that the original position provides “a conception that enables us to envision our objective from afar,” (Rawls 1971, p. 22), setting up “an Archimedean point for judging the basic structure of society” (Rawls 1971, p. 584). Thus, just as Rawls’s principles of justice are intended to provide an ideal standard against which the justice of real world institutions may be measured, so original position reasoning is intended to provide an ideal standard of reasoning against which to measure real world reasoning. Finally, Rawls’s methodological approach is ideal in the sense that his principles of justice are designed for “a well-ordered society.” Like the original position, a well-ordered society is a philosophical fiction characterized in terms of a number of idealizing assumptions that bracket various problematic aspects of the real world. For Rawls, “A society is well-ordered when it is not only designed to advance the good of its members but when it is also effectively regulated by a public conception of justice. That is, it is a society in which (1) everyone accepts and knows that the others accept the same principles of justice, and (2) the basic social institutions generally satisfy and are generally known to satisfy these principles” (Rawls 1971, pp. 4–5). Moreover, “(e)veryone is presumed to act justly and to do his (sic) part in upholding just institutions” (Rawls 1971, p. 8). Rawls also postulates, again counterfactually, a society “conceived as a closed system isolated from other societies” (Rawls 1971, p. 8). Rawls is in no doubt that the real world diverges from his imagined world in significant ways. He acknowledges that “Existing societies are . . . seldom well-ordered” (Rawls 1971, p. 5) and he also recognizes that “the problems of partial compliance theory are the pressing and urgent matters. These are the things that we are faced with in everyday

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life” (Rawls 1971, pp. 8–9). However, he asserts, “The reason for beginning with ideal theory is that it provides, I believe, the only basis for the systematic grasp of these more pressing problems” (Rawls 1971, p. 9).

Young’s Method of Critical Theory Young’s overall philosophical project, like Rawls’s, is to provide overarching normative ideals capable of clarifying specific injustices and shaping the design of real-world institutions. Like Rawls, she rejects particularism, which eschews all general principles. Unlike Rawls, however, Young does not aim to develop a theory of justice that “both stands independent of a given social context and yet measures its justice” (Young 1990a, p. 4). In Young’s view, if a theory were truly universal and freestanding, it would be too abstract to be useful in evaluating actual institutions and practices. Thus, Young refuses Rawls’s aspiration, in his earlier work, to develop a theory of justice that is analogous to a scientific theory. She aims instead for a critical conception of justice. “Critical theory rejects as illusory the effort to construct a universal normative system insulated from a particular society.” Instead, it is “a normative reflection that is historically and socially contextualized” (Young 1990a, p. 5). As Young later expresses it, the goal of the political philosopher is to articulate “normative ideals and moral arguments intended both to reveal moral deficiencies in contemporary . . . societies and at the same time to envision transformative possibilities in those societies” (Young 2000, pp. 8–9). So on Young’s view, the political ideals developed by philosophers should not be imagined to be universally applicable but instead should be tailored to specific social contexts. Because ideal and critical theorists of justice conceive their philosophical projects differently, so their methods differ. Rather than reflecting on “the nature and aims of a perfectly just society,” the critical theorist reflects “on existing social relations and processes to identify what we experience as valuable in them, but as present only intermittently, partially, or potentially” (Young 2000, p. 10). Although Young does not explicitly characterize her method as “nonideal,” it diverges from all three ideal aspects of Rawls’s method. First, Young does not begin with a comprehensive normative vision offered as a standard for recognizing particular injustices. Instead, and following the example of thinkers as diverse as Karl Marx and Karl Popper, she begins by reflecting on particular injustices. It would be wrong to read this difference between Rawls and Young as a sharp contrast between methods that are, respectively, deductive and inductive; neither philosopher’s approach is exclusively deductive or exclusively inductive because both use the method of reflective equilibrium. Instead, this first methodological contrast between Rawls and Young is better seen as a difference in philosophical priorities. Rawls focuses on developing a general ideal of justice, confident that it will illuminate particular injustices, though he says relatively little about these. Young begins with

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particular injustices and draws on her knowledge of these in developing her general ideals. Thus, Rawls’s method of argumentation tends to be top-down, in a logical sense, moving from general to particular; Young’s tends to move from particular to general and so, in a logical sense, to be bottom-up. A more clear-cut methodological contrast between Rawls and Young lies in their respective attitudes toward the moral reasoning of real people. We have seen that Rawls supports his principles of justice by reference to an imaginary reasoning process involving imaginary reasoners in an imaginary situation. It is important to notice that the reasoners, their situation, and their reasoning are not simply imagined or fictional; they are also idealized in the sense that they could never be replicated in the real world. The original position is not just hypothetical; it is impossible. However, because those whose thinking most closely approximates original position reasoning are an intellectual elite of philosophers, original position thinking might be thought of as top-down also in a sociological sense. Whereas Rawls constructs an elaborate philosophical fiction intended to transcend the partial and imperfect reasoning of situated individuals, Young’s books are full of references to the reasoning of real people in actual political struggles, people whose thinking is readily acknowledged to be partial and limited. She seeks “to express rigorously and reflectively some of the claims about justice and injustice implicit in the politics” of the United States new left social movements of the 1960s and 1970s and their contemporary successors (Young 1990a, p. 7). Thus Young does not abstract away from differences in individuals’ perspectives and motivations; instead she pays attention to them. She treats human difference not as an epistemic disability but rather as an epistemic resource. Finally, Young’s philosophical ideals are designed not for a nonexistent and even impossible world but rather for the real world of structural inequality and cultural exclusion. Although Young makes simplifying assumptions, as all theorists must do, she does not postulate counterfactual and even impossible conditions or bracket empirical information that she regards as relevant to injustice. She thinks about justice for a world in which coercion, threats, and structural inequalities are the norm rather than the exception (Young 2000, p. 17). To sum up, Young develops her political ideals not by imagining what nonhuman—even inhuman—beings in an impossible situation might recommend for a world that could never exist. Instead, she reflects on what is actually valued by real people struggling with specific existing injustices.

Some Advantages of Young’s Critical Method Just as the proof of a pudding is in its eating, so the value of a philosophical method is assessed by the value of the philosophy that it enables us to produce. Philosophical methods are good if and only if they enable us to do good philosophy.

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How can we determine which philosophy is good? People disagree about the merits of conceptions of justice even more passionately than they disagree about the merits of theories in many other fields. Nevertheless, it is possible to identify some nonarbitrary and substantively neutral conditions that any good account of justice must meet. In addition to internal consistency, which is a necessary condition for all rational theories, the conditions I have in mind are comprehensiveness, relevance, and substantive acceptability. I do not suggest that this list is complete, so that together the conditions are sufficient for theoretical adequacy, nor am I sure that the conditions are completely independent of each other. However, I do think that these minimum conditions must be met by any conception of justice that purports to provide guidance for the real world. I do not attempt here to assess thoroughly how far Rawls’s and Young’s respective accounts of justice meet these conditions, but I will offer some examples of how such an assessment might be undertaken. When I speak of an account’s comprehensiveness, I refer to its relative success in explaining the available data. Of course, no theoretical account explains all data. Moreover, theories themselves partially determine the data that need to be explained, and what counts as a good explanation is contestable. This is true in all fields but especially in ethics and politics. Nevertheless, many people would agree that Young’s account of justice is more comprehensive than Rawls’s. For instance, Young directly challenges the limits of Rawls’s distributive paradigm of justice, pointing to the need to challenge additionally issues of decision-making powers and procedures, divisions of labor, and culture. Moreover, Young’s account of the five faces of oppression covers many issues of justice beyond the economic distribution on which Rawls focuses (Young 1990a, p. 40). When I speak of a conception of justice being relevant, I refer to that conception’s ability to address the most significant issues of justice facing a given society. A number of critics have noted that Rawls’s theory of justice neglects many urgent contemporary problems. For instance, Charles Mills observes that direct consideration of racial justice is “endlessly deferred” by Rawls and his followers, who fail to acknowledge that they are “living in one of the most race-conscious societies in the world, with a history of hundreds of years of white supremacy” (Mills 2004, pp. 177, 198). In addition to neglecting some issues, Rawls deliberately deprives his theory of the conceptual resources necessary to address others. For instance, by conceiving societies as closed and isolated systems, Rawls constructs a theory that not only fails to illuminate issues such as justice for immigrants but is actually incapable of doing so. By contrast, Young, who defines justice in terms of the institutional conditions necessary for individuals to develop and exercise their capacities and participate in determining their action and the conditions of their action, addresses many important contemporary concerns of oppression and domination (Young 1990a, p. 37). For instance, Young addresses exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence. In

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her last work, she addressed consumers’ political responsibility for the foreign sweatshop conditions in which many of their products were manufactured. Thus, Young’s work is far more relevant than Rawls’s to many pressing injustices. The greater relevance of Young’s account may well be connected with its greater comprehensiveness. Last and most important, normative philosophical accounts must be substantively acceptable. A good conception of justice should not obscure or rationalize significant injustices, just as a good conception of democracy should not obscure or rationalize significant political exclusions. Among other problematic features, Rawls’s theory of justice is vulnerable to serious feminist criticism. For instance, Susan Okin has argued that Rawls does not simply ignore but even rationalizes gendered injustice in the family and Eva Kittay has argued that he not simply ignores but even rationalizes injustice to dependents and dependency workers. (Okin 1989; Kittay 1999) Young’s conception of justice may well be inadequate in some respects but at least it does not rationalize these gendered injustices. These brief comments certainly do not provide a thorough assessment of the respective merits of Rawls’s and Young’s theories of justice but I hope they show how Young’s work is at least arguably more comprehensive, relevant, and normatively acceptable than Rawls’s. If this is so, then it likely offers better political guidance in the real world characterized by deep structural injustices, including racism, imperialism, and male dominance. One reason why Young seems better able than Rawls to address real people’s concerns about real injustices may be that she uses the method of critical theory rather than ideal theory. Once these two methods are unpacked and compared, it seems to stand to reason that critical method is likely to produce more reliable conclusions. As some critics have noted, the methodological device of the original position simply provides an illusion of dialogue concealing reasoning that is essentially monological, even though multiple heads are usually better than one (Benhabib 1992; Jaggar 1993). As for Rawls’s counterfactual assumptions, Charles Mills has observed dryly that it is not at all clear why ignoring facts about real-world injustices should be thought helpful in developing a prescriptive theory of justice for an attainable future (Mills 2004). As Young deploys her method of critical theory, she demonstrates how philosophers with partial knowledge and limited capacities may nevertheless engage in useful philosophical reflection about justice in a world that at present is still discouragingly unjust.

The Limits of Method or “L’imagination au pouvoir” Although Young’s use of a critical nonidealizing method helps in understanding her ability to make powerful philosophical contributions, it certainly does

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not provide a full explanation. Philosophical methods are not decision procedures that guarantee correct outcomes; instead, they are hand tools that are only as good as the people who use them. Many political philosophers relying on a supposedly critical method have produced deeply problematic theories— just as supposedly scientific methods have often been invoked to produce conclusions that are quite mistaken. An additional factor enabling Young’s philosophical contributions may well have been her experience as a woman in a world of male dominance and in a discipline where women’s voices have been generally muted. “Actually existing” philosophers are neither disembodied nor dislocated, although many have devised ingenious strategies for disguising the particular perspectives from which they speak. For instance, philosophers have pretended to occupy an Archimedean point, to take the perspective of an ideal observer or an archangel, to regard the world from nowhere or everywhere, even to take a god’s eye view (Walker 1998). Young rejected such pretensions. She asserted that “the social critic is engaged in and committed to the society he or she criticizes. She did not take a detached point of view toward the society and its institutions, though she does stand apart from its ruling powers” (Young 1990a, p. 6). Young was explicit that, for her as for other philosophers, her own particular but socially conditioned experiences affected which philosophical topics she chose to address and the way she chose to treat them. Yet even though philosophical insight may be facilitated by using an appropriate method and occupying a particular social location, in the end neither of these is either necessary or sufficient. Many women scholars never notice male bias in the philosophical canon or prejudice in academic life—and increasing numbers of men are able to recognize these. Young was a woman but she was also white, heterosexual, and American—and she still produced insightful analyses of racism, heterosexism, and imperialism. Since most philosophers are privileged in a variety of ways, it is encouraging to have evidence that injustices can be recognized even by those who do not endure them personally. However, just as the existence of injustice is unlikely to be recognized by those who lack compassion, so remedies for injustice are unlikely to be envisioned by those who lack imagination.1 As Young asserts, “Imagination is the faculty of transforming the experience of what is into a projection of what could be, the faculty that frees thought to form ideals and norms” (Young 1990a, p. 6). When we realize how much of Young’s philosophical contribution was possible only because of her compassion for those suffering injustice, coupled with her soaring imagination, it is even more heartbreaking to remember the irreplaceable individual we have loved and lost.

1 The slogan “l’imagination au pouvoir” (all power to the imagination) was scrawled on the walls of Paris during the uprising of May 1968, and became an emblem of the European new left.

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Between Democracy and Violence and the Problem of Military Humanitarian Interventions Bat-Ami Bar On In “Power, Violence, and Legitimacy: A Reading of Hannah Arendt in an Age of Police Brutality and Humanitarian Intervention,” Iris Marion Young notes that in 1999, while completing Inclusion and Democracy, she was unable to continue her work on the book since “[w]ith NATO bombs raining on Yugoslavia, reflection on the essentially nonviolent values of democracy felt irrelevant at best and arrogantly privileged at worst” (Young 2007 p. 79). Young then turned to think about violence and wrote “Power, Violence and Legitimacy” (2001, republished in 2007). Young devoted some of her time to thinking about violence again after the Al-Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001 on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the George W. Bush administration’s quick response with a declaration of a “War on Terror.” She did so in two essays, “Envisioning a Global Rule of Law,” which she coauthored with Daniele Archibugi (2002, republished in 2007), and “The Logic of Masculinist Protection: Reflections on the Current Security State” (2003, republished in 2007). What all three essays share is a very critical view of what Young comes to call “official violence”—the violence “perpetrated by agents of the state as means to achieve their mission of law enforcement” (2007, p. 95) either domestically or internationally—and of the rhetoric that is deployed to mobilize support for official violence. The criticism, Young points out, is motivated by a “hope for a regime of perpetual peace” (2007, p. 3) that Young believes must never be abandoned, a hope that given Young’s commitments and other work, I read as one for a global version of a socioeconomically just liberal-democracy with accountable transnational institutions and an active public sphere.

I am grateful to Lisa Tessman, Ann Ferguson, and Mecke Nagel for their helpful comments on this essay.

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I think that Young’s criticisms of “official violence” are insightful and cohere with similar criticisms developed on the Left. But, I also think that Young does not offer a way to think productively about violence when it may be a justifiable means to acceptable ends as in the case of some military humanitarian interventions.1 In order to both bring out the value of Young’s insights and examine the problems with her approach, I first offer an analysis of Young’s three essays on violence that brings out the main lines of her position. I follow this analysis with a comparison between Young and Jürgen Habermas. Like Young, Habermas is committed to the possibility of “perpetual peace” and understands it along similar lines. But, while like Young, Habermas is critical of the United States’ militarized “war on terror,” unlike Young Habermas supported the military humanitarian intervention in the former Yugoslavia. I discuss this difference, which, I believe, helps clarify some of the utopian aspects of Young’s position. Young’s position, though, can be modified and I end by building on Young’s insights and modifying them in light of the comparison with Habermas to offer a more productive view of the possibility of a justifiable kind of violence that Habermas recognizes.

Young on Violence (and Arendt) Young was a democratic theorist and not a political theorist of violence. In this respect she was not very different from many political theorists, which she herself notes in agreement with observations that Hannah Arendt made about forty years earlier in On Violence, which is that most political theorists “have neglected systematic reflections on violence in public affairs” (Young 2007, p. 80).2 Young turned to thinking about violence in public affairs when she felt compelled to respond to current violent events and the suffering accompanying them since they were interfering with her thinking about democracy. When she began to theorize about current violent events, Young consulted Arendt’s On Violence (1969)3 along with a few additional texts by Arendt that helped her clarify some of Arendt’s claims with regard to violence. What Young finds useful in On Violence is the Arendtian distinction between violence and power. While suggesting that Arendt’s claims with regards to both violence and power are abstract and obscure, Young nonetheless determines

1 I am using the phrase “military humanitarian intervention” for the sake of precision. I do not mean for “military” to be strongly associated with the “state” but rather to a wide variety of organized armed forces whose tasks can go beyond the immediate threat and use of violence. I do mean for “humanitarian” to reflect a claimed justificatory connection to a humanitarian crisis that is understood roughly in terms of violations of human rights. 2 I am not sure why, but Young does not explicitly include herself among the majority of political theorists who have not been reflecting on violence since Arendt. 3 Young invokes some of the criticisms of Arendt as an “arrogant conservative” (Young 2007a, p. 81) but seems to believe that Arendt’s insights are not contaminated by either her “arrogance” or her “conservatism.”

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that there is enough in On Violence to hold on to for her own purposes. Of special importance to her is Arendt’s rejection of a common belief among political theorists that “violence is the basis of power” (Young 2007, p. 93). This belief, Arendt suggests and Young concurs, presupposes an understanding of political power as “the rule of some over others, the exercise of command and successful obedience” (p. 85). This understanding of political power is undemocratic. It disregards the free and reciprocal assent to rule by those ruled, which can be interpreted in participatory terms. Interpreted in this way, it is a cornerstone of the modern understanding of the very concept of democracy and one that Young takes very seriously.4 The attractiveness of Arendt’s conceptualization of power to Young follows from the fact that Arendt offers an alternative that attempts to capture the importance of people coming together in order to act politically as the source of political power. The Arendtian conception of political power coheres much better with democratic ideals. According to Young, Arendt, recognizing that political power conceived as she suggests is fleeting and unstable, looks to the covenantal founding of democratic political institutions as the means to stabilize power over time. The look at covenantal founding is a “backward” look. And Young suggests that this is the best way to understand Arendt’s differentiation between the justification of violence and legitimation of power. The legitimation of power is “backward looking” since it must refer to “founding promises” and necessarily “involves the renewal of the power that came to play in the original process” (Young 2007, p. 93). In the United States, for example, legitimation may involve an appeal to founding and canonized documents such as the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution since they are associated with “founding promises.” It may, in addition, involve an attempt to clarify an intent at the time of founding that relies on other documents, such as correspondence among or the journals of those involved in the founding. And, because legitimation, even though backwards looking, has a bearing on the present and the futures that might issue from it, it may also involve questions about the currency of the founding documents and the possible intent of those involved in the founding, for the present and the future.5 Legitimation is profoundly different from justification. The need for justification arises when there is a suspicion regarding the value of an action. The value of any violent action is necessarily suspect because it is unavoidably destructive. Violent action is, therefore, in need of justification. The justification of violent action is “forward looking,” due to “the instrumental character of violence” (Young 2007, p. 94). Young emphasizes, after Arendt, an aspect of the justification of violence that is very significant to her own thinking about violence, which is that “each act of violence must be justified on its own, on a

4 Young develops a strong argument for maximizing participation in her work on democracy (2000). 5 A concrete example of work revolving around legitimation is the work of Arthur Schlesinger on the imperial presidency (2004).

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case by case basis” (p. 95). For Young, one of the most important implications of this is that threats and uses of violence by even a legitimate state appear legitimate since when threats or uses of violence are official, they are delivered by people who are authorized to make such threats or use the violence whose use is entrusted to them. And yet, these threats or uses of violence are questionable because they are threats and uses of violence and thus have to be justified on a case by case basis. The justification itself should not invoke legitimacy, for example, the legal authorization of this or that office or political body to use threats of or actual violence, but rather has to look at and analyze consequences, both those that might have already occurred as well as predictable ones. In many cases, according to Young, the justifications of threats and planned or already undertaken acts of violence fail. Young illustrates this with analyses of several cases of threats and uses of violence by legitimate enough states. They include police brutality in the United States, humanitarian interventions by Western coalitions, the United States-led “war on terror” in its military manifestation as wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, U.S. threats of war against a few other countries that are construed as supporters of terrorism such as Syria and Iran, and the United States’ tightening of internal security as part of the “war on terror,” which have led to its becoming more and more of a “security state.” Translating Arendt’s only guideline for the justification of violence as a “forward looking” consequentialist justification into a guideline regarding the relation of means and ends, Young questions the fitness of the two in each of the cases that she analyzes. According to her, the justification of the threats or uses of violence in each one of the cases does not succeed due to a lack of fitness between means and ends. The first case that Young analyzes is police brutality. It serves her as a paradigmatic case, in part because Arendt herself offers an analysis of police brutality in On Violence. Police brutality, according to Young, is not justifiable since the violence involved exceeds the level of coercion needed to assure that a legitimate legal order is maintained. Coercion, Young believes, “is an inevitable and proper aspect of legal regulation” but “successful coercion is usually more a result of power than violence” and where violence is resorted to, its scope must be limited and its effects must be “immediate and contained” and the harm it prevents must be “worse than the one inflicted” (Young 2007, p. 99). Limitations on the scope of violence, immediacy, and containment of effects, and the balancing of harms inflicted and harms prevented are common criteria for the assessment of violence. In her application Young, like Arendt, adheres to an established practice. What Young learns from Arendt that is different and adds to the mix is a sense that before one even moves to applying these criteria, one ought to examine whether there are not just any alternatives to violence but especially alternatives that may generate, renew, augment, or institutionally stabilize power and, thereby, reduce the need to resort to violence altogether.

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The consideration of alternatives to violence is part of the standard package of criteria used in the assessment of violence. In the case of self-defense, for example, before one examines the appropriateness of the specific use of violence and thus looks at the scope, immediacy, and extent of effects, as well as the balance of harms involved, one asks about the availability of alternatives to the deployment of violence. Whether the defender could escape without the use of violence, is, for example, a very standard question a defender is expected to ask. The same kind of question arises in the case of war where the query is about whether diplomatic efforts have been exhausted before a war is started and engaged in seriously. The Arendtian twist on this criterion that Young articulates even more clearly than Arendt and relies on herself offers a specific political interpretation of the alternatives and thus the question about the possibility that they serve to generate, renew, augment, or institutionally stabilize power. While not necessarily appropriate for individual cases of self-defense,6 the political understanding of the question of alternatives is appropriate for the kind of violence that is in question for Young, namely “official violence.” Young makes this very clear in her examination of NATO’s military humanitarian intervention in the former Yugoslavia as a means of enforcing the evolving human rights regime where she suggests that it calls attention to “impotence,” or as I prefer to think of it, “power deficit”7 in the international arena. And, though Young does not make connections between her Arendtian based theoretical reflection on violence in public affairs and her analyses of other cases of violence, her response to the militarized “war on terror” that has been engaged in by the United States in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001 can easily be read as suggesting that the United States did not consider at all the possibility of generating, renewing, augmenting, or stabilizing power at the international level as an alternative to war.8 Young’s analysis of the “security state,” which is the most directly femi9 nist of her analyses of specific cases of violence, can also be read through the lens of her Arendtian based theoretical reflection on violence though, as in the case of her analysis of the militarized “war on terror,” she herself did not situate the analysis in this way. However, since the analysis of the “security state”

6 If one situates self-defense politically, issues of power as an alternative to violence immediately come up. Thus, for example, one can suggest that the building of community relations and forms of responsibility among neighbors can reduce the opportunities for self-defense by creating power. 7 Young uses the term “impotence” (2007a, p. 103). The term “power deficit” is mine. I use it as a parallel to the term “democratic deficit” that is used by Chantal Mouffe (2000, 4) since I think that the two are related. Mouffe herself borrows the term from criticisms of the European Union that invoked it to call attention to questions of popular sovereignty and the equality of self-governing people. 8 One could read Young’s “Envisioning a global rule of law” (2007b) differently of course, and thus as basically repeating, reaffirming, and developing comments made about the “global rule of law” as an alternative to the militarized “war on terror” by many on the liberal-left and especially those with a cosmopolitan agenda such as David Held (2002). 9 I take Young as a feminist theoretician even when she does not attend to gender relations or invoke feminist analyses.

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enables Young to demonstrate how the “security state” undermines democratic politics and since such an undermining contributes to the production of a “power deficit,” the connections between her feminist analysis of the “security state” and her Arendtian based theoretical reflections on violence seem conceptually straight forward. Young’s analysis of the “security state” relies on early second wave feminist work in the United States that suggested that one of the sources of patriarchal power is a construction of gender that, by feminizing women in specific ways, also creates a need for their protection the tools for which, especially violence, are entrusted to men, and this forms an important factor in men’s masculinization. Using this analysis to offer a reading of Hobbes as arguing for the understanding and construction of the state as a vehicle for protection, Young suggests that the state is masculinized along similar lines that men are and that citizens are feminized along the same lines as women.10 The “security state” is according to this analysis a generalized form of a “male protection racket” that disempowers not only women but all of its citizens, a conclusion that Young believes can be empirically demonstrated by examining the internal transformation of the United States. Between the growths of secrecy in government, the passage of the “Patriot Act,” and the spying on citizens, Young asserts, the United States has moved a long way on the continuum toward its restructuring as a “security state” with a citizenry that is disempowered. According to Young, no alternatives that take into account this enormous cost to democracy with its far-reaching consequences to the legitimacy of the state have been seriously considered in the wake of September 11.

Engaging Habermas on Intervention (and Kant) Jürgen Habermas is less of a populist than Young and, as is implied by Young’s criticisms of some of his ideas, is somewhat less sensitive than she is to the political effects of socioeconomic disparities, let alone to his complicity in Eurocentricm (Young 2005). Still, Habermas, who is responsive to criticisms like Young’s, is no less concerned than Young with the political empowerment of people, as the demos or demoi of new political constellations.11 Like Young, he too has commented on NATO’s intervention in Yugoslavia in 1999 and later on the United States’ “war on terror” and its militarized manifestations, especially in the war in Iraq, which was initiated by the George W. Bush-led United States in 2003. Unlike Young, Habermas finds the two to be different from each other in some significant ways. 10 I find it interesting that while developing this part of her argument Young does not invoke socialistfeminist analyses of the state such as that of Carol Brown (1981) or Ann Ferguson (1989). 11 James Bohman’s work (2005) on the concept of the demos and its developments in Habermas and Habermasians clarifies the importance of the distinction between a “people” and the “demos” or “demoi.”

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In his 1999 “Bestiality and Humanity: A War on the Border between Legality and Morality,” Habermas cautiously yet unequivocally defends NATO’s intervention in Yugoslavia. NATO began bombing Serb targets on March 24, 1999 after the failure of the United States envoy, Richard Holbrooke’s, last visit to Belgrade, where he attempted to convince Slobodan Milosevic, President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, to agree to NATO’s terms with regard to Kosovo. NATO was ready to intervene in Kosovo since September 24, 1998 after the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1199 calling for cessation of hostilities on all sides. Hostilities did not stop and for the next six months NATO threatened the Serbs with intervention while the war between the Serbs and the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo was resulting in a humanitarian crisis as the Serbs engaged in ethnic cleansing, both massacring ethnic Albanians and expelling them from Kosovo. On March 15 the ethnic Albanians agreed to a ceasefire and autonomy within a confederation with the Serbs, which would be protected by NATO forces. On March 22 the Serbs escalated the war with the shelling of Pristina, Kosovo’s capital, from which later in March the Serbs expelled more than 100,000 people.12 NATO ended its bombing campaign on June 11, 1999. As of the time of this writing, NATO forces are still active in Kosovo, which declared its independence on February 17, 2008.13 Objections to NATO’s intervention in Kosovo were quite common, especially on the Left, which in the United States and elsewhere was and has tended to remain suspicious of NATO’s interventions anywhere as a possible cover for self-interested Western deployment of military forces intended, for example, to project force in order to secure the expropriation of other people’s resources. The Left has also been critical of the legality and morality of NATO’s action when taken as independent of possible machinations by the United States.14 Habermas attends to a specific version of the debates about Kosovo as they were developing in the Federal Republic of Germany, the parties to which he classifies as “pacifists by conviction” and “legal pacifists” (Habermas 1999, p. 264). According to Habermas, these debates resemble those elsewhere in West European countries and in some sense are internal to the Left since at stake in these debates is which version of the two main Leftist kinds of pacifisms should prevail in the international arena. German “pacifists by conviction” opposed NATO’s intervention in Kosovo on principle. German “legal pacifists” supported NATO’s intervention in Kosovo and the sending of German troops as part of a NATO force (KFOR)

12 The Serb attack on Pristina constituted an escalation in a war between Kosovar Albanians and Serbs that began with the growing Serb oppression of Kosovar Albanians in 1987. 13 Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia ending talks about its status that began in 2006. The UN Security Council is adjusting its presence in Kosovo to the facts on the ground. NATO’s Kosovo Force (KFOR) is still empowered by the UN to operate in Kosovo. 14 See Johnstone (2002, 2008) for a discussion of the United States and European stakes in Kosovo and from a different perspective that affirms questions of legality see Rodely and Çali (2007).

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to intervene in Kosovo.15 Habermas aligns himself with the “legal pacifists.” “Legal pacifism” is a position whose ancestry Habermas traces to Immanuel Kant and the project of “perpetual peace,” which, according to Habermas, Kant predicates on the legalization of international affairs. For Kant, the legalization in question is different from the one achieved by classical international law, which has left states in at least a semi if not total “state of nature” with respect to each other, hence in a perpetual state of war, which, if not actual, then is always around the corner and waiting to erupt.16 What the legalization of international affairs is supposed to achieve is the elimination of the international “state of nature” and the establishment of perpetual peace and, Habermas claims as a result, that the Kantian account of international law is intended to defend a cosmopolitan order that results from states coming together into a permanent federation. For Kant, Habermas believes, it is the coming together into a permanent affiliation that secures perpetual peace. Kant, according to Habermas, does not explain how the permanence of the federation of states on which perpetual peace depends, “can be guaranteed without the legally binding character of an institution analogous to a state constitution” (Habermas 1998, p. 169). He then moves to amend Kant and asserts that “cosmopolitan law must be institutionalized in such a way that it is binding on the individual governments” (1998, p. 179). For Habermas this ensures compliance with the agreements that states enter as they form a cosmopolitan order because with law comes the threat of sanctions. The UN Charter, Habermas suggests, exemplifies an agreement that at once forms a common organization of states, all agreeing to the outlawing of offensive violence and to law-bound imposition of sanctions, including, if needed, the initiation of military action, when the peace that the member states of the UN constitute with their agreement with each other is breached or even just threatened. Habermas amends Kant’s ideas in yet another way. Kant did not think of individuals as subjects of cosmopolitan law. According to Habermas, however, cosmopolitan law grants individuals an “unmediated membership in the association of free and equal world citizens” (1998, p. 181). The upshot of this is that individual rights get protected by cosmopolitan law, and Habermas again finds steps by the UN that exemplify at least a striving toward the goal of protecting individual human rights, such as the UN Charter’s imposition on member states to promote and respect human rights. 15 According to KFOR documents, in April 2008, 2374 German troops were serving as part of the KFOR multinational force. This is a considerably smaller number than that of KFOR German troops in 1999, which according to gobalsecurity.org was 8500. Globalsecurity.org notes that the 1999 Kosovar involvement of the German military was the first time after WWII that so many German troops were deployed outside of Germany. After 1999, Germany continued to send troops to act militarily outside Germany. Thus, German troops are part of the NATO forces in Afghanistan. Though the United States requested German troops for its 2003-led Iraq war, it was refused and there are no German troops in Iraq. 16 This is a Hobbesian reading. Habermas does, however, point out that Kant was a careful reader of Hobbes (Habermas 2004, 110).

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With his two amendments of Kant, Habermas revises and updates Kantian “legal pacifism” in such a way that it allows him to discriminate between kinds of military actions that are initiated by states that claim to act to protect the peace or on behalf of human rights. The United States-led 2003 invasion of Iraq fails to meet Habermas’s criteria while NATO’s military humanitarian intervention in Kosovo in 1999 meets them. Habermas is aware that the times are “transitional” and there is no “cosmopolitan order” proper since there are not enough agreements and not enough legislation that can be thought of as part of “cosmopolitan law” and there are only a handful of transnational institutions that fit together to form the needed institutional framework of a “cosmopolitan order.” The spottiness of the “cosmopolitan order” complicates the assessment of military actions independently of the rhetoric used to justify them. Nonetheless, Habermas claims, under the current conditions in which one has “to act as though there were already a fully institutionalized global civil society, the very promotion of which is the intention of the action” one is not forced “to accept the maxim that victims are to be left at the mercy of thugs” (1999, pp. 270–271). Invoking necessity in Kosovo due to the transformation of the local civil war into one in which ethnic cleansing is becoming common, Habermas asserts that “[w]hen nothing else is possible, neighboring democratic states should be allowed to rush to provide emergency help as legitimated by international law” (1999, p. 271). Habermas carefully warns against the generalization of NATO’s selfauthorization. Cases should be examined in their historical specificity. Whether or not one can invoke “necessity” to justify military action in other cases remains an open question. A historically specific analysis of Iraq in 2003 and the kind of threat it posed points out that the preponderance of the evidence suggests that the invocation of “necessity” fails in the case of Iraq. This is because in the case of Iraq, the United States has been playing the role of a hegemon as well as acting in violation of international law since “[t]here was neither an appropriate resolution of the Security Council, nor was an attack imminent on the part of Iraq” (Habermas 2004, p. 102).

Junctions and Distinctions Habermas’s and Young’s positions are not as far apart from each other as they may seem at first glance. They both set “perpetual peace” as their horizon. They are both cosmopolitan, at least in the sense that they both believe in the need for transnational cooperation, transnational institutions, and transnational law. They both also see some international treaties and institutions, such as the UN Charter and the UN as buds of a possible future cosmopolitan organization of the world’s peoples. All of this is important since it means that Young’s and Habermas’s sense of how nonideal the political environment

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within which violence is currently deployed in public affairs is similar, though the specific vocabularies that they use differ from each other. And yet, Young and Habermas disagree about NATO’s military humanitarian intervention in Kosovo. For me the importance of the disagreement is that it points at what I think are utopian elements in Young’s thinking. Young’s and Habermas’s disagreement concerns the justification of NATO’s intervention. Habermas appeals to “legal pacifism” as a realistic though still utopian possibility and so takes the lack of a properly functional “cosmopolitan order” seriously. For him there is a compelling need to act nonetheless and respond to a humanitarian crisis in Kosovo that, given Serbia’s conduct in Bosnia Herzegovina, could be expected to get worse, at the same time that one could not expect Serbia to respond to any sanctions that did not involve the deployment of violence. Young appeals primarily to the consequences of NATO’s military humanitarian intervention and finds them too costly in terms of human life and suffering, long-term damage to infrastructure, and environmental contamination. She concludes that, “despite its allegedly noble purposes . . . the NATO war was wrong” (2007, p. 104). Young’s opposition to NATO’s intervention in Kosovo involves suspicions of the kind that Habermas tries to displace by positioning NATO’s intervention in the context of a developing “cosmopolitan order.” But even if his move fails and her suspicion is warranted, there is still the question of a response to a developing humanitarian crisis—to what ought to be done when, to use Habermas’s phrase, “thugs” take over. Young’s appeal to only the consequences of NATO’s military humanitarian intervention is surprising when considering this question. She claims that she does so given what she learned from Arendt. But, she learned from Arendt to ask about alternatives to a turn to violence and ask about them in terms of their relation to power—its generation, renewal, augmentation, or institutional stabilization. Young does say that NATO’s turn to violence indicates an “impotence” or, to use my preferred expression, “power deficit” because power is effective on its own terms. What she does not do is ask whether in the situation that unfolded in Kosovo by 1999, it was possible for anyone to intervene nonviolently and effectively and generate the kind of power that would have successfully stopped the Serbs from continuing with their “ethnic cleansing.” I believe that were Young to have asked the question that she did not ask, she could not have condemned NATO’s military humanitarian intervention in Kosovo, though its costs were quite high. In part this is because there is a parallel between this question and the one Habermas poses since at issue for him is the quality of the response to a crisis and the learning that takes place when democracies come together to respond to a humanitarian crisis, a learning that he believes moves them one step closer to the kind of cooperation that marks a “cosmopolitan order.” Were Young to have asked the question her way, she would have had to return to Arendt and On Violence where Arendt

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endorses the use of violence when power is threatened by violence because Arendt recognized that power cannot resist violence but will be crushed by it. “Violence,” says Arendt, “can always destroy power” and “[i]n a head-on clash between violence and power, the outcome is hardly in doubt” (Arendt 1969, p. 53) More generally, Arendt endorses the use of violence against violence. Young is, of course, right, and Arendt’s endorsement is qualified and requires that one assess whether there are alternatives to, as well as ask about the scope and the consequences of, violence. Yet, Arendt does not exclude a turn to violence merely because the costs in life and suffering are high. Young could have asked the question equipped with her feminist analysis of protection. Was NATO’s military humanitarian intervention in Kosovo feminizing? Of course if the suspicion that NATO was the United States’ proxy is right, then Habermas too would have to object to it, even if not thinking like a feminist, since as a hegemon the United States is projecting force when offering protection and force-based protection can disempower those protected. But, the suspicion is wrong, at least in part. The United States is a declining hegemon and cannot cause NATO countries to simply implement its will. NATO could not have acted if NATO member countries did not agree to the action. All of the member countries are democracies where the action was debated openly. NATO’s action, in this respect, represents a deployment of violence by power that is justified by the compelling importance of intervening with violence and in Kosovo’s case, a violence of a particularly pernicious kind. Still, given Young’s analysis of the “security state,” and the threat of a generalized disempowering feminization, one cannot not wonder about the kind of protection that NATO could even offer via its military humanitarian intervention in Kosovo. As long as the “cosmopolitan order” that Habermas envisions is so spotty and as long as the transnational “impotence” or “power deficit” that Young is concerned with is extensive, no protective use of violence in the international arena, no matter how strong its justification, can be accepted without deep worries about its disempowering effects. I am, however, not sure that one could claim that NATO’s presence in Kosovo has had mostly disempowering effects. Indeed, at the face of it, given its many and quite different kinds of tasks since 1999, NATO’s presence in Kosovo seems to have had mostly positive effects. NATO, as I pointed out earlier, is still deployed in Kosovo. KFOR has 16,000 soldiers operating out of multiple bases and constituting the military/police force in Kosovo. But the projection of a credible threat of violence is not all that NATO does in Kosovo. As described by KFOR, KFOR tasks: have included assistance with the return or relocation of displaced persons and refugees; reconstruction and de-mining; medical assistance; security and public order; security of ethnic minorities; protection of patrimonial sites; border security; interdiction of

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KFOR tasks have this far remained unchanged by Kosovo’s declaration of independence in February 2008.

Cautious Justifications By including KFOR’s post-bombing presence in Kosovo as part of what I am taking as NATO’s military humanitarian intervention in Kosovo, I am creating the possibility of expanding on the consequences that are considered when analyzing the justificatory trajectory of a military humanitarian intervention. With Young and Habermas, I too believe that current military humanitarian interventions of the kind that took and are still taking place in Kosovo, occur in a nonideal world with a large international “power deficit” but, nonetheless, a world that is not merely in an anarchic “state of nature.” As imperfect as the UN, The African Union, Arab League, ASEAN, EU, NATO, The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and other regional governance and security organizations and their charters and treaties may be, and as imperfect as their members are, they offer a limited way to mount some military humanitarian interventions in some humanitarian crises. A military humanitarian intervention can be conceived very narrowly as beginning and ending with the actual uses of violence by the military forces engaging in the intervention in question. I am recommending a wider understanding that includes what a military does after its major direct uses of violence17 during a military humanitarian intervention. A military humanitarian intervention has a temporal dimension that stretches beyond the cessation of major violent action and could even be conceived as beginning before major violent action begins, say when the threat of a military humanitarian intervention becomes credible enough. 17 As loath as I am to use a phrase resembling President George W. Bush announcement about the end of “major hostilities” in Iraq in April 2003, whoever thought the phrase up was quite insightful, if what they aimed to capture is the simple fact on the ground that in the new conditions of war, at least for a while even a successful military is unable to bring to a complete cessation of violence.

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A wider understanding of what counts as a military humanitarian intervention means the conception of its consequences must change accordingly and such consequences go beyond the calculus of foreseeable suffering and harm that are prevented and caused when a major violent action takes place. This means that jus post bellum, postwar justice, is as important when considering a military humanitarian intervention as is jus ad bellum, the justice of engaging in war, and jus in bello, the justice of the conduct of a war. Concerns about jus post bellum have entered the discourse of just war of late, though as Brian Orend (2004) argues, Immanuel Kant had them in mind when writing Perpetual Peace. Orend also offers several jus post bellum principles that call for a fair and public settlement of violent conflicts, the vindication of violated rights, appropriate punishment of jus ad bellum, jus in bello, and rights violations, restitution, and rehabilitation (2002). What I think one can add to Orend’s list is a Young-inspired question about the extent to which the meeting of the principles he suggests also empowers in the strong Arendtian sense, thus a question about the generation, renewal, augmentation, and stabilization of people’s power, that Young relies on. Jus post bellum principles should be this demanding rather than minimalist in their interpretation. It is, I think, Young’s unique contribution to the discussion of military humanitarian intervention that she situates it squarely in relation to the Arendtian distinction between power and violence and so opens a space to rethink it in terms of a justificatory trajectory that includes questions about the relation of violence and power among the consequential considerations that are taken into account when assessing a military humanitarian intervention. As Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s work (2000, 2004) suggests, if one does not take the question of empowerment seriously, when approving of a military humanitarian intervention, one may be contributing to the formation of an imperial sovereignty that is maintained and expanded among other ways through apparently justifiable military humanitarian interventions.18 Imperial sovereignty is easily confused with cosmopolitan law and order. However, where cosmopolitan law and order, understood in Habermasian terms that are filtered through and modified by Arendtian-inspired Youngian terms, stabilize power, imperial law and order undermine it. Hardt and Negri are formulaically optimistic19, believing that because people are the source of their own power, they do and will continue to generate forms of power through their resistance to imperial sovereignty. Young too is optimistic but she is much more cautious than Hardt and Negri. For her resistance as such is not enough and the

18 I think Hardt and Negri oversimplify the current conjecture. However, their work is useful nonetheless since it provides a way to think about the abuses of “law and order” by authorities and elites beyond the national boundaries to which work on the United State’s imperial presidency (for example, Schlesinger 2004; Savage 2008) is confined. 19 I refer to Hardt and Negri’s optimism regarding people’s power as “formulaic” since it seems to reflect in very modified form the Marxist hopes for a proletariat revolution.

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mark of a democratic power generating resistance is the resistors taking of responsibility for justice. While I agree with her on this point, I also, unlike her, argue that sometimes military humanitarian interventions are required, as in the case of NATO and Yugoslavia, provided that there is jus post bellum in the military occupation that follows that allows citizens who resisted the former government a way to democratically empower themselves in the government which follows.

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Engendering [In]Security and Terror: On the “Protection Racket” of Security States Margaret Denike Animating Iris Marion Young’s writings on social justice are questions concerning power—questions such as what power is; what forms it takes; how it operates in different contexts; how it produces or modifies behaviors; how it works in ways that limit individuals’ actions and capacities; and generally, how it organizes the structural injustices lived by members of social groups in contemporary Western societies. They guide her critical assessment of mainstream concepts of injustice, and her efforts to sketch frameworks for social policy and law reform initiatives that such concepts inform. Collectively, her essays provide multifaceted theoretical frameworks and practical approaches to relations of power and justice that are invaluable as a resource for theories of sexual, racial, socioeconomic, and other forms of differentiation, discrimination, and domination, as well as for strategies of progressive social policy reform. Drawing on several writings that span her career, and focusing on her recent publications on the modalities of power that operate in post-9/11 “security states,”1 and particularly in the United States, this chapter elucidates her efforts to think of power relations as a matter of justice/injustice, formulated in terms of relations of domination and subordination, organized structurally and systematically in patterns that sustain normative relations and gender and other group-based hierarchies and systems of exclusion and marginalization. Specifically, I trace her interest in, and application of, what she refers to as Michel Foucault’s “paradigm shifting” accounts of productive and disciplinary power, that is, of the approach that

1 Young defines a “security state” as one “whose rulers subordinate citizens to ad hoc surveillance, search, or detention and suppress criticism of such arbitrary power, justifying such measures as within the prerogative of those authorities whose primary duty is to maintain security and protect the people” (2003, p. 8).

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has reverberated widely in feminist and queer theories on the nature of the normative—and especially heteronormative—institutional, disciplinary practices that engender the body’s movements, comportment, desires, and that shape, manage, and determine behavior in accordance with certain heterosexual norms. In the first part of this chapter, I trace Young’s similar considerations before exploring how these analyses play out in her later work on the institutions and public policies of states that talk incessantly about terror, that mobilize fear, that make monsters out of its alleged enemies, and that promise protection from the danger they create. For Young, these tactics of “masculinist protectionism” are heteronormative apparatuses that organize relations between men, women, and children; and among others, between docile patriots and imagined enemies. In reflecting on her analysis of the machinations of security states, such as these, I briefly consider its application to different moments and expressions of antiterrorist discourses and policies, dancing through contemporary scenes and attending to recursive effects of the proliferation of “terror” within them. To extend the reach of Young’s paradigm of the protectionist, disciplinary power of security states in these scenes, and to complicate an account of their effects, I draw on other cultural, legal, and policy analyses of terrorism discourses, and particularly that of Jasbir Puar (2007) on the racist, imperialist, Islamophobic, and “homonormative” (Duggan 2002, cited in Puar 2007, p. 21) demarcations of “terrorist assemblages.”

Moving Beyond the Distributive Paradigm Throughout her work, Young returns to Michel Foucault’s critical approach to technologies of modern disciplinary power, which inflect her concern with the restrictive ways that power is, and has been, theorized, be it in terms of distribution (Young 1990a) or as force/domination (Young 2003). Guiding such inquiries is a commitment to social justice and legal reform, and to formulating practical approaches and policy alternatives to identifying, articulating, and remedying the injustices that certain forms of power exacerbate. This entails exposing how we conceive of and metaphorize injustice—often as the acts of an individual perpetrator or as the unethical distribution of goods—impedes our ability to see the faces of oppression or get a sense of our complicity in producing them, much less find a way, through strategies of legal and policy reform, to advance social equality in a contemporary political climate and institutional context that has been eroding them. As Young argues in Justice and the Politics of Difference (1990a), the principles of justice that dominate contemporary political philosophy are typically

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construed within a “distributive paradigm,” which tends to dwell on the allocation and distribution of material goods and, in doing so, to reify the substantive elements of social justice and ignore the social and institutional contexts that determine the patterns and processes of distribution in the first instance (Young 1990a, p. 15). These institutional designs, we might add, are built on exclusions, such that the possessions and entitlements provided for some people at once legitimize the exclusion, marginalization, and expulsion of others, and notably, as I discuss below, sexual and racial minorities who are “disidentified” (Puar 2007) with nationhood and citizenship. We’ve seen this in Western imperialist states that are preoccupied with terror: with the pursuit of the security of some comes heightened racism, institutionalized racial profiling; heightened restrictions for immigrants and refugees; a proliferation of exceptional justifications for the use of military force; detainments and extraordinary renditions of “suspects”; and the suspension of human rights protections. To get at those contexts and conditions of the institutionalization of such patterns and their impact on the autonomy, opportunities, freedoms, and capacities of members of different social groups, distribution is not a useful starting point (Young 1990a, pp. 25–26). To capture the conditions and causes of social inequality, Young’s Justice and the Politics of Difference (1990a) gives us what amounts to a composite definition of power as relations of domination and subordination between agents and among actions (Wartenburg 1989), organized structurally and operating systemically (Hartsock 1983), through economic, social, and cultural institutions (Frye 1983) to form social hierarchies, or to exclude or constrain people— paradigmatically women—from making decisions or determining their own actions (Gould 1988), and expressed through exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence (Young 1990a). Moreover, power “circulates,” as Foucault characterized it, through a “productive network which runs through the whole social body,” constituting forms of knowledge, producing subjects and discourses, and inducing pleasure (Foucault 1980, p. 119; cited in Young 1990a). It is this productive, disciplinary apparatus of power that guides Young’s exposure of injustices of gender formations and hierarchies that are produced through the institutions and practices of security states, and in which “we” are often complicit. A decade later, in “Lived Body vs. Gender” ([2002] 2005a), with attention to “complicity” of different actors in producing relations of domination, Young further argues that a structural account of power is needed to explain what it is that effects different opportunities and privileges, when and where it turns on axes of gender, and “how and why certain patterns in the allocation of tasks or status recognition remain persistent in ways that limit the options of many women and most people whose sexual and intimate choices deviate from heterosexual norms” ([2002] 2005a, p. 22). She focuses this analysis on how the

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body “lives out” its positioning in social structures and hierarchies of power; how it lives the division of labor, relations of desire, norms of sexuality, and hierarchies of power ([2002] 2005a, pp. 25–26); and how and where it encounters differences in opportunities and access to resources. Such a framework and focal point bring into view the “institutional valuations” ([2002] 2005a, p. 24) that are reflected in and reinforced by discriminatory norms, laws, and policies that foster and privilege heterosexual relations through the allocation of obligations and entitlements, such as to insurance, inheritance, custody or access to children, or even citizenship, on the basis of marital status and/or sexual orientation. For Young, such measures condition heteronormative hierarchies of power that limit the capacities and constrain the decision-making and actions of women and sexual minorities. These relations and processes are fostered and sustained by predictable and unanticipated complicities, including, for instance, our participation in punitive approaches to those who fare badly against invariably racialized ideals of appropriate care-giving, such as drug-addicted mothers, or in the formal equality marriage campaigns of gay and lesbian organizations that emulate this traditionally heterosexual institution and seek entitlement to “the same” cultural practices. In her discussion and analysis of how such operations make manifest “protectionist” forms of patriarchal power, Young further addresses the complicities of different individuals—the saviors and those who are grateful to be saved—in organizing and sustaining such heteronormative relations of power. I take up this question in the following section.

The Machinations of the “Security State” As with her earlier analyses of various issues of justice, Young’s recent work on the protectionism of security states aims to expose the modalities and relations of heteronormative disciplinary power that have proliferated since 9/11 and that find men and women complicit in sustaining gender and racial hierarchies and practices of exclusion and marginalization. In her 2003 essay on the subject, Young’s exploration into what she calls the “masculinist protection racket” of states that are preoccupied with “security” follows a line of inquiry that is in keeping with her longstanding interest in coming to terms with variations of how power and injustice are organized in different contexts. She describes the “protectionist racket” exemplified by the United States since the Fall of 2001, which promises to pursue justice and provide security against the “enemies” that it locates both outside the state’s borders and within them. There is a certain colonizing, “gendered logic” (2003, p. 2) at work in the discourses and practices of state security, which deploys fear through tales of imminent threats; trades the promise of protection for fear-ridden gratitude; mobilizes military force against its mythic enemies; normalizes legal exceptionalism and

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authoritarian power over its citizens; and produces docile subjects and good patriots, subordinate and obedient women and children, ideally kept in the safe haven of the home (Young 2003, pp. 3–4). Such forms of protectionist power, Young remarked in 2003, had received comparatively little attention in feminist analyses, which, in the context of international justice claims, often finds masculine power metaphorized through the trope of sexual predator or tyrant of the sort that enslaves and brutalizes women.2 Against such figures, current security regimes enlist that of the courageous, responsible, virtuous protector of the home and homeland (2003, p. 4). Under the “masculinist protection racket,” she notes, “good” men who make clear their allegiance to the nation and its imperialist or cosmopolitan military initiatives and economic objectives are readied for the call to save the weak and vulnerable (i.e., women and children) from tyranny and terror (i.e., Islamic fundamentalist “regimes”). Their benevolence is constituted in relation to the evil other and the threat that they pose to “homeland security.” In this logic, as Young argues, “virtuous masculinity depends on its constitutive relation to the presumption of the evil of the others” (2003, p. 13), while at once constituting what even counts as virtue, and who does and does not get to have it. This is facilitated by state-authored discourses, media coverage, and campaigns of often well-intentioned NGOs that talk incessantly about the enemy threats that exist within the state and beyond its borders, or about the greater sexism and homophobia of Islamic cultures, the injustices of Muslim law, and their willingness to resort to torture and execution for the slightest offences.3

The Enemy Outside: Justifying the Use of Force Exemplified by the U.S.-led “war on terror,” the security state, as Young characterized it, constitutes itself in relation to “an unpredictable aggressor against which the state needs vigilant defense.” Faced with its enemy, “it organizes political and economic capacities around the accumulation of weapons and the mobilization of a military to respond to this outside threat” (2003, p. 8). It finds expression in the fear-mongering tough talk of the enemies’ “weapons of mass destruction,” postulations of vast and hidden international terrorist networks that extend well beyond the mythic “axis of evil” and that pose a “grave and growing danger” to “good citizens” and more obtusely, to “freedom.”4 This paternalistic 2 Since 2003, there has been a remarkable proliferation of feminist analysis of terrorism discourses and the tactics and policies of security states. See, for example, Orford (2003), Hawthorne and Winter (2003), Spivak (2004), Razak (2004), Chinkin, Wright, and Charlesworth (2005), Engle (2004; 2005), Powell (2005), Kapur (2006), Puar (2007), and Schueller (2007). 3 See, for example, the campaigns of the Feminist Majority in the United States, for the treatment of women in Afghanistan, and those of the U.K. GLBT organization, Outrage!, on the treatment of gays in Iran. 4 State of the Union address of January 29, 2002, President Bush notoriously claimed: “States like these [Iraq, Iran, North Korea] constitute an axis of evil arming to threaten the peace of the world.” At http://www. whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020129- 11.html.

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state power, Young suggests, “gets its support partly from the unity a threat produces and our gratitude for protection” (Young 2003, 2). Moreover, the talk of such threats, including the prospect of imminent terrorist attacks by these enemies, and the political and military response to them, have effectively inaugurated a “state of emergency” and legal exceptionalism (Agamben 2005)—a circumstance that, as Giorgio Agamben has argued, is hardly exceptional at all, considering that legal exceptionalism has invariably been the operative paradigm and norm of modern capitalist governments that aim to circumvent democratic accountability. Consider for example “exceptional measures,” such as President Bush’s Military Order,5 sweepingly suspension of humanitarian and human rights laws and norms in the name of enhancing security; where the “Commander and Chief” of the so-called “war” and members of its administration, offer moral justifications (such as fighting “evil”) for the unauthorized armed invasions of sovereign states and for the treatment of their detainees and prisoners. The creation and deployment of terrorist threats and promises of protection have worked to normalize countless reversals to pre-existing social justice policies and practices, and to target, criminalize, demonize, disenfranchise, detain, and deport Muslim and Arabic immigrants and refugees. In the space of lawlessness, new legal regimes and chilling policies have emerged, such as those that have legitimized racial profiling; substantiated draconian reforms to immigration law; and established detention camps outside of the jurisdiction of U.S. constitutional protections. Not surprisingly, these developments have confirmed for several contemporary commentators that violence, and particularly war, is the “father of law,” the “foundation of most state sovereigns and their legal systems” (Douzinas 2002, p. 24), the modus operandi of imperialism, since so much of it is written in its blood.6 Consider, for example, how the very talk of such life-annihilating threats have conjured support, even among human rights organizations, for the innovative policy of the “preemptive” use of force against states that allegedly “harbor” terrorists, as was introduced in Bush’s National Security Strategy (2002b), however much such a policy directly contravenes the explicit prohibitions on such force under international law and convention.7 Dressed in the rhetoric of self-defense, that is, in the only terms accepted under the Charter of the United Nations as a justification for states to resort to armed force against others, it feigns to represent its violation of the global prohibition on military aggression 5 Military Order of 13 November 2001, Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War against Terrorism, 66 Fed. Reg. 57,833 (2001). 6 For various contemporary articulations of this thesis of Carl Schmitt, see Derrida (1992); Balibar (2002); Douzinas (2002), Anghie (2004), and Agamben (2005). 7 Article 1(1) of the Charter of the United Nations (1945) states that the primary purpose of the United Nations is to “maintain international peace and security.” Article 2 (4) of the United Nations Charter states that, “(a)ll Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”

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as a response to an act of war (which never occurred); in doing so it masquerades its military aggression as an act of freedom and justice while deflecting its own violence onto its target population. Paternalist protectionism is most effective in garnering gratitude when its own violent origins and imperial motivations are somewhat concealed. Although Young didn’t have much to say on the historical reverberations of these expressions of antiterrorism, the protection racket employs timehonored tactics of Western imperialism, including its cultural, economic, and legal colonization through its promise to tame the savage/terrorist and to liberate its victims. As Anthony Anghie has observed, it is principally through the ethos of racism and the language of self-defense that “the ‘other’ is constructed, excluded from the realm of law, attacked, liberated, defeated, and transformed” (2004, p. 278). The war on terror is illustrative of a “dynamic of difference” that historically characterizes the “making of international law” (Anghie 2004, p. 274), created through the confrontation of Western European states with the “barbarians”: the imperialist initiatives locate, sanction, and transform these enemy others, set aside existing laws, thus generating new doctrines, typically on sovereignty and the use of force. The consequences are so far-reaching as to effectively inaugurate a “dramatic shift in the character of law,” a new international jurisprudence of “national security” that “recreates the sort of Hobbesian universe whose defining character is fear, and which will be based on the right of the world’s one superpower, the U.S., to wage unilateral, preemptive war, rather than the system of the U.N.” (Anghie 2004, p. 301). As an example of the effects of the exceptionalism of the protection racket and its imperial self-interest, consider the Bush Administration’s approach to the treatment of what they have dubbed “enemy combatants,” named as such to distinguish them from the “prisoners of war” that they are, i.e., from those persons detained in the context of an armed conflict whose treatment is explicitly governed by the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War. In his notorious 2002 memo to President Bush, Alberto Gonzales reasoned that such international conventions are obsolete and should not apply to prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, since doing so would “impose strict limitations on questioning [i.e., of torture] of enemy prisoners” (Gonzales [2002] 2004, pp. 122–123). After all, this “new” war, Gonzales reasoned, is not the “traditional clash between nations adhering to the laws of war that formed the backdrop of the Geneva Convention for Prisoners of War” (p. 123). It is, rather, as President Bush described it in the U.S. National Security Strategy (2002b) a “battle for civilization.”8 As both the U.S. and Australian governments persisted in arguing through to the U.S. Supreme Court in the first challenges brought by the prisoners detained under Bush’s so-called “Executive Order,” basic human rights, such as the right to be apprised of the reasons for arrest and detention, 8 George W. Bush, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Sept. 17, 2002).

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to legal counsel, or to a public hearing do not apply.9 The enemy is so threatening that there is no time for law, no room for human rights protections. It is by constructing these monsters out of Muslim men and teens, demonizing these “terrible threats to the civilized world” (Bush 2002b) in such hyperbolic terms, and trading on racist fear and hatred, that the security state can introduce the most regressive and draconian measures to reverse social policy while making the magnitude of such regression less apparent by casting itself in protectionist terms “on the side of freedom,” prepared to save civilization and to liberate those victims suffering the brutality of “rogue regimes.” In creating its evil/enemy other the protection racket has tapped the campaigns and taken on the rhetoric of feminist and human rights organizations to recast its objectives of economic imperialism as a mission to liberate the innocents of the repressive regimes of Afghanistan and Iraq. Visions of women suffering under Taliban rule and Muslim law, typically cribbed from feminist human rights campaigns, have been an effective tactic of projecting barbaric cruelty onto a culture of savages while preserving tropes of “fighting the good fight” of “humanitarian” war for the military action of Western states (Chandler 2002, p. 158). Generally speaking, this dynamic of Western “humanitarianism,” and its protectionist posturing, as Anne Orford has noted, masks their role in contributing to their plight, and works to erase the violence of intervening states or the “international community” and to divert attention from the fact that, despite using such women as a justification for war, the reforms to immigration policies that tighten the nation’s borders and create new obstacles for refugee claims, prevent the very Muslim women who symbolize the nobility and integrity of the cause of the war, from seeking asylum as refugees (Orford 2003, pp. 187–190). The engendered colonization of the Muslim women’s “docile bodies” is instrumental to the racism of protectionist logic: representations and stereotypes of women as subjugated victims of Muslim tyrants are part and parcel of the benevolent posturing of protectionist power, as much as they are of the demonization of the enemy/oppressor from whom the victims need to be saved. As many feminist writers have noted, the liberation of Muslim women was frequently touted as a justification for the invasion of Afghanistan and the eradication of the Taliban regime. The deployment of stereotypical imagery

9 Two U.S. citizens who were alleged to have been involved in terrorism were labeled “enemy combatants,” detained, not charged with any crime, and denied access to counsel. See Padilla v. Rumsfeld, 352 F.3d 695 (2d Cir. 2003), cert. granted, 124 S. Ct. 1353 (2004); Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 316 F.3d 450 (2d Cir. 2003), cert. granted, 124 S. Ct. 981 (2004). The Executive Branch also held uncharged combatants arrested in Afghanistan in indefinite detention in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. While the Bush Administration held that the rights granted to U.S. citizens to be apprised of the reasons for detention and entitled to legal counsel did not extend to the extra-territorial sites like Cuba, the U.S. Supreme Court did not agree: much to the seeming surprise of the government, in the summer of 2004, in Rasul v. Bush the United States Supreme Court decided 6:3 that the habeus corpus jurisdiction of the Federal Courts extended to those detained at Guantanamo Bay. See Roach and Trotter (2005, p. 1012).

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of the helpless Muslim women, oppressed by a cruel and backward culture, typically veiled, languishing in silence, was quick to become an icon of the enemy’s evil, and a moral justification for the protectionist actions of their lawless Western saviors.10 And while the “protection racket” turns heroes out of the masculine saviors of these women, all the talk of their liberation and of their first taste of freedom diverts attention from the damage that the devastation of armed conflict does to their security: faces and voices that speak of material reality of the terror of the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq are silenced by all of the talk of how much better off they are once they are “saved.” As we know, women are economically devastated by armed conflict, through the imposition of sanctions and diversion of resources into the war, the loss of homes through the sale or destruction of property; and the shortage of food and water supplies, shelter, healthcare, and sanitation (Gardam and Jarvis 2000, p. 32). Women also shoulder the burden of caring for the casualties of war, including abandoned or orphaned children, typically in female-headed households, despite the fact that women’s lack of education and training make it difficult for them to support themselves and their families (p. 30). Such impacts are part and parcel of what Young describes as the structural relations that operate along axes of gender, that exacerbate social inequality in all patriarchal cultures, including those of Western security states, that deprive women of the means to fully exercise their capacities. The effects of the norms and policies that engender such work are compounded and exacerbated by protectionism’s glorification of military violence, and the patriotism, nationalism, and racism that is produced by it.

The Enemy Within: Racial Profiling The security state is characterized by Young to be preoccupied as well with “the enemy within,” an enemy that is hidden among us, requiring vigilance and collaboration in surveillance, scrutiny, reporting of “abnormal behavior,” especially in public space and institutions, and, we might add, particularly when they involve Islamic subjects, whether loners or participants in organized opposition or vocalized dissent to imperialist foreign policies. The prospect of hidden conspiracies and/or terrorists in our midst is a common narrative that, in mobilizing fear of a local and immediate threat, enlists the assistance of all good patriots, and relies on their complicity to function effectively as a “racket.” Narratives of the hidden enemy, popularized through dominant media, have been instrumental in the revitalization of racial profiling and its work in 10 So too were they made the measure of the success of the invasions: as President Bush put it in his White House speech of March 12, 2004, “We’re seeing women take their rightful place in societies that were once incredibly oppressive and closed. We’re seeing the power and appeal of liberty in every single culture. And we’re proud once again–this nation is proud–to advance the cause of human rights and human freedom (cited in Engle 2005, pp. 429–30).

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targeting, investigating, attacking, detaining, and expelling those “aliens” and others among us who “look like” terrorists. Because the enemy is hidden, one needs to attend to characteristic features to identify him, invariably marked through categories of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, class, and political opinion. A certain homogenization of the racialized monster has been necessary for the codification of racial profiling in several areas of law,11 fostering support for discriminatory treatment against visible minorities. Racial profiling, as Reem Bahdi puts it, entails the use of race as a “proxy for risk” (2003, p. 295); as the state’s “primary weapon of choice” in the war on terror, it was immediately brought to bear on those who had no connection to terrorism or socalled “terrorist networks” (Ahmad 2004, p. 1268), but who inhabited the risk of race. While just before September 2001, the U.S. government was poised to approve a legislative ban on racial profiling, with over 80% of Americans supporting this initiative (Ahmad 2004, p. 1268), after 9/11, the Act was quickly shelved, and in its place was introduced the 2003 Guidance Regarding the Use of Race by Federal Law Enforcement Agencies. This new policy makes an exception for all “law enforcement activities involving threats to national security or the integrity of the nation’s borders,”12 authorizing federal law enforcement officials, including airport screeners and border personnel, to consider race and ethnicity in the course of “matters of national security, border integrity or the possible catastrophic loss of life,” and suggesting that selective prosecution of the laws based on alienage would be permissible (Guidance 2003).13 As has been documented by the Office of the Inspector General, this “national security exception” was used to authorize the detentions and immediate deportation of hundreds of Arab, Muslim, and Asian noncitizens within a few months after 9/11,14 even though none of the putative terrorist detainees or deportees in this period had been charged with terrorist activity. The process was simply used for targeting and deporting detainees for minor immigration infringements, to circumvent the due process rights of those who “looked like terrorists” (Ahmad 2004, p. 1269). Antiterrorism laws and policies, introduced in almost all Western states in the past decade, have also contributed to false arrests and wrongful convictions, the practices of which have disproportionately impacted racial and ethnic minorities (Roach and Trotter 2005). Consider, for example, the effect

11 See Roach and Trotter (2005) for an overview of the extensive reforms to immigration and refugee law and criminal law and policy that have been introduced since 9/11. See also Banks (2005) for a discussion of the policies introduce as a response to 9/11. 12 U.S. Department of Justice, Guidance Regarding the Use of Race By Federal Law Enforcement Agencies (June 2003), available at: http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/split/documents/guidance_on_race.htm. Cited in Ahmad, at 1269. 13 See Johnson (2003) and Ahmad (2004) for a discussion of this. 14 Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Justice, The September 11 Detainees: A Review of the Treatment of Aliens Held on Immigration Charges in Connection with the Investigation of the September 11 Attacks (June 2003), available at http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/0306/full.pdf. Cited in Ahmad, at 1269, n. 22.

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on judicial processes by provisions in the U.K.’s Terrorism Act (2000) and AntiTerrorism, Crime and Security Act (2001), which, respectively, lowers the burden of proof normally placed on the prosecution for crimes associated with state security, and explicitly derogates from fair trial rights for the first time in British history (Roach and Trotter 2005, p. 995); and the U.S. Patriot Act, which allows for the detention of both foreign nationals and American citizens as “enemy combatants.” There is also the use of material witness warrants, by which those suspected of simply knowing about terrorist plots can be indefinitely detained; “security certificates,” which allow for the indefinite detention of suspected terrorists until they can be deported, if, as is set out in the AntiTerrorism Crime and Security Act (2001) there is a “reasonable” cause to believe that the person’s presence is “a threat to national security” (cited in Roach and Trotter 2005, p. 971); or the public interest immunity provisions of Canada’s Terrorism Act, which restricts the disclosure of evidence to the accused in the interests of “national security” (ibid, p. 980).15 Fostering the complicity of docile patriots [“us”] in targeting racialized groups [“them”], the discriminatory policies of security states, have less to do with producing security than with exacerbating race-based domination and conflict. Their effect, rather, is to expand the legislative and institutional means to profile, arrest, detain, and deport those associated, for whatever reason, with being a threat, such that the promise of security for us turns on the heightened insecurity of the racialized others that are vulnerable to these tactics. One of the reasons that new draconian policies of the heightened surveillance of security regimes have been acceptable to, and supported by, citizens who are clamoring from protection, as Young observed, is that they think that such measures apply only to others (2003, p. 15). “Anxious for protection,” she adds, the duly patriotic citizens lose sight of the fact that it is not only the disposable humans that stand to lose in this war on terror. Security will always elude us, as Mary Robinson puts it, in addressing the presumed dichotomy between rights and security, at least “until we can tackle the root causes of the humiliation, anger, and frustration that can be manipulated to draw recruits for terrorist action” (Robinson 2003, p. 309).

Conclusion As Puar and Rai describe it, there is a “double movement of power” to the processes of disciplining or expelling enemies, as it is in these processes and against these enemies that “docile patriots” are constituted: in the name of patriotism we quarantine the monsters “whose psyches offend the norms of domesticity, of the properly masculine or feminine.” Through their very example, they add, 15 See Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Act.

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such enemies “provide patriotism with its own pedagogies of normalization,” which also create, on the other hand, the “space of the national family, inhabited by a plurality of subjects who find their proper being in the heterosexual home of the nation” (Puar and Rai 2002, p. 136). By exposing security states’ tactics of creating and engaging with their enemies, and the operative logic of their protectionist racket, as Young similarly urges us to do, we can reveal the patterns of disciplinary and biopolitical power behind them and the policies and practices that facilitate them, as they work to profile, scrutinize, manage, arrest, and deport its internal enemies; justify armed attacks on its external enemies; and constitute the subordinated and obedient roles for vulnerable “women and children,” who trade their quiet gratitude for protection. But as Young herself has reminded us, we need to constantly reassess our conceptual tools and tropes for whether or not—and to what extent—they adequately capture the modalities of power and related injustices that operate structurally and systematically in social and political relations, such as those produced through the protectionist racket of security states. It is this very consideration that demands, in turn, further critical reflection on Young’s analyses. Despite her sensitivity to many of the human costs of protectionist power, we could do further justice to Young’s approach by fleshing out the haunting details that lurk in the background of her quick snapshot of security states, and by taking care to trace the varying racial and sexual demarcations and implications that permeate constructs of terrorist threats and terrorist bodies. For it is in these details that we see how some bodies—our enemies’ bodies and those who look like them—are marked, not for being lived, but for imminent death (Puar 2007, p. xxiv). The dictum of the Bush administration that “you’re either with us or against us,” compounded by the tropes of perversion through which they are represented, as Puar argues, “serves to rearticulate the devitalization of one population sequestered for dying—Iraqi detainees accused of terrorist affiliations—in the secularization and revitialization of another population, the American citizenry” (Puar 2007, p. 5). In pitting “us” (good citizens and “good aliens” [Engle 2004]) against “them”; and our protectable and mournable lives against their torturable, invadable, and expendable forms, the protectionist racket of the security states exposes the darker, insidious side of its benevolence, and of what exactly those who are “anxious for security” are complicit in, and grateful for. As the above cursory overview of the various tactics of the protectionist racket make clear, the very possibility of finding grateful women among the disciplined “docile patriots” of the nation and among the “victims” of the other’s “tyrannical regimes,” is conditioned on the racial and sexual demonization of Muslim and Arabic men through terrorist constructs. What needs to be brought into the purview of our analyses of the protection racket is the processes by which fostering some lives as protectable prepares public acceptance for the death of those who threaten them; that is to say, the processes by which

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a “necropolitics” (Mbembe 2003, cited in Puar 2007, p. 96) looms in the biopolitical fostering and management of life. Jasbir Puar’s recent critical analyses of the multiple assemblages of terrorist and security discourse and the complicity of Western feminist, GLBT, and human rights organizations in proliferating them, make clear that the machinations of security states cannot be contained by familiar paradigms of heteronormativity that Young’s formulation of protectionism frames. Puar notes that in contemporary discourses and disciplines of terrorism and security, “the terrorist” and terrorist bodies are typically produced through “colonial fantasies of Orientalist sexual excess, perversity and pedophilia” (Puar 2007, p. 14), which inform assumptions about “properly queer” subjects (xiii), not unlike they do of properly heterosexual familial subjects, such as docile and grateful women. This production is imbued with racial formations that plague representations of South Asian, Arab American, and Muslim sexualities. Examining a vast assemblage of government counterterrorism texts, film documentaries, print media, organization campaign materials, ethnographic data, among other sources, she shows how the perverse sexuality of the terrorist is pivotal to its racist demonization: globally disseminated images of a Muslim Arabic masculinity as “failed and perverse, virile yet emasculated” (always with femininity as “reference point of malfunction”) is “metonymically tied to all sorts of pathologies of the mind and body—homosexuality, incest, pedophilia, madness, and disease” (Puar 2007, p. xxiv). It is by assimilating public discomfort with these perversions, that security states produce “new normativities,” including those that embrace a properly, and invariably patriotic, queer and/or Muslim subject. The regulatory effects of the new normativities mark the difference between “good” and “bad” Muslims. So too do they mark the difference between the perverse sexuality of the terrorist, and the acceptable queerness of nation-loving patriots, such as the nowiconic Mark Bingham, the gay rugby player who died on ill-fated Flight 93 (“the flight that fought back”16), embraced as an “American hero,” a good son and team player, “rehabilitated” by protectionism’s tolerance and brought into the “spatial-temporal domain” of “homonationalism” (Puar 2007, p. 38). The emergence of a national homosexuality, or homonationalism, operates tangentially to the heteronationalism of the protection racket as a “regulatory script not only of normative gayness, queerness or homosexuality, but also of the racial and national norms that reinforce these sexual subjects” (Puar 2007, p. 2). The broad strokes of Young’s preliminary sketch of forms and effects of heteronormative disciplinary power that are deployed by security states obscure the nuances of the shifting allegiances, lines of flight, and unanticipated

16 See Ramon Johnson (2008). “The Flight that Fought Back: Mark Bingham and the Heroes of Flight 93,” http://gaylife.about.com/od/moviestheatre/fr/flight93.htm for one of many blogs and Web sites that celebrate Mark as a gay national hero.

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complicities by which new regulatory normative apparatuses—and related rules, laws, and practices—are created out of the states of exception, especially in the face of crisis. A consideration of these shifts in normative targets, throws into relief the mobility and facility of protectionist technologies of power, and, in this instance, how their work in protecting life imbricates a politics of death, and particularly the death of the individuals and groups that are actively excluded from the purview of protection by virtue of its racist logic. These finer details are revealing of the systemic forms of power and structural injustices that don’t seem to shift all that much (such as consistent patterns in historical and colonial fantasies of the “uncivilized” of dark and exotic continents); Western economic domination and the expansion of corporate markets; the persistence of gender hierarchies that, even in the context of emergent “homonationalism,” find femininity aligned with passivity and dependence, helplessness, and malfunction; and the glorification of male violence in renewed justifications for attacks against evil others and “alien” threats. Attention to both the shifting forms and more permanent structures that protectionist power takes—and to who benefits and who pays the price for them—brings into view the fundamental operations of the racist conditions and relations of a racket that can so readily take life in the name of protecting it. It is crucial to attend to these forms and effects, to rethink the tropes and frameworks that make them more visible, if we are to expose the injustices of the policies and practices of “security,” organized in relation to “our” enemies. Following and articulating the “logic” of protectionist power and its varying complicities, as Young urges us to do, is necessary for devising strategies of reform to the laws and policies that sustain it, including lobbying initiatives and legal challenges to the “exceptional” and blatantly unconstitutional laws and policies that are born from and tarry with these mythic enemies. And for conjuring wider recognition of, and active resistance to, the many injustices of an illegal war and its fundamental violation of the principles of justice we must demand states to be responsible to uphold.

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PART IV

JUSTICE: ETHICS AND RESPONSIBILITY

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Iris Young’s Last Thoughts on Responsibility for Global Justice Martha C. Nussbaum At her untimely death, Iris Young left the manuscript of a mostly completed book, called Responsibility for Justice. I am extremely grateful to Dave Alexander for allowing me to read the manuscript. I feel privileged for having been able to see this book so early in its career. It is a major book, one of her very best things. Iris did not have time to complete it as she would have wished. Many footnotes remain to be filled in. One crucial chapter still takes the form of an independent paper on Hannah Arendt, and it was Iris’s plan to integrate the argument of that paper fully into the book, with a consequently diminished focus on the exegesis of Arendt’s ideas. But it is clear that she intended some version of the paper to be the third chapter of the book. A separate paper on Fanon on historic injustice, which discusses the question of reparations for slavery, remains less clearly placed in the project as a whole. It discusses similar questions in a similar way, but it does not contribute a missing piece to the argument, and thus it may in the end function as an Appendix rather than a chapter. Finally, Dave tells me that in revising Iris always attended to clarity, rewriting a good deal to make her ideas more accessible and transparent to her readers. I find the existing manuscript extremely clear, but Dave feels that she would have worked even further on that aspect.1 What I hope to do in this chapter is, first, to give you an overall idea of how Iris argues in the book, and of the contribution of each of its chapters; second, to describe in more detail the book’s key argument concerning the distinction 1 Because the manuscript is incomplete in this way, I shall not try to guess what texts Iris would have cited in footnotes. Most of the footnotes have the form “Cite,” or “Cite Arendt,” etc. It will be best for a graduate student or colleague who knows Iris’s work very well to fill in those notes, and therefore I use footnotes in this paper only where I myself have introduced the reference in my own commentary. In an earlier draft, I cited page numbers of Young’s manuscript. Since the manuscript is not a pdf, however, these page numbers would not be good guides to whatever version someone else might print out, so I also have omitted those here. When the book appears, as I hope it will in a year or two, I shall update this paper by filling in those page references.

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between guilt and responsibility; and finally, third, to puzzle over that distinction and to suggest an alternative formulation, since I think that the best way to honor Iris’s daring and provocative contribution is to wrestle with it. My main aim throughout, however, is to allow you all to hear Iris’s voice.

The Argument Responsibility for Justice begins with a focus on economic inequality within the United States. (Later the scope of the argument will be extended to take in global inequalities.) Young notes that there has been a shift in the way in which government officials, journalists, and the public think and talk about poverty: the primary causes of being poor, instead of being seen as social, are currently understood as personal. “On this account,” she writes, “the social segments that tend to be poor do not take responsibility for their lives as much as members of other groups, and too often they engage in deviant or self-destructive behavior. Public assistance programs only add to the problem by allowing these deviant segments to expect hand outs in return for which they need do nothing.” The purpose of the first chapter of the book, entitled “From Personal to Political Responsibility,” is to look critically at some assumptions that lie behind this shift in thinking. Focusing on the writings of Charles Murray and Lawrence Mead, Young finds three assumptions embedded in their analysis. First, they assume that we have to choose, in describing poverty, between an account focused on personal responsibility and one invoking structural causation; a single coherent account cannot involve both. Second, by assuming that poor people can improve their lot by effort and will, Mead and Murray assume that background conditions are basically fair, are not unfairly stacked against the poor. Third, they assume that the only problem of personal responsibility that needs attention is the personal responsibility of poor people: it is implicitly suggested that all other people properly discharge their responsibilities. Young argues that, although this mode of thinking is most prominent on the right, it also underlies some prominent analyses on the left, particularly that of Ronald Dworkin. And she notes that this idea of personal responsibility has displaced an older shared understanding, perhaps most prominent in the welfare states of Europe, but now threatened there as well, that “the members of a whole society collectively bear responsibility for taking care of one another’s old age, health care, support for children, and keeping us out of poverty.” It is this older understanding that the book intends to revive, with new arguments and a fresh perspective on its contributions. Concerning the first assumption, Young argues that there is no need to think that we have a binary choice between a focus on the personal and a focus on the structural. In the end, in her view, all responsibility is at some level personal, in

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the sense that the individual is the central locus of ethical responsibility. Nonetheless, one must recognize the crucial role of structures in producing injustice, even in cases where individual actors may be going about their business in a normal way and not intending to do any harm. A good analysis will attend, then, both to personal and to structural factors in the genesis of poverty. Concerning the second assumption, Young announces her intend to argue that there are indeed serious structural problems in the background conditions in our current U.S. situation that make it difficult if not impossible for poor people to better their lot. Concerning the third assumption, Young notes that pinning blame on the poor has had, in the arguments she criticizes, the consequence of deflecting attention from the possibly questionable behavior of others. This “absolving function,” as she calls it, is one of the main attractions of the discourse of personal responsibility for many Americans. Clearly, however, it is wrong simply to assume that the nonpoor have behaved well and discharged all their responsibilities, especially without first articulating and defending a general account of ethical responsibility. Young notes that most people do not really believe that being ethically responsible means simply avoiding dependence on others. “A more realistic understanding of being responsible, one that better matches what most people think, might go something like this: a responsible person tries to deliberate about options before acting, makes choices that seem to be the best for all affected, and worries about how the consequences of his or her action may adversely affect others.” This is a demanding standard, and Murray and Mead have not shown that the nonpoor meet it. Young concludes this chapter by applying her insights to Dworkin’s theory and to the related theory of John Roemer, which, unlike Dworkin’s, makes room for structural injustice. Young’s second chapter, entitled “Structure as the Subject of Justice,” presents Young’s argument for the conclusion that political, economic, and social structures must be central to any good account of the genesis of poverty: we cannot handle the task by appeal to individual responsibility alone. She begins with a complex example of a woman, named Sandy, who is forced into homelessness by a combination of factors: condo conversion where she has been living, the high cost of rental housing, combined with the demand for a three-month security deposit; the need to live near transportation to her workplace and in a neighborhood where she feels her children will be safe and have good schools to go to; a sex-segregated labor market that makes low-wage service jobs the primary option for women without college degrees. Young notes that we can certainly identify some elements of personal responsibility in Sandy’s situation, including her earlier educational choices, her choice to get divorced, and her choice to value highly her children’s education. Nonetheless, we also feel that something has gone badly wrong when a person like Sandy cannot find a place to live that she can afford.

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Can we blame Sandy’s situation on specific individuals with whom she has come into contact? Going through the available options, Young argues that we really can’t. “No particular agent she encounters has done her a specific wrong,” and yet she suffers injustice. This injustice can only be analyzed at the structural level, by talking about the way the housing market works, the way the service economy works, and so forth. Nor can we pinpoint a particular unjust policy as its origin. Its causes are not so immediate as the persons with whom the wronged sufferer interacts, and not so focused as a single policy. The sources of the generalized circumstances of being vulnerable to homelessness are multiple, large scale, and relatively long term. Many policies, both public and private, and the actions of thousands of individuals acting according to normal rules and accepted practices, contribute to producing these circumstances. Methodologically, Young is an individualist, and she notes that it’s a good thing that social theory has moved away from the old debate about that question: “Few theorists of social structures deny that individual actors produce them.” Nonetheless, the fact that individual actors produce social structures does not entail that particular individuals can be rightly blamed for the failures of those structures: the individuals may be acting in a normal and acceptable manner, and yet the cumulative effect of their actions may be to produce an unjust situation. “Social structure, then, refers to the accumulated outcomes of the actions of the masses of individuals enacting their own projects, often uncoordinated with many others.” The second chapter ends with a close examination of John Rawls’s argument concerning the basic structure as subject of justice. While agreeing with Rawls against the criticisms of Liam Murphy and Gerald Cohen, Young argues that Rawls’s account of what forms part of the basic structure is somewhat too narrow. He selects a set of very basic institutions, without acknowledging the many ways in which these are continuous with diffuse social processes. Young, by contrast, urges us to look at the whole society, seeing “patterns in relations among people and positions they occupy in relation to one another.” Although I’m not sure this critique of Rawls is entirely successful, I shall not elaborate that point here. The third and fourth chapters are the heart of the book. I shall describe their argument very briefly, since I shall be returning to it later. In the Arendt paper that Young intended to revise as chapter 3, now entitled “Guilt versus Responsibility: A Reading and Partial Critique of Hannah Arendt,” Young follows Arendt to some extent but also criticizes her formulations in some ways. She argues that we ought to distinguish guilt from responsibility. When we apply the concept of guilt to someone, we are blaming them for something that they have done in the past. The function of guilt is to locate fault, to single out

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for either moral or legal blame. It is usually not appropriate to ascribe guilt to a group as such, unless we have some reason to conceive of the group as a collective agent (e.g., as in the case of guilt ascribed to corporations). Responsibility, by contrast, is a forward-looking concept. To ascribe responsibility to a person is to say that they have a job to do. We can hold either individuals or groups responsible, and responsibility for social ills is typically shared among many agents. People can be responsible without being guilty. Young rejects Arendt’s suggestion that people bear responsibility simply because they are members of a political community; however, she does think that the sort of participation in political processes that licenses the ascription of responsibility does not entail an ascription of guilt. A typical case will be the passive or normally active behavior of non-malicious people who simply go along with their society’s way of doing things. These people, Young argues, are not guilty “and should not be blamed.” Nonetheless, they are cases of “a political responsibility not taken up.” Because we dwell on the stage of history, and not simply in our houses, we cannot avoid the imperative to have a relationship with actions and events performed by institutions of our society, often in our name, and with our passive or active support. The imperative of political responsibility consists in watching these institutions, monitoring their effects to make sure they are not grossly harmful, and maintaining organized public space where such watching and monitoring can occur and citizens can speak publicly and support one another in their efforts to prevent suffering. In chapter 4, “A Social Connection Model,” Young now puts these ideas to work analyzing the structural injustices that she has described in the second chapter. The social dynamics of Sandy’s situation are not helpfully analyzed in terms of guilt. Pinning guilt on someone is not appropriate, first, because in such cases there really has not been any bad behavior: no malice, and, or so Young argues, no negligence. Although many actions of many individuals contribute to the unjust outcome, no individual has a significantly large causal role to be blamed for that outcome. Moreover, the focus on guilt is pragmatically damaging: by seeking to pin blame on individuals, we absolve others, and thus those others may be able to go on ignoring the fact that as citizens we have a shared responsibility of the type she has described. “A rhetoric of blame in politics often seeks a single or a few particularly powerful actors who have caused the problems, often some public officials . . . . The power of some actors is improperly inflated and that of many others is ignored.” We also deflect attention away from the nature of the background conditions within which agents make choices. Finally, we produce defensiveness rather than cooperative helpfulness: “Rhetoric of blame in public discussion of social problems . . . usually produces defensiveness and

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unproductive blame-switching.” Even when people do acknowledge guilt, finally, the “blame game” usually produces an unhelpful sort of self-focus: “People become more focused on themselves, their past actions, the state of their souls and their character, than on the structures that require change . . . Such self-indulgence can distract us from discussing more objectively how social structures operate, how our actions contribute to them, and what can be done to change them.” Young then argues that the most helpful concept with which to approach structural injustice is that of shared responsibility. We turn away from the past and toward the future, accepting, collectively, the fact that as citizens we bear responsibility for monitoring political institutions and ensuring that such structural injustices do not arise within them, or, if they are already there, that they are ameliorated. In chapter 5, “Responsibility Across Borders,” Young turns from domestic politics to the global sphere. She argues that what she has called the social connection model is helpful in facing global inequalities. Thinking in terms of shared responsibility for global conditions might at first seem paralyzing: “How can I begin to take action to discharge my responsibility in the face of such massive and diverse problems?” Many injustices in the world result from structural processes, but it seems hard for individuals to accept even a shared responsibility for so many of them. Young boldly now asserts that the demanding nature of our responsibility under the social connection model is a reason to embrace it, not to reject it. The fact that we are parts of many causal networks that lead to structural injustice is simply a truth, and one that we need to face. “We should pause at the sight of such responsibility. Dwelling too long in the shadow of such awe can be paralyzing, to be sure. So we should move to consideration of action, and then questions of what is possible and reasonable to expect come into play.” The rest of the chapter is then devoted to making the idea of shared global responsibility manageable and tractable. She does this through a detailed consideration of sweatshop labor in the developing world, showing how many non-blameworthy actions collectively create a structure that is unjust, and looking at ways in which the anti-sweatshop political movement has “involved a great many people and achieved some success in creating a public discussion of injustice of working conditions and some changes in institutions and practices.” This chapter contains a lot of empirical material, as, with Young’s always bracing realism, she shows how her abstract model helps us confront an actual political challenge. Along the way, she discusses, sympathetically but critically, work by Charles Beitz and Allen Buchanan that bears on the question of how we imagine personal responsibility for global harms. In thinking about who bears responsibility for ameliorating global ills, she now argues, we ought to consider several specific parameters: First, an agent’s power, her position, within structural processes, for actual influence over those

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processes. People who have greater influence have greater responsibility. Second, we ought to consider an agent’s privilege. Privilege and power usually go together, but in most such situations there are some privileged agents who don’t have much causal influence: nonetheless, simply because of their privileged lives, they have greater responsibility than others. Third, we must consider an agent’s interest. Here what Young means is that people who are the most affected, the victims of structural injustice, have a particularly strong interest in changing the situation, and so they ought to take more responsibility than others for doing so. Finally, people should think about what Young calls collective ability. What she has in mind is that individuals are sometimes members of groups in such a way that they can draw on the resources of an already existing group, such as a stockholder organization, a labor union, or a church group, and use that group as a resource for change. Such membership gives individuals a larger share of responsibility. Notice, then, that so far Young has focused on individuals and on groups that form part of “civil society.” She has said little about state responsibility or about the responsibility of international institutions. In the concluding section of the chapter, she states clearly that she does think both of these very important in thinking about shared responsibility, but she also thinks that they have too often been the exclusive focus of accounts of global justice. In downplaying them and playing up other more informal associations, she seeks to right the balance. Chapter 6 is entitled “Avoiding Responsibility.” Here Young studies different ways of thinking through which people avoid accepting their responsibility with respect to global structures. The first is reification, or the pretense that the processes that produce injustice are inevitable and unchangeable, like natural forces that cannot be otherwise. (Here she discusses both Marx, Lukacs, and Sartre in an illuminating way.) The second bad strategy is denying connection. Many people simply deny that they have any connection to people at a distance, while accepting responsibility for the conditions of people close at hand. Often this strategy is assisted by using the guilt idea: the person says, look, I’ve done nothing wrong and so how can you ask me to take responsibility for improving these conditions? Drawing on Onora O’Neill’s analysis of global interconnection, Young argues that we do bear responsibility for a wide range of global conditions. The third impediment to accepting responsibility lies in what Young calls “The Demands of Immediacy”: we acknowledge that we are connected to millions of strangers, but we also point out that we simply have no resources left for such people: our time and energy are used up on the demands made on us by relationships of immediate interaction. Here, drawing on Levinas, Young insists that “Every other is an irreducible and unique locus of need and desire,” and that we cannot avoid the ethical demand to weigh the interests of the distant against those of the close, not if we are ethical beings in the first place.

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There is “an irreducible, even tragic, tension in moral life,” given that we must take care of our own and also attend to the “potentially infinite” claims of distant individuals. What we should say is that we can never fully discharge our ethical responsibility: the ledger is never fully balanced. But we must not on that account withdraw our attention from people at a distance from us. One way in which we can at least reduce the tension between the near and the far is to enlist those we love in the shared task of working for global justice: in that way “the attention and energy we put into being personally responsive to others is at the same time attention and energy devoted to political responsibility for justice.” The last bad strategy that Young considers is the attitude that says that this is “Not My Job.” This strategy, once again, is aided by the use of guilt as a central moral category: for I say, pin the blame on someone else; I, clearly, haven’t done anything wrong. Here Young discusses critically Bob Goodin’s suggestion that in cases where there is nobody to blame we ought to rely on the state to take action. As before, Young feels that leaving things to the state narrows the sphere of responsibility much too much, leaving individuals free to think that they have nothing to do other than pay their taxes. But even government’s ability to rectify structural injustice depends on the active involvement of its citizens in that endeavor. And, given the great extent to which assets and activities that might elsewhere or at another time have been in state hands are, in the United States today, in private hands, we can hardly expect stripped-down government to solve such problems even with support. Each excuse for not accepting responsibility, Young concludes, has a truthful basis, sees something that is real. But each is ultimately an evasion of responsibility that we ought to assume. The rhetoric of guilt distracts us from that shared project.

Guilt and Responsibility I hope that this summary has shown what a rich and exciting book this is. There are several topics on which I would like to write a paper; the criteria for greater and lesser responsibility is one of them, the strategies of avoidance another. Now, however, I shall focus on the distinction between guilt and responsibility, which lies at the core of Young’s argument. In Young’s view, an agent is guilty just in case she has done a blameworthy action. Blameworthiness usually requires harmful intent, although Young recognizes that it may in some cases only require a culpable degree of negligence. She briefly recognizes, too, that we hold people legally accountable without any showing of mens rea in cases involving strict liability, such as statutory rape, although this recognition plays, so far as I can see, no subsequent role in her argument.

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Young does not tightly define responsibility, since her concept emerges by way of discussion and critique of Arendt. But let me do so on her behalf. An agent is responsible, by contrast, just in case (a) the agent is causally embedded in processes that produce a problematic result, and (b) the agent is in a position to assume ongoing forward-looking responsibility (in cooperation with others) for ameliorating those conditions. At times, these two conditions appear to be individually necessary and jointly sufficient for being responsible, but at times, as in the passage I quoted earlier, Young adds a third element: citizens in general ought to monitor and superintend the institutions in their society, and it is in virtue of that general moral duty of citizenship (in addition, presumably, to the first two conditions) that a given agent can be said to be responsible. I don’t think that this third condition creates any obscurity in Young’s account, since presumably she thinks that this general normative fact always holds, both of citizens in their domestic relations and of members of the global community in their international relations. Young makes two distinct types of arguments for distinguishing guilt from responsibility and in favor of ascribing responsibility, but not guilt, to citizens in a society that contains structural injustice: two intrinsic or conceptual arguments, and several pragmatic arguments. The first conceptual argument says that guilt requires blameworthiness, but agents often participate in structural injustice without blameworthiness. The second conceptual argument says that guilt is backward-looking, whereas responsibility is forward-looking. Now to Young’s five pragmatic arguments. Young argues, first, that focusing on fixing blame distracts us from our future tasks. Second, she argues that it does worse than that, focusing our attention on a few likely culprits while apparently exonerating many other people who really ought to get involved in the task of making things better. Third, a focus on blame, because it targets individuals, tends to distract us from the background conditions within which injustice arises. Fourth, playing the “blame game” produces a squirming defensiveness rather than a helpful cooperativeness. Finally, fifth, guilt turns the mind inward, so that we become unhelpfully focused on the state of our own characters, rather than on the task that lies ahead of us. This is really a wonderful piece of work, and I have to say that it completely transforms the nature of the debate about such matters. Nonetheless, although initially I was thoroughly convinced by Young’s account, I am now less convinced, and let me try to say why. First, on the conceptual distinction, I think that it is really very difficult to maintain the retrospective/prospective portion of the distinction, guilt being appropriate to past acts only, and responsibility to future acts only, for the simple reason that time marches on. Let us stipulate that at time t, agent A bears responsibility R for social ill S. Time passes, and she shirks her responsibility. What should we say next? I think it can’t be right to say, well, looking back on it, she did nothing wrong at t, and we should now forget about t and focus

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exclusively on what lies ahead of her at t + 1. If we take that line, preserving the clean distinction between retrospective guilt (which we’re not supposed to be assigning to participants in structural injustice) and prospective responsibility (which we are supposed to be assigning to them), well, then people get a free pass indefinitely, since no task they have failed to shoulder ever goes onto the debit or guilt side of their ledger, and the new task always lies ahead of them. By contrast, it seems to me that what we ought to say is that if A has responsibility R for social ill S, and she fails to take it up, then, when the relevant time passes, she is guilty of not having shouldered her responsibility. I think that this follows quite simply from the logic of ought; Young says that A ought to shoulder the burden; well, that appears to imply that if A doesn’t shoulder the burden A has done something wrong. What about the second point, that agents can participate in structural injustice without doing anything culpable? Here I think that we should definitely grant that A need not have malicious or harmful intent. But I do not think we should grant that A is not negligent. For if it is a general moral truth that citizens ought to monitor the institutions in which they live and be vigilant lest structural injustice occur within them, then I think it follows that they are culpably negligent if they do not shoulder that burden. The same seems true in the international sphere. Sometimes we may not want to blame the agent very much, since such general moral truths might not be known to her. But, here as elsewhere, ignorance of the law, including the moral law, is no excuse. Maybe we want to add a category of particularly non-culpable participation that is more analogous to strict liability, in the sense that no mens rea need be present at all: still, the agent has violated the law, and thus is guilty. These points seem like powerful reasons to reject the conceptual distinction. What about the additional conceptual point that guilt is individualistic, while responsibility is often shared? Well, I think that we have a good way of understanding what a given agent’s task is within a general scheme of shared responsibility. Indeed, Young’s various criteria (power, privilege, interest, collective ability) give us a good way of thinking about the size of a given agent’s share, whether in the end we endorse exactly this account of how the shares divide or some other similar account. So, we don’t blame an agent for not shouldering the entirety of the social task all by herself, but we blame her for not shouldering the part that she ought to have shouldered, and thus we blame her for her contribution to the bad outcome. What about the pragmatic arguments? I think that Young would now say, even if we grant the conceptual symmetry between blame and responsibility, still, it seems right to focus on the future rather than on the past, on what can and should be attempted rather than on people’s failure. So, I must now confront those five arguments. First, does focusing on blame distract us from our future tasks? Well, one does not have to buy into deterrence as a complete theory of punishment in order to think that the ascription of blame

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serves as a powerful deterrent toward committing future blameworthy acts. Think about a child. It is certainly true here, as in the political case, that a good parent will not focus on pinning blame on the child for misdeeds without directing her at the same time to helpful modes of conduct in the future. Surely, as Young says, the accent should always lie on the future, which can be changed, rather than the past, which cannot be. However, it is a little hard to see how we ever get to the future without a critique of the past: praise and blame for good and bad actions that have already happened help a child learn how to perceive new situations in the future, and supply her with powerful incentives to seek good actions in the future and to avoid the bad. Suppose every time the child does something selfish the parent says simply, “From now on, treat others fairly.” Not “From now on, do things differently,” which implies that the child did something substandard just now, and certainly not, “You just treated Johnny very unfairly, and next time I really expect you to try hard to be fair,” which tethers responsibility to guilt. No, this parent says simply, “From now on, treat others fairly.” This sends an unhelpfully confusing message to the child. She really doesn’t learn about fairness, since she doesn’t learn what she did unfairly just now. Indeed, she doesn’t even learn that she has done something unfair just now. So to that extent her ability to identify future fair acts is not enhanced, and her motivation to do so is not strengthened. So too, I believe, with citizens. If we just say to people, “From now on conserve energy,” without showing in detail how the wasteful lifestyle of Americans contributes to global harms, little learning takes place, and moral incentives are not created. By contrast, when we say, “Look how large your carbon footprint is,” learning is promoted and motivation is strengthened by a confrontation with one’s own obviously quite harmful acts. Young’s second argument is that focusing on blame often has the tendency to pin fault on a small number of culprits while making most of us feel exonerated. Well, of course that might happen, but clearly it need not. It all depends on the causal analysis. A good analysis of each person’s contribution to global warming applies blame to all Americans who have not made major efforts to reduce their contribution. We might compare, here, two recent films. “Who Killed the Electric Car?”2 was a very entertaining and revealing whodunit. As its title implies, it had the aim of pinning blame on a small number of individuals. In the end, a handful of executives and politicians end up looking guilty, and the general public felt lulled and relaxed. By contrast, Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”3 is much more inconvenient, because it does show us all the collective task that we have mostly all been shirking. For the most part, it directs us toward the future, but not without placing blame on most people for 2 Directed by Chris Paine, Sony Picture Classics 2006. 3 Presented by Al Gore, Directed by Davis Guggenheim, Paramount 2006.

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culpable inattention. So Young’s second pragmatic point is sometimes true, but need not be. The third claim is that a focus on blame distracts our attention from background conditions. Well, once again, it may do so, but any good allocation of blame would not do so. When we ask whether a child is to blame for not doing a household chore such as mowing the lawn, we can ignore background conditions that make it unusually difficult to carry out that chore (such as a tornado, or a power cut). But we should not and we need not. If we do, we surely won’t get the ascription of blame right. Young’s fourth clam is that playing the blame game simply makes people feel defensive and evasive, while exhorting them to responsibility is more likely to produce cooperation. This seems to me a powerful truth, but a partial one. Surely it is true that if you want people to come together around a cause, it can sometimes be counterproductive to tell them all the time how bad they are. They may then just want to avoid you, whereas if you show them what they can do in the future they are more likely to listen to what you say. On the other hand, guilt is also a powerful incentive to make reparations, and when the appeal to guilt is coupled in the right way with respect for the person, or even love, it can even more powerfully produce such motivations. Here I think it is useful to distinguish between two different ways of ascribing guilt. One way is narrowly targeted: we look for a few ringleaders and single them out for blame. This indeed is likely to produce squirming evasion of future responsibility, and it is also likely to make others sit back and relax, rather than shouldering their share of the burden. On the other hand, there is another way of ascribing guilt that is general: it says that we all participate in a wasteful lifestyle (or almost all of us), and we all need to change. This is the sort of guilt that Martin Luther King Jr. skillfully evoked in his white audience, when he spoke of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence as a “bad check” that has come back marked “insufficient funds,” or as a “promissory note” on which the United States has “defaulted so far as her citizens of color were concerned.”4 Now of course King did not harp on guilt: most of his message was futuredirected. But it was important that the ascription of guilt was part of the mix, for the situation of black Americans was bad, and white Americans, through their inaction and negligence, even if they were not malicious ringleaders, bore the guilt for that ongoing situation, 100 years after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. If King had dwelt only on the glorious future, without telling white Americans that they have been irresponsible and negligent in the

4 Speech delivered on August 28, 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, popularly known as the “I Have a Dream” speech. Among the thousands of places where one can find the full text of this speech is www.americanrhetoric. com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm.

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past, I think his speech would have had less power to motivate constructive engagement than it in fact did. Finally, Young tells us that guilt makes people turn inward and focus on themselves, rather than turning outward to focus on others. Well, again, maybe. But why can’t sincere self-examination be a very important ingredient in the process of genuinely turning outward toward others? It seems to me that it’s only when we identify and work against our own narcissism, our selfish anxiety, and our desire to lord it over others that we can truly turn toward others, somewhat more freely of those powerful impediments. Nor need these processes be two separate phases of a moral life. Gandhi’s life, and the movement he created, shows that a turning within can sometimes be not just the catalyst of a turning outward, it can be simultaneous with it. Both he and his followers learned to practice a critique of their own violence, their own tendencies to domination, as an essential aspect of their freedom struggle on behalf of the nation as a whole. I guess I think that if we turn outward prematurely, before we conduct an honest critique of our own inner world, our dedication to ameliorative action may prove shallow or short-lived. Forces that remain in the personality, pushing us toward narcissism, will ultimately distract us from social efforts. I do not feel confident about any of this. I feel that the logical next step would be to have a conversation with Iris about all these points. I think that together we would have gotten much deeper into the topic, understanding more clearly where and why we differ. I am sure I would have come to understand, for example, why Iris does not adopt Gandhi’s view of political struggle, or my related, but rather psychoanalytically influenced, view of narcissism and aggression. I am sure she would have had a lot to say and that it would have been very powerful. Unfortunately, however, that conversation is no longer possible, and it remains for all of us to try to continue the argument as best we can.

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4

Injustice, Evil, and Oppression Claudia Card

A New Paradigm Iris Young’s Justice and the Politics of Difference (1990a; hereafter JPD) quickly became one of the most frequently cited sources in feminist philosophy on the nature of oppression.1 In this book, Young rejects what she calls a distributive paradigm of justice. She presents an alternative to approaches influenced by John Rawls’s idea of justice as fairness in distributing benefits and burdens of social cooperation. Rawlsian approaches tend to begin from and become fixated on economic and political conflict resolution under ideal conditions. Young does not take justice’s primary concern to be adjudicating conflicts of interest regarding the distribution of such goods as income and wealth. On her view, the primary concern is to work toward a society that would be free of oppression and domination. This approach centers on human development and power relationships, not on external benefits and burdens. And it begins from a set of very nonideal conditions. We might call it an agency or human development paradigm. In Inclusion and Democracy (Young 2000; hereafter ID) Young delves still deeper into the evils of oppression, distinguishing them from the harms of domination. Yet evil is not a concept that she uses. It is very deliberately not a concept that she uses. That point brings out a divergence between her interests and mine.

For helpful comments on an earlier draft of this essay, I am grateful to Alison Jaggar, Ann Ferguson, Paula Gottlieb, and the audience attending a session devoted to the work of Iris Young at the Central Division meetings of the American Philosophical Association in Chicago, 2007. 1 Another feminist classic on oppression (also cited by Young) is Marilyn Frye’s “Oppression” (Frye 1983, pp. 1–16).

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She views oppression through the lenses of justice and a politics of human diversity that evolves into a politics of inclusion. I have a history of viewing oppression through the lenses of moral categories. Young’s work has persuaded me to rethink my long-standing assumption that oppression is necessarily a product of culpable wrongdoing. I return to this matter at the end of this essay. JPD did not offer a comprehensive theory of justice, nor did it aim to do so. Still, the more focused theorizing into which it led Young is no less complex than a theory would be. Instead of beginning with the positive idea of justice, Young begins with everyday injustices and works toward a vision of what a society might be like without them. ID further clarifies the forms that injustices take. In ID, Young distinguishes between oppression and domination in a way that seems to me exactly right. Oppression, she notes, hinders self-development, whereas domination hinders self-determination (2000, p. 31). The focus is on agency in both cases—agency, not the sorts of external goods that can be multiplied through cooperative efforts. Those who are oppressed are generally also dominated. But those who are dominated need not be oppressed as well. At least, they need not suffer hindrance to the development of capacities other than capacities for self-determination. And yet, historically, domination has often facilitated oppression. Important to Young’s argument in ID is that inclusion of diverse social groups in a society’s political processes undermines whatever tendency there might otherwise be for some groups to dominate others. In that way, inclusion tends to block a great facilitator of oppression. JPD is widely cited for its portrayal of oppression as presenting five faces: exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence (Young 1990a, p. 40, pp. 48–63). Of these five faces, marginalization has garnered less attention from philosophers than the others. In ID Young indirectly makes marginalization a focus. She does that by developing the requirements of its opposite, namely, inclusion. The project of ID further concretizes JPD’s rejection of a distributive paradigm of justice. Developing agency, in Young’s vision of justice, takes priority over achieving fairness in the distribution of the kinds of goods that it makes sense to distribute. An inclusive society prioritizes political participation by all groups, thereby making the oppression of minorities much less likely. In the sections that follow this one, I take a closer look at Young’s views on oppression, with special attention to her work on groups. The evolution of her thought on social groups is an important part of her philosophical legacy. It interests me especially in relation to collective evildoing, and I have learned much from it. Young is critical of the idea that our identities are simply determined by the social groups to which we belong (2000, pp. 99–102). Rather, these social groups (many of which are not chosen) “condition” us by delineating our options and by delineating the range of our future possibilities. Groups into which we are born include much of what I have elsewhere called “the unnatural lottery” (Card 1996, p. 20). Rawls has described the natural assets

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and liabilities with which one is born as one’s luck in the natural lottery (Rawls 1999; pp. 11, 13). By the unnatural lottery, I meant that network of unjust social norms (often nothing very natural about them) into the midst of which one is born, which determine one’s starting points in life (and often one’s future prospects). At least some of the social groups that Young mentions (gender groups, for example) are arguably part of a basic social framework that Rawls calls “the basic structure of society” (Rawls 1999b, pp. 6–10). Still, we make our own identities, Young maintains, through our actions, interactions, and choices. In some cases, she notes, it is not so much the groups to which we belong but significant events in our lives that become central to our identities. Perhaps an example would be non-Jewish, non-German survivors of World War II: being such a survivor might be a defining event in many such lives, more so than the social groups to which they belonged.

Varieties of Social Collectivity Social groups are at the forefront of Young’s thought on justice from the beginning. She opens JPD with the question, “What are the implications for political philosophy of the claims of new group-based social movements associated with left politics—such movements as feminism, Black liberation, American Indian movements, and gay and lesbian liberation?” (1990a, p. 3).These liberation movements point to the “differences” of that book’s title. Yet the groups indicated by these names actually form an odd list, as she soon realized. Women, ethnic groups, and people identified by sexual orientation, not to mention age groups and religious groups (added a few pages later, pp. 42–43), are not all “groups” of the same order, even though none of them is a mere aggregate. Their structures are significantly different. Members of such groups are related to one another in significantly different kinds of ways. In JPD she writes, “A social group” is “a collective of persons differentiated from at least one other group by cultural forms, practices, or way of life,” and its members “have a specific affinity” with one another based on these things, which leads them to associate with each other either more than with those outside the group or in a different way (1990a, p. 43). She was no doubt thinking of cultural groups, perhaps African-American or American Indian ones, when she wrote those words. But she was soon led to draw distinctions among different kinds of social groups in light of such facts as that many women (for example) appear to have no specific affinity for women and that the same is true of other groups, even many cultural ones. A well-known result of oppression has been widespread horizontal hostility (although that is not a term Young uses), that is, intra-group hostility. The hostilities among women encouraged, even cultivated and rewarded, by oppressive practices are well-known: mother/ daughter, mother-in-law/daughter-in-law, wife/whore, heterosexual/lesbian,

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and so on. And yet, affinities are there, too. As Adrienne Rich noted three decades ago: “Women have always lied to each other.” “Women have always whispered the truth to each other.” Both of these axioms are true. (Rich 1979, p. 189) Four years later, appreciating all this and more, in her Signs essay, “Gender as Seriality: Thinking about Women as a Social Collective” (1994a), Young stole the idea of “seriality” from Jean-Paul Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason (1976), becoming—as she put it—one of Linda Singer’s banditas (who raid male-authored works for useful concepts). She played with the idea of seriality in a feminist context, making creative applications of that concept that Sartre did not anticipate. “Gender as Seriality,” reprinted as the opening chapter of Intersecting Voices (Young 1997a), applies a distinction, which Young attributes to Sartre, between serial collectivities and other social groups. Sartre, she says, illustrated serial collectivity with the examples of people waiting in line for a bus and people listening to the radio. Bus riders and radio listeners are members of series that do not construct their members’ identities. Nor do members share common characteristics or have a particular affinity for one another or even awareness of themselves as belonging to a social collectivity. Yet they are not mere aggregates. The glue that binds members of a serial collectivity consists of routine activities, habits, and materials which each engages for their own purposes. Young began to explore the idea that women, like bus riders, are a serial collectivity. She identified two basic externalities that unify women into a series. One is a sexual division of labor. The other is enforced, institutionalized heterosexuality. In “Gender as Seriality” (1994a), Young follows Sartre in reserving the term “social groups” for self-conscious unions that members of series sometimes form deliberately to respond to social structures in which, as members of a series, they had previously participated unselfconsciously. Series are here treated as a backdrop to the formation of other social groups. Before women’s groups were consciously formed, “woman” was not an identity. There were, of course, women, as there are bus riders. But we did not tend to identify ourselves as women. Rather, we tended to identify ourselves in terms of our relationships to significant others (usually male). When we published, many of us used initials instead of giving our first names, in order to hide our gender. We thought of ourselves as human beings. Not as women. We wanted to be perceived as human beings. Not as women. Yet even when “woman” became for some of us an important, even central, part of our identity, that was not because of our common female anatomy (actually quite diverse). It was because of our choices regarding the importance of certain shared experiences of the external structures—including sexual divisions of labor and enforced heterosexuality— that had made us into what Young initially calls a serial collectivity.

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In ID Young moves further from Sartre and articulates her own vocabulary to mark differences among collectivities. She first distinguishes aggregates from both associations and social groups. She then divides social groups into structural ones and cultural ones. Both associations and social groups are distinguished from aggregates in being defined by interactive relationships among their members. All the philosophers in the world form an aggregate, not unified by any external structures or materials. But some of us belong to associations of philosophers. Associations—such as the American Philosophical Association—are purposefully constituted for specific functions (like holding conventions at which papers, such as an early version of this one, can be presented). Social groups, in contrast to associations, are less clearly defined. They are not explicitly constituted. It is less usual to join a social group and more common to discover that one belongs to such groups. Among social groups, ethnic groups are paradigmatic of the cultural ones, whereas groups distinguished by gender, race, class, sexuality, or ability are structural. Structural groups are the ones that would be naturally thought of as Sartrean serial collectivities. The ingenious idea that women are a structural group is a very interesting way to make concrete Frye’s claim, in her essay “The Possibility of Feminist Theory,” that what unify women are overlapping patterns, rather than common characteristics (1992, pp. 59–75). The patterns of interaction structured by the sexual division of labor and compulsory heterosexuality are excellent candidates to play that role. Social groups are porous. Not rigidly bounded, they overlap. They “emerge from the way people interact” (Young 2000, p. 90). “The attributes by which some individuals are classed together in the ‘same’ group appear as similar enough to do so only by the emergent comparison with others” (ibid.). Young cites as an example the Maori, who, prior to the British conquest of New Zealand “saw themselves simply as belonging to dozens or hundreds of groups with different lineage and relation to natural resources” (ibid.). Upon reading this, I recalled a man in my “Feminism and Sexual Politics” class who remarked one day in 1980, “I did not know I was Cuban until I came to the United States.”

Who Is Oppressed? And Who Is Responsible for It? For Young (as for Frye) oppression is structural. The agents of oppression are interlocking social structures that trap the people they oppress. At the same time that the norms of the sexual division of labor and of enforced heterosexuality oppress us they unify us into the structural collectivity we know as “women.” The idea is that such social norms actually make individuals into women in the process of oppressing them. This idea fits well with Frye’s

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observation that the term “oppression” embeds the term “press,” which suggests “reduce,” “mold,” and “immobilize” (1983, pp. 2–7). Sexist structures mold us into women. Indeed. Who, then, or what, is oppressed? Who is molded into a woman? We say, “Women are oppressed.” Yet insofar as women are a structural group, it appears that there would be no women apart from oppressive social structures, as there would be no bus riders apart from buses. Who, then, becomes a woman? (Beauvoir implies: one does. “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” [1953, p. 273]). We say who becomes a bus rider by means of proper names or memberships in cultural or other structural groups. Then, is it social groups all the way down? That is, individuals interacting systematically in certain ways? If so, it would seem that there is a social aspect to our identities, whether we embrace it or not, that is not a function of our choices. Social groups may not determine our sense of who we are. But they often determine the ways that others identify us and the histories that are in socially significant ways ours. If women are constructed by oppressive social practices, such as a sexual division of labor and enforced heterosexuality, it seems that women would cease to exist without those practices, as bus riders would not exist without buses. We would not cease to exist. But we would cease to be women. For those practices might not be replaced by alternatives that unified all of us who are currently women into a new structural group. Or, is it possible that some less inclusive social groups deliberately formed by women would perpetuate women’s existence as descendants who inherit a certain past, even though structures of sex oppression had been abolished or disappeared? In that case, we would still be women, but “woman” would have changed its meaning. It would have evolved. A related question inevitably occurs to me: Would there be no lesbians if the social group women did not exist, if there were no women? To whom are lesbians attracted? Mostly women, not just lesbians. Young’s account of structural groups can illuminate the debate over whether lesbians are women. Insofar as we cease to participate in the sexual division of labor and enforced heterosexuality, there are grounds for regarding us as not women. Monique Wittig took that position, maintaining, in what was a maverick idea when she first espoused it, that lesbians are not women, that a lesbian has to be a notwoman (Wittig 1992, pp. 9–20). Sarah Hoagland’s lesbian ethics was very influenced by that view (Hoagland 1988). And yet, whether we have in fact been conditioned by the practices that form so many of us into women is not entirely a matter of our choices. The processes that mold us begin before we are developed enough to make choices. Even without sexual relationships with men, most of us learn to “handle” men in stereotypically feminine ways without being particularly conscious of doing so. And so, it can also be argued that lesbians are part of the structural group women despite our choices. Most of us

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who identify as lesbian have been raised to be women and have been treated as women by most of the people who interact with us. Yet the question remains: if the sexual division of labor and compulsory heterosexuality ceased to exist, would there be no lesbians? Perhaps not. Samesex relationships could continue. But there might be no basis to classify parties to same-sex relationships as members of a social group, any more than there is any basis for classifying left-handed people as a social group. No external structures currently unify left-handers into a social group, as they might do if left-handers’ needs were more systematically taken into account. We are not, according to Young, to think of social structures as ontologically any kind of super entity over and above the individuals who are systematically interacting in certain ways, in accord with certain norms, making use of certain kinds of materials, and so on. To hold structures responsible for oppression, then, is presumably to hold at least some individuals responsible for oppression. But which individuals? Young begins to address this question more fully in Global Challenges (2007). In oppressive institutions, the oppressed interact systematically with those who dominate and exploit them and with the privileged who benefit from others’ oppression. We know that Young, who is not into the blame game, would not blame women for sex oppression, although many (most?) women are complicit in sex oppression in a variety of ways—for example, in supporting the norms of compulsory heterosexuality. Questions of responsibility become important for securing accountability (which need not involve blame) and determining who should shoulder which burdens of change. ID argues for inclusion of the oppressed in decisions that affect them. There is room for further work on the nature of such inclusion, on issues of accountability, and on distributing the burdens of change.

The Nature of Oppression With luck, most of us can develop capacities to evaluate, criticize, and influence at least some of the groups into which we are born as well as many of the groups with which we may ally ourselves (even groups from which we may distance ourselves). One of the most serious harms of oppression is systematic hindrance of the development of these capacities, for example, punishing as disloyal or treasonous attempts at criticism or dissent. Individuals who could, if they wished, identify as biracial, bisexual, bicultural, bilingual, or multi- almost any of these things are familiar with pressures to identify with one group at the expense of the other(s) and with accusations of disloyalty or self-hatred for refusing to do so. Oppression can limit our ability to form identities that we can affirm, tolerably coherent identities that are relatively stable, that have integrity, and that support self-esteem and self-respect.

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To appreciate how her conception of oppression evolved, let us revisit Young’s five faces of oppression in light of her later work on social groups, tracing some of the modifications that the later work requires in her earlier work. The faces, recall, are exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence (Young 1990a, pp. 40, 48–63). In JPD Young invokes Marx’s (1967) account of exploitation as appropriation. The capitalist appropriates the powers of workers. Politically, this is more on target than Kant’s view of exploitation (Kant 1996; pp. 79–81). It is an understatement to say that oppressive exploiters fail to respect others as ends in themselves. Marx’s capitalists not only use workers but use them up, drain their substance, suck them dry. And how do they do this? It may be that no individual capitalist has a maxim of action that captures the impact of exploitative interaction. Social structures do it, which is shorthand for many individuals interacting systematically in complex ways with effects that may not be initially foreseeable but that can eventually come into view as people begin to acquire a consciousness of what they have been doing. Those who acquire such a consciousness may attempt criticism and rejection of the exploitative practices. Suppression of such criticism and dissent is apt to be culpable even if the practices criticized were not. Nonunionized workers were Sartre’s paradigm of serial collectivity. Exploited workers are robbed of control over their powers and of benefits derivable from them. If this appropriation disempowers them too much or too rapidly, it becomes self-defeating. Hence, the well-known tension between oppression and exploitation: to be exploitable, one must remain useful, at least until one can be replaced. There must be power there to exploit. Yet appropriation of a worker’s labor does stunt the worker’s growth as an interactive social agent. The result is apt to be a stultifying life—no hope or vision for the future, not much different from being a long-term prisoner. The working poor who resist Marx’s view or who find it offensive tend to emphasize kinds of control and forms of culture that are less dependent on economics—humor, storytelling, songs, religious ideals, and moral values, all of which can ameliorate a materially deprived life. Yet the individual worker is as unable as the individual woman to get off the bus. Foreshadowing ID, Young wrote in JPD that marginalization may be the most dangerous face of oppression. The marginalized are expelled from useful participation in social life. She cited the old, people with disabilities, single mothers and their children, the involuntarily unemployed, and American Indians, “especially those on reservations” (1990a, p. 53). People who are marginalized are vulnerable to potentially severe material deprivation, even premature death. There may be no motive, as there is in exploitation, to keep the marginalized alive and functioning. Yet one might object that those who have disabilities but enjoy class privilege may not be vulnerable to deprivation or social invisibility. Franklin Delano

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Roosevelt presided over the United States from a wheelchair. ID emphasizes that we belong to many structural groups, some of which can negate or diminish an individual’s vulnerability to the oppressiveness suffered by so many in others. Who or what, then, is marginalized? Is it the group? Is it only the unlucky members of a group? Is it, rather, the facts of disability? Instead of offering an answer to this question asked in this way, in ID Young revisits marginalization by way of its opposite, inclusion. She is then able to offer a more layered account of marginalization that invokes practices of democratic representation and the many possibilities of inclusion and exclusion associated with them. That a group is inadequately represented does not, because of multiple group membership, entail that individual members are expelled from social life or that they are materially deprived. Marginalization, now finally understood as exclusion from participation in democratic processes, is a matter of the degrees to which and the ways in which individuals can be so excluded in a less than just society. The third face of oppression, which Young called “powerlessness” (but probably should have called “disempowerment,” to capture the idea that this is something done to people) is redundant. All oppression is disempowering insofar as it hinders the ability to exercise and develop one’s capacities for agency (one’s “power” in the broadest sense). Cultural imperialism receives a truer and more careful account in ID than it had received in JPD. In ID, cultural imperialism is presented as a form of domination, rather than, as in JPD, as a face of oppression. Recall that domination hinders self-determination, whereas oppression hinders self-development. What cultural imperialism interferes with is self-determination. It does not necessarily hinder self-development, although it can. Cultural imperialism can be deeply unjust, arrogant, and disrespectful without actually disempowering. But it need not be any of these things. Consider denazification. Denazification aimed to destroy Nazi culture. Was it imperialistic? It forcibly imposed democratic values on a very undemocratic society. Sounds like domination. But was it also oppressive? I would say, rather, the opposite. It liberated others from Nazi oppression. It did not hinder the development of the capacities of those who had become Nazis. What it hindered were extremely oppressive uses of their capacities to govern and to administer political institutions. It restricted the autonomy of those who had used their autonomy to oppress others. Violence is the last of Young’s five faces in JPD. Whether violence is oppressive likewise depends on the nature of the violence, how it is used, and its effects. Violence can be used to dominate without stunting the development of capacities for agency. Some violence actually stimulates development. My grandfather as a child was thrown into deep water and told to sink or swim. That was a violent lesson. But he learned very fast to swim. The case of violence suggests that Young’s faces of oppression are best seen not as analytic of the concept of oppression but as characteristic forms

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that injustice takes. Injustices include many forms of domination as well as oppression. Young’s aim was never to offer an analysis, in the sense of a set of necessary and sufficient conditions, of oppression. It was, rather, to zero in on the most important forms that oppression takes in the real world, to elucidate the values at stake in eliminating oppression.

Concluding Thoughts Young seems to me to have more in common with Rawls than she recognizes. Both are more Stoic and less Epicurean in their approaches to social justice than John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, and other welfare economists. Both Young and Rawls place a higher value on agency than on external goods. Agency in Rawls’s approach plays a key role behind a hypothetical veil of ignorance in proposing principles that would remove obstacles to action, insuring basic liberties for all, refusing to exclude anyone in advance from competing for political office. In the lexical ordering of his two famous principles of justice, Rawls treats basic liberties as of far greater importance than any of the other primary goods except self-respect. There can be no trade-offs in Rawls’s theory between basic liberties and income or wealth. In Young’s theorizing about justice, agency becomes key in her concern to include in political processes people from a wide variety of social groups and to eliminate the kinds of practices that can hinder the development of one’s very abilities to act, even when there are no external obstacles. Like Rawls, she is more concerned with agents and relationships than with such external goods as income and wealth. But her theoretical starting point is opposite to his. He begins with a vision of principles for evaluating social practices under the ideal supposition that most people would abide by requirements of justice most of the time, yielding a nearly just society. She begins with the negative concept of injustice, with real-world heavy duty instances of it, and tries to imagine what a society free of injustices would have to be like. Finally, I want to return to the divergence noted at the beginning of this essay between Young’s approach to oppression and my own. I have been especially interested in oppression as an evil, even a paradigm evil. Evils, on my theory, are wrongs that deserve priority of attention, the worst wrongs. Not all wrongs, not even all injustices, are evils. The challenge in responding to evils is how to do so without doing evil in the process. My approach to justice, highly colored by Rawls, has been to think of it as a part of ethics and to regard one’s sense of justice as part of one’s moral sense. Young’s interest in oppression is more political than moral. She is concerned with mobilizing effective resistance to oppression without making moral judgments regarding the sources of that oppression. She was frank about her reasons for not making those moral judgments. Negative moral judgments,

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she feared, would reduce the likelihood of cooperation from those so judged, and their cooperation may be very needed. My interest in evils, however, is not basically an interest in blaming but in identifying the worst wrongs and in thinking how to respond honorably, without doing further evil. Identifying culpable perpetrators can be important to instituting productive accountability and acceptable distributions of the burdens of change. I have long thought of oppression as a paradigm of evil, in the ethical sense of “evil” developed and defended in my book The Atrocity Paradigm (Card 2002). On the theory of that book, evils are reasonably foreseeable intolerable harms produced by culpable wrongdoing. In regarding oppression as paradigmatically evil, I have thought it not only intolerably harmful but also culpably produced. Yet, if what makes a practice oppressive is that it hinders self-development in the oppressed, there is no necessity that this hindrance be culpably produced. Oppression, like many injustices, is definable independently of the psychological states of individuals. Oppression is defined in terms of what people suffer (undergo), not in terms of what others do to cause it (although the conduct of others does cause it). In that regard, oppression is similar to injustice in Aristotle’s narrow sense of that concept (Aristotle 1925, pp. 106–36): not receiving one’s due. What counts as one’s due is definable independently of the psychological states of the agents, if any, who are responsible for what one has (or lacks). Aristotle saw this and struggled with an inadequate vocabulary for drawing the distinctions that need to be drawn regarding whether someone acted unjustly or not (Aristotle 1925, pp. 125–28). Perhaps because Young approaches oppression by way of the idea of injustice, she is inclined to see it from the points of view of those who suffer it, who may not understand its causes or even care so much what caused it as how to end it. To some extent, her readiness to suppose that much oppression is not the product of culpable activity may be a result of her preoccupation with routine governmental and economic practices. My recent preoccupations have been torture, terrorism, and genocide, in which culpability figures prominently. For a while I was inclined to reconcile Young’s view and mine regarding culpability and oppression by noting that although a practice might have arisen without culpable wrongdoing, when an appreciation of its oppressiveness becomes possible on the part of agents who can resist or work for change, then refusals to engage in resistance or work for change can turn what had been a social disaster into a moral evil. Refusals and other failures to work for change can certainly be culpable. Yet I now think the more important point is that Young is right to appreciate that oppression does not necessarily presuppose culpability, even if it is always an injustice and even if much oppression is in fact also the product of culpable wrongdoing. To the extent that Young is right about the likelihood that oppressive social structures can come into being without culpability on the part of their agents, I cannot continue to regard oppression as paradigmatic of evil without

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modifying my theory of evil. I do want to be able to make sense of oppression as evil. But doing so requires me to modify my analysis of evil, at least as applied to institutions or practices. I have become persuaded in thinking about torture that a better analysis of evil would substitute “inexcusable wrongdoing” for “culpable wrongdoing.”2 With this revision, evils are “reasonably foreseeable intolerable harms produced by inexcusable wrongdoing.” “Inexcusable” here refers not only to the absence of diminished agency but also to the absence of even partially justifying reasons, reasons that could mitigate blameworthiness in accountable agents or the injustice of a social practice. The absence of mitigating reasons does not imply the presence of wickedness or sadism. Often, ordinary selfishness is inexcusable, and it can bring about reasonably foreseeable intolerable harm. Evil in institutions or practices can, of course, take the form of inexcusably culpable deeds by individuals. But it can also, or instead, take the form of norms that are utterly indefensible, from a moral point of view, whether those who are guided by those norms are aware of it or not. An advantage of this revision is that it preserves, better than my earlier analysis, the weightiness of judgments of evil. Culpability has degrees. “Evil” may be too severe a judgment when the agents of even major harm were not very culpable. Another advantage of substituting “inexcusable wrongdoing” for “culpable wrongdoing” in the definition of “evils” is that the new definition can make better sense of structural evils and evil in institutions. “Inexcusable” does not always have the same meaning when applied to institutions or practices as when applied to individuals. When applied to individuals, it implies culpability. But applied to practices or institutions, “inexcusable” can mean only that the rules, the norms, that define, or structure, the practice are not even partially justified, morally speaking. That is, there are no good moral reasons in favor of those norms. That view is compatible with Young’s belief that oppressive social structures can evolve without culpability in individuals. There are, of course, explanations for the existence of such structures. But there may be no justifying reasons for them. There may be no culpability, either, if no one is accountable for the existence of the structures, even if individuals are fully accountable under other descriptions for what they do. I am still inclined to think that oppressive structures that are entirely the product of non-culpable activities are relatively rare. Young was inclined to think they are, on the contrary, all too common. But that is not a philosophical disagreement between us. If the alternative to regarding oppression as an evil is to regard it simply as an injustice, there arises the danger of understating both the wrong and the harm of oppression. For although many injustices are grave, some are fairly trivial (petty thefts, or unjust salary discriminations among handsomely paid CEOs). Oppression, in contrast, is never trivial. Yet evil, as Bat-Ami Bar On 2 I owe this idea initially to Kekes (2005), whose second book on evil characterizes evils as inexcusably wrong, although I develop that idea in my own way.

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has recently reminded me (2004), is a primarily moral category, not primarily a political one. Justice straddles both ethics and politics. If a specifically political concept exists that corresponds to “evil” in picking out the most serious political wrongs (ones that are never trivial) as “evil” picks out the most serious moral wrongs, perhaps that concept is oppression. Unlike domination, oppression is always an evil. If the concept of oppression enables us to identify political atrocities and distinguish them from lesser political wrongs, as the concept of evil enables us to identify moral atrocities and distinguish them from lesser moral wrongs, Young’s lifelong work on oppression bears a certain analogy or parallel to my own focus on evil, despite our differences.

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The Faces of Animal Oppression Lori Gruen

About fifteen years ago, I wrote an article analyzing the connection between the oppression of women and the oppression of animals.1 I argued that nonhuman animals are oppressed in a myriad of ways and that examining the mutually reinforcing structures that support the oppression of nonhuman animals and the oppression of other groups is an important liberatory project (Gruen 1993). These claims were, and continue to be, met with some skepticism. In response to one critic, I turned to Iris Young’s “The Five Faces of Oppression” for intellectual support.2 Here I will return to the question of oppression beyond the species boundary, again drawing on Young’s insights and explore how it can be claimed meaningfully that nonhuman animals, like so many human groups that differ from those in positions of power and privilege, suffer from exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence and thus can be considered oppressed. When we understand the situation that individuals and groups are in as oppressive ones, then greater attention can be paid to rectifying the particular wrongs caused by oppression.

Animal Oppression Humans have always interacted with nonhuman animals, and while contexts and relationships have changed the structure of the relations have, arguably, stayed 1 When it is not too rhetorically cumbersome, I will use the most accurate phrase “nonhuman animals.” When I do occasionally use the term “animals” I am not including human animals in the category. 2 Gruen, 1996. “The Five Faces of Oppression” was originally published in 1988. References here are to the pages in Young (1990a). Iris and I never had a conversation about her views on the oppression of animals. I always hoped we would “get to this someday.”

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much the same. Humans dictate how nonhuman animals in human environments will fare. Given that human environments are continuously expanding, that human behaviors—i.e., emitting green house gases and polluting water and air—cannot be contained in one geographical region, and that we are encroaching on even the most remote places on earth, it is not unreasonable to claim that virtually all nonhuman animals are living in human-impacted environments. Most of our actions affect them. Humans dominate and control the lives of nonhuman animals. Humans oppress nonhuman animals. While some individual relationships may not look or feel like dominating and oppressive ones, the structure of the relations are characterized by the forces of oppression. When we look at Young’s categories of oppression we can see how this is the case. Young suggests that “the central insight expressed in the concept of exploitation” (Young 1990a, p. 49, my emphasis) is that this type of oppression occurs when one group systematically extracts the labor of another to benefit themselves and not the laborer. Although the concept of exploitation in traditional Marxist and more recent socialist-feminist theory has been reserved for human laborers, it is not at all difficult to expand the concept to include nonhumans. Consider the plight of dairy cows, battery hens, and sows in factory farms. Intensively reared dairy cows are so overworked that they begin to metabolize their own muscle in order to continue to produce milk, a process referred to in the industry as “milking off their backs.” The cows are milked by machine and often suffer from painful inflammation of the mammary glands, or mastitis. Sows are confined for their entire lives and repeatedly artificially inseminated so as to produce piglets who are removed three weeks after birth, fattened up, and sold for consumption. In factory farms, sows spend most of their lives in crates that are seven feet long and two feet wide—they literally have no room to move. Hens are kept in battery cages stacked tier upon tier in huge warehouses. Confined seven or eight to a cage, they too cannot move or even spread one wing. Conveyor belts bring in food and water and carry eggs away. The lives and bodies of female animals on factory farms are completely controlled to produce the maximum amount of product at the smallest cost to the producer. Factory farming, a process in which over five billion animals annually in the United States alone are intensively confined, manipulated, and ultimately slaughtered to produce the greatest profit for the few agribusinesses that control the market, not only exploits female animals’ biological and reproductive labor, but also denies all factory farmed animals their lives so that some humans can profit. The animals are exploited and when their labor is thoroughly extracted, they are killed. Young’s second category, marginalization, involves, in part, separating one group and viewing them as dependent upon the dominant group. The conceptual structure of the human/animal divide, in mythology, in religion, in history, in art, and also in material terms, defines human as not animal, as above animal, as dominant over the animals. Human civilization and progress

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is measured by how far we humans have come from our animal ancestors. The group human is framed by the nonhuman animals in the margins. The marginalization of animals is not just conceptual or symbolic. It has direct and often devastating consequences on their lives. Consider those animals, particularly chimpanzees and orangutans, who are used in entertainment and commercials. Taken from their mothers at birth and raised to be comedic human stand-ins, infant apes are often kept alone and terrorized into performing. Dressed in human clothes, running amok in offices or shopping stores, these individuals are deprived of species typical behaviors and community with others of their kind. When they become too big to handle (usually around puberty, between 6–8 years old) they are further marginalized, sent to roadside zoos and other substandard facilities, where they might spend the remainder of their lives, in the case of chimpanzees that can be as long as 50 years, alone in a small cage. Young suggests that even when marginals have their needs provided for, “injustices of marginality would remain in the form of uselessness [and] boredom . . .” (Young 1990a, p. 55). One need only visit one of the many unaccredited zoos or roadside exotic animal “farms” to see lives of uselessness and boredom, animals pace, rock back and forth, and look out at the world with what Jane Goodall has called “the thousand mile stare.”3 Young illustrates the oppressive nature of powerlessness by analyzing class injustices yet much of what she argues can be extrapolated to the conditions under which nonhuman animals live. Those who are powerless are denied the opportunity and authority to make choices about their own lives, they are inhibited in the development of their own capacities, and they are subject to disrespectful treatment. From zoos to feedlots, pet shops to laboratories, factory to fur farms, nonhuman animals are denied the most basic control over their lives. If they are allowed to reproduce, their infants are usually taken from them; they rarely have choices about when to eat, what to eat, or how much to eat; and very few have choices about basic movement, often forced to sit on cold concrete or other inappropriate substrate, and those who do live with others don’t have the option of choosing with whom to interact. Not only are actual nonhuman animals treated with disrespect in a myriad of ways, one of the most poignant ways of disrespecting humans is to compare them to a nonhuman animal.4 To be a nonhuman animal, in some way, is to be a thing unworthy of respect. Even seemingly powerful animals in the wild are increasingly rendered incapable of doing what they might otherwise choose to do as habitat is being

3 As described by Roger Fouts in “Serving a Life Sentence for Your Viewing Pleasure” a publication of the Chimpanzee Collaboratory at www.chimpcollaboratory.org. He writes, upon witnessing a young chimpanzee in a refrigerator-sized enclosure that when she looked at him and Jane, Jane commented that she was looking right through them with “the ‘thousand mile stare’ that she has seen in young children starving to death in Africa. This chimpanzee had given up. She was no longer a chimpanzee.” 4 Patricia Hill Collins (1991) describes this well in her discussion of the ways that Black women are linked to animals, and the way that this linkage allows for the perpetuation of oppression. See chapter 6.

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destroyed and they are more frequently meeting human animals who are certainly less physically powerful, but who have guns and other high-powered weapons that can be shot from jeeps, ships, and helicopters. Though the majority of nonhuman animals are hunted and killed for economic reasons, many are killed, at least ostensibly, in the name of culture. Consider the case of the Makah Nation, the only Native American tribe that has a treaty right to hunt and kill whales. With the exception of a legal hunt that led to the death of a three year old gray whale in 1999 and the illegal hunt that mortally wounded a gray whale in the fall of 2007, the tribe had not hunted whales for over seventy years but they are campaigning to be granted permission to do so again. Most Makah view the hunt as a way to reclaim their traditions and to provide the younger generation with the basis of identities that can help to shape their goals and aspirations (although some elder members of the Makah community view the hunt as a travesty). For the majority of the Makah the cultural value of whale killing is crucial to their identities. While some Makah have suggested that the cultural values and the value of the whales can be simultaneously promoted in the hunt, it might also be claimed that the Makah are imposing their culture on the whales, much the way white Americans are imposing their cultural values on the Makah and other Native Nations. These impositions represent a form of cultural imperialism and in the case of the whales, it denies the very possibility that a whale’s life may be valuable to her and her family independent of the dominant cultures conception of that value. (In the case of the Makah, they can only be considered a dominant culture in respect to the whales, certainly not within current U.S. society in which they are subject to cultural imperialism and marginalization.) In our personal lives, we can see the way cultural imperialism operates on the lives of our “domestic pets” or “companion animals.” When humans bring nonhuman animals into their homes, the nonhuman animals are forced to conform to the human rituals and practices that exist there. Cats and dogs are often denied full expression of their natural urges when their “owners” keep them indoors or put bells around cats’ necks to impact their success at hunting or forbid dogs from digging or otherwise scavenging for food. While there are clearly reasons that can be given for imposing such restrictions on companion animals, and while there are also important benefits that are gained by both the companion animals and their human companions in domesticated relationships that are thoughtful and compassionate,5 the potential benefits do not erase the fact that they are forced to live by our cultural standards. Finally there is the issue of violence. Young writes, “What makes violence a face of oppression is less the particular acts themselves, though these are often utterly horrible, than the social context surrounding them, which makes them possible and even acceptable. What makes violence a phenomenon of social 5 See, for example, Cuomo and Gruen (1997).

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injustice, and not merely an individual moral wrong, is its systemic character, its existence as a social practice” (Young 1990a, pp. 61–62). The assembly-line method of intensive agribusiness is violent from start to gruesome finish. During transport, many animals suffer broken bones; some are crushed or suffocated by animals that cannot control their movement during shipment. Early on, chicks have their beaks cut of with hot blades, cattle and other animals are branded with hot irons, and pigs have their tails cut off so they won’t be pulled off by other animals in the crowded conditions in which they spend their shortened lives. When they are transported again to slaughter, most are hung upside down while still conscious, then are jolted into unconsciousness before their throats are slit. Not all animals slaughtered are lucky enough to be unconscious as they bleed to death, however. While raising and slaughtering animals for food on factory farms is an extreme instance of the oppressive violence Young noted, it is also a social practice that obscures, and in some instances authorizes, other forms of violence against nonhuman animals.6 Though Young did not mention nonhuman animal oppression in her writing, another feminist philosopher, Marilyn Frye, uses the oppression of nonhumans as a metaphor for human oppression: The experience of oppressed people is that the living of one’s life is confined and shaped by forces and barriers which are not accidental or occasional and hence avoidable, but are systematically related to each other in such a way as to catch one between and among them and restrict or penalize motion in any direction. It is the experience of being caged in: all avenues, in every direction, are blocked or booby trapped. Cages. Consider a birdcage . . . It is perfectly “obvious” that the bird is surrounded by a network of systematically related barriers, no one of which would be the least hindrance to its flight, but which, by their relations to each other, are as confining as the solid walls of a dungeon. . . . (Frye 1983, pp. 4–5) Importantly, for billions of nonhuman animals their cages and stalls and crates and dungeons are not metaphors, but realities, and our understanding that their reality is one in which they are oppressed can provide ways of thinking about how to overcome oppression and achieve justice for them.

Recognition and Oppression The skepticism about applying the term oppression to nonhuman animals, and perhaps even adopting Young’s analysis of oppression to describe our 6 Many countries that use non-humans for food (whales in Japan, dogs in Korea, apes and other large animals in parts of Africa) rightly point out the hypocrisy of complaints by those in countries where animals are reared on factory farms.

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treatment of nonhuman animals, might be based on the idea that in order to be oppressed one has to experience oppression as oppression. Oppression is an experience that is subjectively understood as limiting, harmful, frustrating, disrespectful, and worse. Critics might contend that while the caged bird cannot fly away, only humans can understand the structures that prevent her flight. Nonhuman animals may be unable to do certain things in virtue of the ways in which we exploit and marginalize them, strip them of power and control, force them to live the way we want them to live and are physically and psychologically violent toward them, but they do not suffer from the extra knowledge that we are doing these things to them because of who or what they are. Certainly the fact that humans can be aware of their oppression represents an added feature of the injustice that oppression is for them. Oppression denies individuals and groups the ability to pursue their way of life or to express themselves. Oppression operates to systematically frustrate or deny a group of people the chance to live their lives as their own, to be, as it were, the narrators of their life stories. This way of understanding oppression has led some, for example Seyla Benhabib (2006, p. 441), to interpret Young as claiming that oppression represents a violation of the right to recognition. Since nonhuman animals are not the kinds of beings who can be said to formulate identities that would be the basis for a right to recognition, it would be a mistake to think of them as being oppressed. However, oppression does not reduce to being denied the right to recognition in the case of humans as well as in the case of nonhuman animals. Oppression can be measured objectively even if no member of the group being oppressed themselves, recognize their oppression. This is particularly important in cases in which “internalized oppression” or “false consciousness” or “adaptive preferences” may be operating. The fact that there are such cases suggests that determining whether or not oppression is operating will require an objective analysis of the context that goes beyond subjective assessment. In the case of women who may claim that their marginalization and their powerlessness do not constitute oppression, for example, we may want to determine who is benefiting from the practices that keep them marginal and powerless and who, as a group, is suffering from it. In many instances, though an individual woman may not identify her treatment as oppressive, the structures of oppression may nonetheless be present and those who perpetuate the structures continue to benefit from them, even in cases where the individuals being oppressed may also be said to benefit. For example, if becoming a sexual servant gets one out of conditions of horrible poverty, then there may be at least some benefit for the sexual slave, but that doesn’t mean the conditions in which she exists are not oppressive. There are those who benefit (the men) systematically and there are others (women) who may not themselves be sex slaves but who nonetheless suffer from stereotypes, prejudices, and material hardship that are enabled by the structures that allow sexual slavery. The importance of viewing

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oppression objectively is particularly clear in egregious cases of adaptive preference formation in which sex slaves view themselves as only worthy of being slaves and accept that they are getting what they deserve. In contexts in which the ability to think thoughts free of oppressive constructs is absent; it would be dangerous to understand oppression as a strictly subjective experience. Indeed, Young does not argue that one has to see oneself as oppressed in order to be oppressed. She believes the criteria for oppression that she identifies “are objective. They provide a means of refuting some people’s belief that their group is oppressed when it is not, as well as a means of persuading others that a group is oppressed when they doubt it.” (Young 1990a, p. 64). In recognizing this she provided us with tools to address oppression even in those contexts where it has distorted the very experiences of those who are oppressed. She also, I believe, allowed for the possibility that others whom she did not identify directly, such as nonhuman animals, may be oppressed. One might object to the sensibility of the claim that nonhuman animals are oppressed, even objectively oppressed, because oppression is a social process that is exerted on groups and there is no social group that is “nonhuman animals.” The category “nonhuman animal” itself is so large and variable that unlike human social groups there are no positive characteristics, identities, or affiliations that members of the group share. The group nonhuman animals seem to be based on a taxonomical distinction—the group consists of all nonhuman animals that are not members of the species Homo sapiens. Within the group nonhuman animals, there are individuals as diverse as aardvarks and elephants, dolphins and cheetahs, mice and mountain goats, beings that have very little in common except for the classification as “not humans.” However diverse the group nonhumans actually is, and despite the importance in most contexts to attend to the diversity of interests and needs that the variety of species within the group nonhuman have, the larger category serves a central symbolic role in human social lives and in our self-understanding, as mentioned above. Given that the group has a social reality, even if not a meaningful biological or conceptual basis, it can be thought of as akin to the human social groups that are more often the subjects of discussions of injustice and oppression, e.g., “People of color” or “LGBT.” These human groups, as Young notes, are products of social processes, and so too is the group of nonhuman animals. Members of human groups may not “share a common nature”, they are “multiple, cross-cutting, fluid and shifting” (Young 1990a, p. 48), but insofar as they are identifiable to those in positions of power, they can be subject to oppression. Unlike unified analyses of oppression, one of the virtues of Young’s approach is that it recognizes that there are different kinds of groups that are constructed for different reasons in different contexts and that oppression will operate differently given these social facts. This important recognition of difference provides a way of making sense of the oppression of nonhuman animals.

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Perhaps the most forceful objection is that there are important differences, not in the analysis of nonhuman animal oppression and the oppression of human groups, but in the purposes or ends such an analysis is meant to achieve. Young’s analysis of oppression is aimed, in part, at identifying forces that contribute to particular forms of injustice. Members of oppressed groups are denied the possibility of developing and exercising their capacities and are unable to express themselves and be heard in democratic, social deliberations. The goal of identifying oppression is to help construct institutional solutions that will enable members of oppressed groups to become full, equal participants in their social lives. It might be argued that these aspects of justice simply do not apply to nonhuman animals and thus saying that nonhuman animals are oppressed either is metaphorical or means something very different than what Young had in mind.7 In one sense, it is true that the goals that Young’s anti-oppression analysis is meant to enable are not goals that nonhuman animals could share, even if they were desirable to them. Participating in decisions about the division of labor, reformulating social and cultural institutions to make visible previously oppressed groups’ values, creating institutions that allow for full participation in social decision-making are liberatory ends for humans seeking justice, but they don’t apply to nonhuman animals, even those that are living in human contexts. Nonetheless, I believe there is an important way that the shape of these ends for humans can help us to think about the shape of justice for nonhuman animals. The success of thinking in these ways will not only help clarify what anti-oppressive treatment might mean for the nonhuman animals themselves, but may also assist in pointing a way past what has become a fairly ugly divide within the movement for animals. Let me turn specifically to this question.

The Significance of an Oppression Analysis for Nonhuman Animals Much of the work that is directed at articulating the ethical and political importance of the plight of nonhuman animals, or at least the work that has gained the most attention, focuses on how an individual nonhuman animal’s rights or interests have been violated or ignored.8 As sentient, feeling beings, as beings who can experience pleasures and pains, both physical and in many instances, psychological, they are, in important respects, no different from us. Since we can make claims on one another, whether verbal or not, when our interests or rights are in jeopardy, as ethically valuable beings like us, they too can make such claims. Nonhuman animals are morally considerable in virtue of the fact 7 I thank Ann Ferguson for raising this sort of worry. 8 See Gruen 2003, for a summary of the various mainstream views.

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that they share with us the very capacities, most notably sentience, that we think make us morally considerable. To recognize these capacities as ethically salient only in humans is to engage in a form of “speciesism” which is akin to “racism” and “sexism” and other discriminatory attitudes. However, while animal advocates have identified speciesism as a form of prejudice, this has not led to an analysis of the structures of power that speciesism represents and reinforces nor has the identification led to a consistent strategy for combating this prejudice.9 There is a divide within the animal advocacy movement between those who are focused on ending suffering and those who are focused on ending the use of animals. Both positions are often referred to as “animal rights” positions, but they have been increasingly distinguishable as advocates of each position have taken issue with the other.10 Those who are primarily concerned with the pain and suffering nonhuman animals experience often adopt a utilitarian view—they are interested in minimizing unnecessary animal suffering and in practice that means they are opposed to most uses of nonhumans, particularly in the developed world. Those who are primarily interested in ending animal use call themselves “abolitionists”—they too are interested in ending animal suffering but are driven by the principle that opposes the use of nonhumans in all contexts. As abolitionist Gary Francione, who wants to rid the world of the use of animals for any purpose, including companionship, has written: our recognition that no human should be the property of others required that we abolish slavery and not merely regulate it to be more “humane,” our recognition that animals have this one basic right [not to be property] would mean that we could no longer justify our institutional exploitation of animals for food, clothing, amusement, or experiments. (Francione 2000, p. xxix) Animal liberationist Peter Singer doesn’t see the contrast between abolition and regulation in such stark terms. He argues: It’s absurd to say that because we do one thing that is arguably bad for [animals] therefore it doesn’t matter what else we do to them and can just treat them as things. You might as well have said in the debate about slavery that we shouldn’t have had laws to prevent masters beating their slaves because as long as they are slaves they are just things and you might as well beat them as much as you like [until slavery has ended]. (Leider 2006) The difference in the positions are more than just rhetorical; in practical terms they lead to different sorts of assessments of the problems nonhuman animals face. 9 Importantly, feminists who think about the oppression of animals as related to other oppression have done the most work here—Carol Adams (1990), Greta Gaard (1993), Josephine Donovan (1990), and myself. 10 For a very telling example of this see the debate between vegan advocate Eric Marcus and law professor Gary Francione. Transcripts are here: http://www.gary-francione.com/francione-marcus-debate.html.

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One of the most contention current issues is that of “cage-free” eggs. As I mentioned above, the battery system of egg production is exploitative, painful, and, I’ve argued, oppressive for hens. They are kept in small cages in which they cannot stretch a wing, surrounded by tens of thousands of other hens also in small cages and all the cages are stacked in rows in large, ammonia filled, dark sheds. Around the globe, an estimated 3.5 billion birds live under these terrifying, crowded, painful conditions until they are sent to slaughter after a year of egg production. In response to the awful reality these hens are forced to endure, animal campaigners and compassionate consumers have pushed for more humane conditions. In response to both changes in law and changes in demand, some egg producers have switched to “cage-free” systems. These cage free systems take hens out of cages, but still keep thousands of them crammed in large, ammonia filled dark sheds. The hens are still debeaked—a painful process that involves using a hot blade to cut through the complex horn, bone, and sensitive tissue of the hen’s beak. This procedure often leads to deformities that prevent hens from eating, drinking, or preening normally. The cage free hens are also sent to slaughter after a year. Sometimes the hens can go outside of the shed, but the exits are very small and the sheds so crowded that the only hens that could get out would be those closest to the door. There is no question that the move from the battery cage system of egg production to the cage free system represents an improvement in the welfare of the hens, albeit a rather small improvement. For those concerned with animal suffering, even this small improvement represents a victory. So many hens suffer so horribly that improving the conditions even minimally amounts to a vast overall improvement, given that people are still eating eggs. For those opposed to any use of animals, cage free systems of egg production work to prolong the violation of the rights of these animals as it makes people feel better about their abuse. Abolitionists point out that many people conflate “cage-free” with “cruelty-free” and worry about the complacency that these small improvements encourage. While rarely admitting it publicly, many abolitionists think the chance of actually ending the use of animals is greater if the conditions in which they exist are worse. By resisting discussion of improving animal welfare in “institutions of use” on principle, abolitionists are unable to address very practical issues of nonhuman animal well-being. Consider another example: presently there are approximately 2,500 chimpanzees in captivity in the United States. These chimpanzees live in conditions ranging from naturalistic, group enclosures where the chimpanzees are given options about what to play with, what to eat, and who to spend time with to sterile, solitary conditions in which everything they do is completely controlled by masked, gloved humans. For most captive chimpanzees, the conditions are somewhere in between. From the abolitionist perspective, all of these conditions represent a violation of the chimpanzees’ rights. Since chimpanzees who have spent their lives in captivity cannot be

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released to the wild (and given that wild chimpanzees are under dire threats from habitat destruction and the bushmeat trade) there is an important question about what to do for captive chimpanzees who can live for 50 years or more. Abolitionists, insofar as they are unwilling to discuss improving conditions of “slavery” are unable to sensibly and consistently discuss what to do for these sensitive, captive individuals. However, by recognizing these situations as oppressive, rather than merely as painful situations or, alternatively, as situations in which individual rights are violated, different practical solutions come into view. When combating oppression for human groups one of the most important structures that requires interrogation is the market that both provides excuses for oppression and forces certain groups to suffer under oppressive working conditions because all too often they are denied any other options. Surely the economic system that allows for modest improvements in the conditions of hens while continuing to make significant profits can be pushed further. Given that there are many people in the world for whom access to protein is limited and would require killing animals, perhaps wild animals, it is important to consider models of symbiotic living and respectful use that might allow for non-oppressive egg consumption.11 As we also know from situations of human oppression, there are often contexts in which conflicts between the interests of various groups require compromises in order to eliminate oppression. What is necessary, often, is identifying ways to respectfully attend to the needs, interests, and desires of the members of the oppressed groups on their own terms. An absence of oppression does not necessarily translate into either complete freedom or a life free from pain or distress. What we are after, as Young points out, is the possibility of developing one’s capacities so that one can be, in some sense, a participant in a meaningful social life. If we extend these ends to captive chimpanzees, for example, we might find that attending to their particular needs for social and psychological engagement are centrally important to allowing them to live non-oppressed, yet nonetheless imprisoned lives. Chimpanzees appear to understand themselves as captives and humans as captors, but insofar as it is possible to treat them with respect, to provide them with the power to determine much of what they do with others of their kind, and to develop responsive and sincere relations with them while respecting their wild dignity, they may be able to live reasonably safe and meaningful lives. Framing the discussion of animal liberation as one that is understood in terms of oppression provides for an importantly different, and arguably deeper analysis of not only our current practices towards nonhuman animals but the ways such practices support unjust and harmful social and political structures,

11 There are multiple examples in nonindustrialized countries, while in our own Polyface Farms may be another (although there is some controversy here). For a fuller discussion see Singer and Mason (2006) and Pollan (2006).

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particularly structures of power. If we are to recognize and identify the oppression of nonhuman animals, then we may more readily be able to see oppression in other contexts. There may be a perceptual as well as practical advantage. For example, gender or racial hierarchies, in which white men are thought to be separate from and superior to white women and women of color share a similar structure to hierarchies that separate humans from other animals and justify human dominance over the allegedly inferior others. Linking people of color and all women with nonhuman animals reinforces the inferiority that serves as a justification for various forms of oppression. In speciesist social contexts (which is virtually every social context in the contemporary world) the nonhuman animal other serves as a marker of the rightfully oppressed. By comparing those who are to be oppressed or continue to be oppressed, oppressors can naturalize and justify oppressive structures. When we begin to identify the cruel and life-denying attitudes and practices that nonhuman animals are subject to as oppressive practices, we not only begin to explore ways to undermine their oppression, but oppression generally. Iris Young’s analysis of the faces of oppression provides a valuable way to begin this long-overdue process.

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Making Character Disposition Matter in Iris Young’s Deliberative Democracy Desirée H. Melton

Our democracy is imperfect. Votes are miscounted, election judges fail to show up at polling sites, candidates are personally attacked and scrutinized rather than their platforms and positions on important issues, lobbyists are bought; voters are discouraged from voting in many ways, and fraud can turn the outcome of a relatively fair election. Despite its flaws, however, most of us would probably agree that democracy is the best political arrangement we have out of the options available to us. Deliberative democracy sidesteps many of these problems of traditional democratic institutions because political agents immediately face each other. Yet it is not without its own flaws. Stemming from the discursive tradition of Habermas and Levinas, the deliberative model prides itself on cooperation and respect for inclusive deliberation among the citizenry allowing for the expression and critique of many diverse views from people of diverse backgrounds. Unfortunately, as Young points out, many potential deliberators are excluded from participating. In Inclusion and Democracy (2000), Young focuses on the problem of exclusion. She notes that there are times when groups of people are deliberately and insidiously excluded from participatory democracy but also shows that exclusion is oftentimes unintentional—yet just as harmful. For example, in town meetings, public hearings, city council meetings and other venues where people gather to discuss policy, social difference can be seen as a hindrance rather than an important political resource; representatives are sometimes out of touch with whom they represent; and in deliberation, notions of appropriate speech can discourage those from participating who speak in other (but just as effective) ways.

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Exclusion is particularly distressing given that the assurance that every eligible person can participate in democracy without impediment is one of our most cherished political ideals. Inclusion is the core of other important ideals like political equality and reasonableness; they come across as empty if everyone who will be affected by the outcome of a decision does not have the opportunity to participate in its discussion. Young proposes solutions to the problem of exclusion and suggests ways to deepen democracy. To correct for exclusion in deliberation, for example, Young proposes communicative procedural changes to broaden traditional or standard notions of political discourse which will bring more individuals into the discussion and aid in communication across difference.1 Young’s project is seemingly straightforward—the core ideal of deliberative democracy is inclusion, so if individuals are excluded from participating, they must be brought in to hold democracy true to its ideal. Importantly, Young also states that deliberative democracy has a core, normative ideal of moral respect, which is indirectly upheld by inclusion (Young, 2000). This essay considers whether the communicative changes Iris Young proposes to increase inclusion will be enough to also uphold moral respect as a normative ideal. I will suggest that moral respect as the core of democracy, coupled with the exclusion of individuals which cheapens it, calls for more effort on the part of deliberators than simply being mindful of how one communicates with others. Young proposes measures like changing the rules of discourse so that the marginalized are included. And while the problem of exclusion does need discursive correctives like Young’s, the problem of moral respect calls for something else. The procedural changes Young proposes will likely increase inclusion and promote more civil and respectful deliberative practices, but to have respect for the other requires dispositional change on the part of individuals. I will argue that deep deliberative democracy based on moral respect depends on everyone who will be affected by a decision on an issue being included in discussion around it, as well as for people to be vulnerable enough to other selves to feel respect for one another as individuals who are dependent on one another for understanding across difference. There is another reason to focus on moral respect and inclusion separately. The nature of political involvement has changed rapidly over the years due to the centralization of political power in most representative democracies in policy debates among elites, rather than between representatives and those they supposedly represent. Proposals that aim to make democracy more inclusive by changing rules of discussion, therefore, are only suitable if there are actually people deliberating. Although she says otherwise, many of Young’s proposals

1 Young’s project of inclusion has its critics. María Lugones (1994), for one, has been critical of Young’s past attempts at using social difference as a resource, particularly Young’s Justice and the Politics of Difference (1990a) and Throwing Like a Girl and Other Essays in Feminist Philosophy and Social Theory (1990b).

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seem more appropriate for small-scale town hall meetings, whereas politics is now overwhelmingly large-scale, limited to debates among a few contenders of the major parties who compete to represent millions of individuals who will never meet, let alone engage in face-to-face discussion. In the section, Deliberative Democracy vs. Aggregative Democracy, I briefly explain why Young supports the deliberative model of democracy. In the section Communicative Greeting and Recognition, I discuss the modes of communication Young proposes to include in deliberation, focusing on greeting. In the section A Vulnerable Disposition: Political Acknowledgment vs. Existential Acknowledgment, I propose the kind of character disposition people should have in deliberation as a counterpart to the communicative changes discussed in the previous section. In conclusion, I offer some thoughts on what can bring about a vulnerable disposition.

Deliberative Democracy vs. Aggregative Democracy Young divides contemporary democratic theory into two broad categories: aggregative and deliberative. The aggregative model is competition based. Under this model, candidates and political parties attempt to satisfy the greatest number of citizens’ preferences as aggressively as is fair. Citizens, in turn, compete (also aggressively but fairly) as individuals and as part of interest groups for the candidate and/or party that best matches their preferences. Decisions and elections are won based on whose preferences are “most widely held” or whose aggregation is “the strongest” (Young, 2000, p. 21). In contrast, the deliberative model is discussion-based. This model is based on the broad understanding that all who will be reasonably affected by a decision should be able to participate in discussion around it. In deliberation, individuals should expect to come to agreement on some issue; arguments are presented and then challenged with other arguments, and proposals are refined until, eventually, agreement is reached. Both the aggregative and the deliberative models are normative. The aggregative model is based on the fairness of healthy competition and the deliberative model is based on the fairness of healthy discussion around some issue. To Young, the deliberative model is preferable to the aggregative because it is based on norms which we should hold, namely, political equality, reasonableness, and publicity. All of these norms are anchored by what is perhaps the most important norm for deliberative democracy: inclusion. For political equality, reasonableness, and publicity do not go very far if people are not included in deliberation to begin with (Young, 2000). In deliberation, preferences and interests are evaluated on the basis of what is good or just rather than having them “lose” because the other side is better prepared and has access to better resources. A limitation of this model is that it tends to privilege argumentation. Those who voice their interests in a nonlinear fashion or through storytelling are

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often ignored or looked down upon, so while they may be structurally included in deliberation, their presence has no weight because they are not heard or listened to. Young calls this form of exclusion “internal exclusion” (Young, 2000, p. 53). Internal exclusion is more subtle than “external exclusion” (Young, 2000, p. 53). External exclusion is more obvious because individuals are blatantly barred from participation. For example, polling centers are closed or deliberation is scheduled during times where groups of people are unable to attend. External exclusion is easier to attend to than its more subtle counterpart, internal exclusion. Young argues that one way in which internal exclusion can be prevented is by de-privileging argumentation as the primary form of deliberative discourse; Young does not want to eliminate argumentation altogether, just to add other voices. She identifies three modes of communication (greeting, rhetoric, and narrative) that if included, can be as effective as argumentation. Including them can enrich deliberative democracy in, among others, one very important way: the dominant mood is transformed because marginalized and disenfranchised groups are taken more seriously and respected.

Communicative Greeting and Recognition Communication is such a familiar part of our lives that most of us take for granted the fact that there are rules to our communications. All cultures have rules for how one is to speak with another, with the rules changing depending on to whom one is speaking and the nature of the conversation. Speech, body language, and personal space, are all a part of normal everyday communication but for most of us it isn’t until someone “breaks” the rules that they become apparent. One does not observe the same rules of speech, body language, and personal space, for example, when they are teaching a class as when one is at a social gathering with friends. In the United States, for example, students would probably be taken aback if a professor suddenly began speaking to them noseto-nose—it would be unsettling and seem inappropriate. The professor would be “breaking the rules” of personal space. “Rules” of communication can be misleading, however. In political deliberation for example, less powerful groups and individuals are often not acknowledged. Young cites the welfare reform debate during the Clinton administration as exclusionary; the people who were to be directly affected by the outcome of the debate (young mothers) were largely not a part of it (Young, 2000). Young suspects that if people are not included and addressed in public debate, it may give the appearance (true or not) that the more powerful and privileged groups do not see them as people worthy of inclusion in these decisions, but as problems to be solved. Young recognizes that words like “traditional” and “standard” are not neutral but rather mask an orientation that can be exclusionary to individuals

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with different orientations. Rational, dispassionate discourse is the norm and if deliberators deviate from the norm by speaking nonlinearly and passionately, they are often looked down upon and marginalized. Young proposes changes to the rules of political discourse to include marginalized voices. Specifically, she focuses on the way deliberators greet one another (greeting or public acknowledgment), the way one’s preferences and thoughts are shared (rhetoric), and the form one’s thoughts take (narrative) (Young, 2000). Greeting or public acknowledgment, the initial encounter between deliberators, is a very important part of the deliberative process because it sets the tone for interactions that follow. I want to focus on greeting because I think Young (2000) places unreasonably high expectations on what it can accomplish. As she says: In the moment of communication that I call greeting, a speaker announces her presence as ready to listen and take responsibility for her relationship to her interlocutors . . ., [one] explicitly acknowledges the others whom they aim to persuade. (p. 59) Young emphasizes the importance of small gestures like making small talk, exchanging pleasantries, hugs, and handshakes, and saying “hello” and “goodbye” because they show respect and politeness to others and affirm that one will be ready to listen to others when deliberating. She says that gestures like these serve to acknowledge the other before taking up the real business of political deliberation (Young, 2000). It is certainly important to take a few minutes and engage the other with whom one will deliberate by saying hello and asking how one is doing, how one’s week has been, having food and drink together, etc., before deliberation begins. This period of informal chatting has been pejoratively called “softening up”—pacifying to increase agreeability—but it needn’t be negative. Except when softening up is used coercively, it can be an acceptable way to bring about a calm atmosphere, especially when it precedes what could be a heated discussion. Greeting can be a very effective aid to communication—especially persuasive communication—by letting the other know that one is ready to listen by gentle softening up with small talk and pleasantries. The value of greeting the other before deliberation begins, however, is limited. Young uses “greeting” interchangeably with “public acknowledgement” and recognition; describing greeting as a dispositional situating of oneself to another such that one’s “ethical responsibility” for the other is acknowledged (Young, 2000, p. 57). I think this is a misleading way to describe greeting, which as Young herself acknowledges, can be either genuine or hypocritical. Greeting is a communicative, largely external activity. One communicates greeting with words (“hello,” “how are you”) and touch (handshakes, hugs) by showing that one is there, present, and ready to listen which aids in further communication when discussion begins.

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Young notes that there is always the risk that individuals (often the overprivileged) will just go through the motions of greeting others with “pro forma, superficial” (Young, 2000, p. 61) gestures and that individuals will have to work at maintaining the recognition and inclusion contained in greeting gestures. I agree with her and I think this is why so many of us are cynical about politics and politicians. Often, politicians tell us exactly what we want to hear. They smile, shake hands, look us in the eye, give assurances, tell us they share our concerns and can help; they design political platforms to address our issues and concerns and when they’re in office often the promises are forgotten, leaving people angry and disillusioned. There is little assurance that the same kind of disillusionment will not issue simply by enhancing communication. Deliberators can say “Hello” to one another, engage in mild flattery, ask how one another is doing, then, when the deliberation is over, forget about the particular individual one just greeted. But there is another more important limitation to greeting than its susceptibility to hypocrisy and that is its inability to encourage a disposition of vulnerability and exposure like Young wants it to. She describes greeting as an act of recognition: The sensual, material proximity of the other person in his or her bodily need and possibility for suffering makes an unavoidable claim on me, to which I am hostage . . . the speaker responds . . . by taking responsibility for the other’s vulnerability . . . recognition is best thought of as a condition rather than a goal of political communication that aims to solve problems justly . . . As a political issue of inclusion, recognition is primarily a starting-point for political interaction and contest, rather than its end. (Young, 2000, pp. 58–61, my emphasis) Young’s vivid description of democratic engagement evokes an intimate relationship of responsibility and need. People come to deliberation and enter into a reciprocal relationship with other selves with the expectation that their possibility for suffering and worth as a person to whom moral respect is due will be recognized. Yet I am unconvinced that this kind of deep recognition can be accomplished through communicative speech or physical gesture. The changes Young proposes will allow for better communication and political acknowledgment, but not existential acknowledgment, and I think a deep existential acknowledgment is what Young wants to bring about.

A Vulnerable Disposition: Political Acknowledgment vs. Existential Acknowledgment Young’s greeting is a political acknowledgment. By addressing others before deliberation begins, individuals soften up one another and bring about a calm

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atmosphere conducive to better discussion. The other modes of communication she argues for ensures that other voices are included in deliberation but they do not bring about a climate where one feels responsible for the other person in need. Thus, the problem of exclusion (increasing the numbers of deliberators) can be addressed with instrumental changes like including other modes of communication, but the problem of keeping democracy true to moral respect as a normative ideal requires more than procedural correctives—it requires a certain kind of acknowledgment that comes from a certain kind of disposition. Young’s description of the greeting moment in deliberation reveals that she wants an existential response on the part of deliberators to others’ situatedness and the demands, interests, and preferences that come from their particularity. Existential acknowledgment (or recognition) involves a demand that greeting is incapable of meeting. Recognizing another’s vulnerability and then feeling responsible and claimed by it requires selves to have a disposition that encourages one to feel claimed and responsible. Individuals come to the deliberation vulnerable with the possibility for suffering and want acknowledgment, but if others to whom they are vulnerable do not recognize and feel claimed by the vulnerability, they will not have the response Young describes. Therefore, the disposition of deliberators is important. A self with a vulnerable disposition is more likely to recognize the needs of others and more likely to existentially acknowledge others. A vulnerable disposition is an internal undertaking involving a dispositional comportment where a self sees oneself and others as individuals who are mutually dependent (on one another) for understanding. A vulnerable disposition is one in which a self internalizes and reflects in one’s disposition a preparedness to understand across difference because others are dependent on this understanding; giving it shows moral respect to other selves. It is a way of being in the world that says “I will let your situatedness as a particular individual with the capacity for suffering affect how I see the world,” and reveals a deeper commitment to others; deeper than “I hear you.” This internal exposure is like an existential space between individuals and the plea for justice. One is then able to respond to the other’s particular interests, problems, desires, or needs. After all, democratic deliberation is more than an arena for discussion across difference—in deliberation individuals expect to make a decision on some issue after what can be difficult and painful discussion.2 Where greeting in deliberation is a political acknowledgment of the other in deliberation that shows one is ready to listen, existential acknowledgment shows respect for another’s particularity; it shows the other that one is open and ready to better appreciate and understand where others are coming from. To be able to 2 Gooding-Williams (1998) highlights the importance of having a common ground in deliberation. For him, deliberation across difference is enhanced the more groups understand about each other. Wendy Brown (1996) has concerns that groups that highlight their differences and disagreements as groups may be overly and (detrimentally) dependent on their suffering.

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respond to the other as a self with interests, problems, desires, and needs, one must see the other as vulnerably dependent on this response deserving of moral respect. The ability to see others as deserving of moral respect, to acknowledge them existentially, depends on a vulnerable disposition. Procedural changes of the kind Young advocates are important for inclusion and better communication across difference, but moral respect as an ideal requires selves who see themselves dependently in relation with others. Deliberation, then, is a coming together of selves who are mutually dependent upon one another for moral respect. Procedural changes without dispositional changes treat the deliberative arena as a stagnant, superficial space for conversation rather than a dynamic, alive space comprised of selves who legitimately want understanding and respect. Moral respect as a normative ideal gives a legitimate weightiness to deliberative democracy that is often unaddressed but is revealed in the selves of the participants, not in the procedure. Moral respect as an ideal of democratic deliberation should have selves who are vulnerable to others. This requires internally seeing oneself and others as individuals who are mutually dependent on one another for understanding which then gives one the ability to existentially acknowledge others in deliberation. To existentially acknowledge others means to treat the other as a particular, unique, situated self rather than simply a social type. It may seem artificial or disingenuous to talk of actively cultivating a vulnerable disposition. Alternatively, the way I have described it may seem as though “becoming” vulnerable is a passive event that one cannot bring about and if so, one does not control whether one has a vulnerable disposition or not. To be sure, there are elements of both. A vulnerable disposition can either be actively cultivated in ways that needn’t be insincere, or it can happen passively. One way to cultivate a vulnerable disposition is by seeking out and having experiences that can bring about change. Some ways in which vulnerability can be passively achieved include exposure to different points of view in higher education that reveal one’s own longheld views and invite critical evaluation of them. A particularly moving political speech can sometimes make one think about things that have not been seriously considered before. Living abroad for a length of time in a place with a culture very different from one’s own is a well-known stimulant for self-reflection. We also have the potential of becoming vulnerable through actively seeking out experiences that can change the way we see ourselves in relation to others. Richard Schmitt and Milton Fisk’s recent essays in socialist thought are particularly useful in envisioning the relationship between social situatedness, experience, and character change. In “Can We Get There from Here? Reflections about Fundamental Social and Human Change,” Schmitt asserts that we can change our character and how we see ourselves in relation to others if we make social changes. Social changes include living with people of different

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races, socioeconomic levels, and religions, such that we live differently and develop different skills; we become different people (Schmitt 2007). In “Social Feelings and the Morality of Socialism,” Fisk emphasizes that having a “moral orientation” gives rise to feelings and promotes dispositions that can guide us in our actions—they can encourage actions that cohere to a feeling and discourage actions that do not cohere (Fisk 2007). He says that having positive social feelings toward others can allow us to identify with others and motivate us toward helping to improve their lot. For example, having “feelings of sympathy, compassion, and benevolence” (p. 123) will promote us to respond to the distress of others appropriately. Having negative social feelings works the same way. If one has “feelings of outrage at, mistrust of, and disillusion with decisions, officials, and programs” (p. 123), one is moved to act. In both cases, having social feelings toward others whom we consider part of our community rouses us to act to change the situation. Although my project is somewhat different from Fisk’s and Schmitt’s, character change through social rearrangement coupled with the promotion of social feelings in community captures the existential mood that I think will allow others to existentially acknowledge one another. Thus, one way to actively develop a vulnerable disposition is through purposely living around, interacting with, and befriending people who are very different from oneself, and allowing oneself to have the kinds of social feelings that one would appropriately have toward a member of one’s community. For example, one would feel compassion toward one’s black neighbors when they suffer from discriminatory social and political structures and would appropriately feel outrage at the structures that cause it.

Conclusion Democracy’s broad principles are laudable: respect for basic human rights, political pluralism, free and fair elections, and religious freedom, among others. In a well-functioning democracy, these principles are not just lofty ideals to which governments aspire, but are lived and experienced by the body politic. Underpinning these broad principles is the conviction that individuals matter equally in decision-making and are equally respected as participants. And it is the latter that I think is often understated although I think it holds much of democracy’s appeal. Young states that “society is bigger than politics and outruns political institutions, and thus democratic politics must be thought of as taking place within the context of large and complex social processes” (Young, 2000, p. 45). I agree wholeheartedly and suggest that those acknowledging the problems of democratic culture due to the size and scope of society must anticipate and hope that selves will make ethical adjustments in their manner independent

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of political involvement—but that the adjustments will persist when they do become involved in politics. The ethical adjustment I am calling for, existential acknowledgment, involves a vulnerable character disposition whereby others are visible as particular humans with the capacity for suffering that demands moral respect. One way to bring about this disposition is to seek out ways to interact with people very different from ourselves. Interacting with differently situated others does not guarantee that one will have appropriate feelings of compassion when others suffer unfairly because of social structures that discourage those with too much privilege from understanding the situation of those who suffer from a lack of privilege.3 Nonetheless it may be a necessary condition to promote the inclusion Young envisions because it promotes moral respect. Acknowledging one another as humans with the capacity for suffering is acknowledging and respecting humanness. My claim here is that we need to expect and encourage this kind of existential acknowledgment if we are to be just.

3 For example, white-skin privilege has been explored by many scholars including feminists, critical race theorists, and sociologists. People with white skin, however, are often reluctant if not outright hostile to its existence because they have been encouraged to not see discrimination. See Charles Mills’ recent article on epistemic ignorance (Mills, 2007) and his book The Racial Contract (1997), which contains an earlier treatment of the phenomenon.

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PART V

JUSTICE: DEMOCRACY AND INCLUSION

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4

Iris Young, Global Responsibility, and Solidarity Ann Ferguson

In some very insightful papers in the two years before her untimely death (Young 2004, 2006c, 2006d) and her unfinished book manuscript Responsibility for Justice, Iris Young presents an overview to a new conception of social justice based on the shared political responsibility that groups of people have who are involved in structures and processes that create unjust harms to others. Her new paradigm allows a way to address questions of global responsibility that individuals hold for each other across national borders and local social power positions such as race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, and disability without appealing to an ahistorical cosmopolitan universal humanist ethics. In this chapter I shall support Young’s shared political responsibility model of social justice, but shall argue that her justice project in turn must be based on solidarity as an achieved social base for such a project, that is, individuals and collectives involved in solidarity practices. I claim that Young’s earlier paper using distinctions which conceptualize women as a series connected by practical social structures (Young 1994a) point toward the need for solidarity practices rather than identity-based projects if women are to assume shared political responsibility across social power locations of race, class, sexuality, national borders, and other such inequalities. Such solidarity practices are key for other social justice movements as well as feminism, and are becoming an achieved social base through a developing global network of alternative A version of this chapter was first prepared for the Feminist Philosophy Conference May 11–12, 2007 at UMass Amherst in honor of my retirement (http//:www.umass.edu/wost/events/feministphilosophy.htm). I want to thank Uma Narayan, our keynote speaker at that conference, who has pushed me to think more critically about problems of solidarity in practice in a globalized capitalist world, cf. her keynote address for the conference (Narayan, 2007).

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economic, political, and social practices that oppose neoliberal capitalist globalization and other global injustices. These global injustices include systematic violence and discrimination against women, gays, and minority racial/ethnic groups, exploitation of workers by multinational corporations, unjust wars by nation-states, and global poverty, sometimes caused by environmental disasters to which governmental responses are unjust or unfair, such as the current U.S. government’s inadequate compensation to the mostly poor Blacks and Latinos displaced by hurricane Katrina. I put forth a conception of solidarity importantly inspired by the works of Carol Gould (2007b), bell hooks (1984), Chandra Mohanty (2003), Sandra Bartky (2002), Amy Allen (1999) and most recently, Carolynn O’Donnell (2007), an undergraduate at Mt. Holyoke College who wrote a senior thesis on solidarity which I chaired. This concept of solidarity, as a disposition involving feelings of emotional connection and commitment to support the struggles of others to challenge oppression, is connected to a new concept of global social justice we can call the “solidarity justice” model. The solidarity justice model is one which only becomes possible at the particular historical stage of advanced corporate globalization in which we are now living. It can be contrasted with previous ahistorical ideal models, such as cosmopolitan views of justice, or ideal theories of justice as fairness such as those of John Rawls (1971). I shall conclude by arguing that Young’s political responsibility conception of justice requires that the solidarity conception of justice be in place before it can really be an effective normative standard for critiquing individual actions, social practices, and institutions. Young contrasts her political responsibility model of global justice with the mainstream liberal liability model. To understand the ways these different models of justice relate, it is helpful to understand them as answering claims based on different aspects of justice. The liability conception is based on principles of desert and recompense for damages and harms that apply when a person or particular institution can be identified as the leading cause of the harm or damage done to a specific person or persons, for example, when someone has damaged or stolen someone else’s property, or when an institution, such as a business, has, by negligence, caused harm to someone in a preventable accident. In such a case, particular people or institutions can be held to blame for their actions or inactions, and legal systems are usually set up to resolve conflicting claims about punishment or compensation to the victims of such injustices. By extension, claims of injustice against employers and educational institutions based on reported violations of the principle of merit (that occupations and openings should be rewarded on the basis of merit, or desert), can also be seen to fall under liability justice, since the grievance is addressed to an authorized hiring or admissions official who is charged with discrimination in failing to hire or admit someone of superior merit in favor of one with less, and hence of causing an unjust harm to the former person. In such a case, the individual or institution

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is assumed by their actions to be the cause of the discrimination, hence to be blameworthy, and may be sued for damages or compensation. An example of global injustice that cannot be captured by the liability conception of justice is the injustice caused to workers in maquilas or in sweatshops who are paid a nonliving wage and forced to work in dangerous and unhealthy conditions. Such conditions are typically found in situations where workers are employed by multinational corporations who are working in so-called free trade zones of countries where national laws protecting labor rights do not apply, or in shops where the workers are immigrants, often illegal immigrants, who are not unionized and whose legal rights are unclear. Thus, the employers cannot strictly be held liable for unjust salaries or working conditions, since they have not broken any laws, but clearly there is another sense in which they are engaged in an unjust process. It is that sense that Young is trying to capture with her political responsibility conception of justice.

Young’s Political Responsibility Paradigm of Justice In my view, Young has made out a clear case that the examples she gives of global injustice do require the paradigm she calls the Political Responsibility paradigm to supplement the Liability paradigm of Justice. She is right, I think, to claim that individuals who participate in the normal workings of such institutions as global capitalist markets and as citizen-subjects of nation-states have a shared political responsibility to challenge unjust practices that occur within them by uniting with others in political networks and projects which challenge them. In the following I will address two things: first, I shall raise a puzzle over the issue of whether practices which violate what could be taken to be the universal principle of respecting women’s rights as human rights, which are unjust from a cosmopolitan view of justice, can be the sort of practices that distant strangers not obviously involved in promoting those practices have a political responsibility to oppose. If we cannot find a way to construe Young’s political responsibility paradigm to cover these cases, we may want to argue that her paradigm, while necessary, is not sufficient to cover all cases of global injustice not covered by the Liability paradigm. Secondly, I shall argue that we need to broaden Young’s Political Responsibility paradigm of Justice to include as a necessary precondition, the existence of those operating on what I have called the Solidarity paradigm of Justice.

Women’s Rights as Human Rights Do people in other countries have a moral obligation in any sense, or a political responsibility in Young’s sense, to try to intervene in another country in

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order to avoid a systemic institutional injustice which violates women’s human rights? And is this the case even if the human rights violations do not occur in any clear-cut set of institutions or processes in which these people are engaged, like consuming goods produced in the global capitalist market, which would implicate them as individuals in enabling such processes to continue? Those feminists, such as Susan Okin (1999), who defend women’s human rights from a cosmopolitan point of view, would argue that we do have such obligations, for our obligations to protect people’s rights do not stem merely from membership in a nation-state but in virtue of Kantian categorical imperative to ensure that people are treated as ends, not as mere means. Other feminists, such as those who have taken the lessons of the postcolonial critique of Western feminism to heart, have critiqued such cosmopolitan approaches as dangerous in that they may lead to justifications for imperialist interventions, as in the case of Laura Bush’s defense of the recent U.S. war in Afghanistan as leading to the liberation of women from the oppressive regime of the Taliban. Further, there is the danger that Western feminists, acting on the basis of general stereotypes of non-Western women as victimized by their patriarchal culture or governments (Mohanty 2003; Narayan 1997), may intervene in arrogant uninformed ways which make the situation worse. We seem to be left in a dilemma. On the one hand, we can insist on cosmopolitan moral obligations which are onerous, hard to carry out, and can easily boomerang in practice to create worse situations for the victims of injustice. On the other hand, we can espouse a relativist or particularist theory of moral and political duties which gives us no political responsibilities or obligations to try to help those who are oppressed by honor killings or systematic sexual violence. Young’s political responsibility paradigm won’t help us with these cases, although it can help us with duties within the nation-state to oppose violations of women’s human rights. All citizens in a nation-state can be said to have political responsibilities to challenge unjust laws that prohibit reproductive choices, for example, as well as the unjust absence of laws or state policies that will provide access to reproductive choices, health care, redress from sexual violence, and so forth, since they participate in citizenship processes and institutions which otherwise benefit them. But what do we do with cases of injustice that fall outside the nation-state, and to which we are not immediately tied by institutional processes?

Ideal vs. Nonideal Models of Justice One way to bypass this dilemma is to introduce another distinction: that between ideal vs. nonideal models of justice. The debates around social justice which pit Classical and Neoliberal models of justice against Welfare Liberal models usually prioritize some intrinsic value, such as individual Freedom, over another

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value, such as social Equality, in the principles of justice they espouse. The three predominant values in the liberal Western tradition stemming from the English, French, and American revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are summed up in the motto of the French Revolution: Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. Fraternity as a goal, which relates to the notion of Solidarity that I shall develop below, has been neglected by liberals in the mainstream debating conflicts between principles of justice. This is probably because it is assumed to be a condition that will be achieved once people can come to agreement on how to balance the other two and set up a social contract seen as beneficial to all. However, I shall argue below that this assumption is a mistaken conclusion, and that solidarity requires much more radical conditions. While neoliberal laissez-faire capitalist thinkers prioritize the right to private property as promoting the most individual freedom, welfare state liberals argue that we need to curb such rights so as to promote the material conditions for, if not absolute equality, then equality of opportunity for citizens to meet their basic material needs. Radical liberals include demands to achieve radical democracy and self-development as values usually ignored by those emphasizing individual freedom and equality. For example, Iris Young (1990a) argued in her influential book on Justice, that we must include rights to self-development, to freely exercising and developing one’s human capacities, as central to the goal of social justice. Such a goal cannot be met without understanding the institutional structures of exploitation, oppression, and marginalization that perpetuate sexism, heterosexism, racism, class exploitation, and neglect of the disabled. She also highlighted ways that the traditional debates about justice between the neoliberals/conservatives and welfare state liberals tend to overlook or distort such institutionalized injustices because they assume a distributive paradigm of justice: that justice vs. injustice is about the fair or unfair distribution of goods, rather than the relative power or lack of it that the majority of people have to control the political, social, and material processes that govern their lives, including the distribution of goods and life choices. Young’s approach is distinctive not only in its emphasis on different central values—self- and collective-development and democratic inclusion—that just institutions should promote, compared to the mainstream debate as to whether to prioritize entitled freedoms or social equality. She is also presenting what Charles Mills (2004) calls a “nonidealized” approach to moral and political theory. That is, instead of giving us some ideal principles of justice assumed to be the basic rationale for our existing social structures as a self-defined liberal democratic nation, her emphasis is in uncovering the real existing institutional structures of exploitation and oppression that actually operate in our country; and by extension, in any capitalist, racist, male-dominated country, which would include most nations of the world. On the basis of these really existing structures of oppression, her conclusion is that the United States and other countries with similar institutional structures are unjust.

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I have also mounted a similar critique to idealized paradigms of global justice elsewhere (Ferguson 2006b) in favor of a nonidealized paradigm I call the Solidarity paradigm of Justice. Young (1994a) conceived of women as a “serial group,” that is, those placed contingently in a group due to a social position created by gendered social structures. She suggested that women are like passengers waiting for a bus who have no automatic reason to identify with each other, and certainly not to take their being women as a reason for solidarity with each other. But under certain circumstances, for example, if the bus breaks down and the women enter into collective dialogue as to what should be done, a common politics of the group becomes possible. While such a model of gender commonality challenges any essentialist identity politics for women, nonetheless it can provide a nonidealist ground on which to understand the emergence of solidarity politics, as I outline below.

The Concept of Solidarity There have been many concepts of Solidarity advanced in modern political theory, starting with the rather vague concept of Fraternity mentioned above, which was advanced in the French Revolution. There it wavered between being three senses: first, a cosmopolitan concept involving a felt empathic connection to all other humans, in the most universalistic sense, secondly, to all other citizens, in the sense of identification and support for a national community in which one felt a part, and thirdly, to the particular combination of social and economic classes, the so-called Third Estate, revolting against the aristocracy and monarchy. Solidarity as fraternity in this third sense was developed by Marxism and labor movements informed by Marxism which maintained that their common interests to challenge capitalist class exploitation would lead the international working class to develop the needed sense of felt bonding to overthrow the capitalist system. In developing her theory of transnational solidarity in a globalizing economy, Carol Gould (2007b) argues that the development of the global corporate capitalist economy has created economic interdependencies and international divisions of labor that require the expansion of concepts of solidarity based on a more particular sense of community such as the nation-state. She distinguishes between cosmopolitan, civic, interest-based, and welfare state conceptions of solidarity, based on some distinctions made by Kurt Bayertz (1999). She also finds Bayertz’s distinction between the factual and normative senses of the term solidarity helpful. The normative cosmopolitan sense of solidarity would claim that all humans should be conceived of as one big moral community, and thus that we have moral obligations to aid and support all other people. But there are problems with this claim, since solidarity involves a felt connection to others, and it is clearly false in the factual sense that all people

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feel solidarity with all other humans, particularly because national ties tend to trump any transnational feelings for those in other countries. And while cosmopolitans might want to argue that we ought, in the normative sense of solidarity, to “feel-with” all other people, to use Sandra Bartky’s (2002) conception of solidarity, it is problematic whether such a claim is plausible, given the empirical difficulties involved in getting people who don’t know each other, and who may come from cultures alien to each other, to have the sense of being similar enough to each other that seems to be a precondition for feelings of solidarity. The third notion of solidarity Gould and Bayertz distinguish has to do with defense of common interests. Factual solidarity occurs when people form a group, such as a labor union, to stand up for common interests, an action which is associated by a felt sense of bonding with members of the group. Normative solidarity with respect to interests is the claim that one has a moral/ political obligation to defend the group rights or interests of which one is a member against an opponent who threatens those interests, whether it be an individual or a group with institutional power, as in the case of corporate employers who create unsafe and excessively exploitative working conditions for sweatshop employees. Unfortunately, neither the civic friendship nor the group interest notions of solidarity as commonly understood can easily meet the goal of giving us the preconditions for the sort of global political responsibility Young advocates as an obligation for those involved as consumers of sweatshop projects. Just because one comes to understand that one’s consumption of a sweatshop product perpetuates a system or process that is unjust, one does not automatically come to form a civic bond or feel empathy with those oppressed by the process. And particularly if one finds oneself in an internationally competitive marketplace where one’s own low paid job requires one to find low cost consumer goods, one might feel one’s solidarity with the group interests of one’s own family members if the household economy trumps any solidarity owed to those not one’s kin or compatriots. There is a similar problem of whether mass-based transnational solidarity is really feasible for identity-based social movements, such as local or nationally based women’s and feminist movements. What is needed for women in order to achieve solidarity with women very different from them in terms of their nationality, class, sexuality, ethnicity, race, or religion? As many intersectional feminist analyses, notably by women of color feminists, have indicated, the mere formal commonality of being identified as a woman by one’s society does not automatically give one common interests with those whose class, racial, ethnic, sexual, or national interests and privileges are not the same as one’s own. Carol Gould (2007b) argues that we can develop a notion of transnational solidarity which would be premised on the existence of overlapping

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solidarity networks based on the expectation of mutual aid and reciprocity in challenging various structural oppressions, and argues that these are increasingly made possible because of the Internet and other means of global networking that have been developed by global social movements. While I agree with Gould, she does not really deal with some of the philosophical problems with the notion of transnational solidarity, the material and social conditions under which it is possible, as well as exactly what sort of transformation of values is required to achieve it. I shall try to provide answers to these questions below.

An Intersectional Feminist View on Solidarity An intersectional feminist analysis, like that of bell hooks, can give us another way to look at the development of feminist solidarity. Rather than seeing it as based on a facile sisterhood achievable by women due to their commonality of being women in male-dominated structures as does Robin Morgan (1996), hooks sees it as a goal to be achieved by an active coalitional process which creates a common bonding across differences of race, class, sexuality, nation, religion etc., based on dialogue and disagreement (hooks 1984). Such dialogue, with the permission to express and debate disagreements, is a necessary ongoing process to produce trust and a sense of common cause. In this way one group can come to understand and respect another group’s priorities to fight oppressions promoted by those very social institutions or processes in which the first group may garner privileges. This then can lead to a moral/political commitment to challenge these other oppressions as if they were one’s own, as a way to promote the common collective good of other relevant groups of women. This will first be understood concretely as including the good of those particular women whose situation one has empathized across differences in particular dialogues and coalitions seeking to promote social justice. Hopefully the next step is to be open to identifying more generally with the collective good of all women regardless of their differences. For hooks, this sisterhood solidarity, as an achieved value in this two step process, involves transforming oneself so as to define one’s own moral identity as a passionate commitment to promote the collective good of all women which would require the elimination of all social domination relations that oppress them, not simply those of gender, i.e., sexism. Clearly such a sense of solidarity goes beyond that of a present interest-based solidarity, since one’s present interests as a socially located individual, e.g., with class, race, heterosexual, or national privileges, will often be in opposition with promoting sisterhood solidarity based on one’s transformational moral identity based on the collective good of all women.

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My concept of solidarity is similar to that of hooks as well as Amy Allen1, who uses some of the ideas of Hannah Arendt (Allen 1999, ch. 4). Given that this redefinition of solidarity involves a transformation among those who pledge it to work for a collective good, not merely for those in their own social location (so is not limited to those who share what Arendt called “the identity under attack” (cf. Arendt 1968, p. 18), we should redefine this as transformational solidarity. While hooks and Allen’s rearticulation of a sisterhood as transformational solidarity may avoid the problems faced by Morgan’s too-simplistic solution to the problem of difference for feminism (Morgan 1996), their theory as outlined faces the possible charge of idealism in relation to the conditions for achieving the kind of collective bonding through dialogue and disagreement that allow women to develop a commitment to fight for a collective good for women that includes challenging all structural social injustices. Doesn’t this suppose the leisure time and resources to meet and dialogue with women across national borders that only relatively privileged women have? Don’t people, men and women, who want to promote an inclusive feminist commitment to a collective good of social justice for all, require material conditions that can allow them face-to-face, Internet or other material opportunities to dialogue, understand and trust particular others in spite of disagreements? And lacking these conditions to form emotional bonds, are we left merely with “imagined communities” (Ferguson 1995) or “world-traveling” (Lugones 1987) of the most abstract sort which are subject to all sorts of imposed arrogant understandings of what really is the collective good of those absent women one is supposedly in solidarity with? There is still a rather weak sense in which one can use the concept of group interest of women as a possible motivator for a normative claim for group solidarity. Anna Jonásdóttir (1994) distinguishes between formal and content interests that women have as a socially positioned group in all male-dominated modern societies. Her argument is based on the view that modern (capitalist) societies have historically developed interest-based politics in which groups seek political power to shape their own choices based on their group perception of these interests which pit them against competing groups. But historically, women as members of these societies as citizens, and in more specific social groupings within the particular polity such as social class, or race or ethnicity, have lacked the “formal,” i.e., legal or political access comparable to men in the polity or particular social groupings to shape the conditions of their choices in

1 Allen argues that Arendt’s notion of political power as a type of power with others that comes about when people engage in principled concerted action together to bring about some common good. This idea of power is of a relation in which power only appears when it is actualized in collective action. Allen argues that solidarity among women can thus be reconceived, not as based on a collective given existing identity, but as “solidarity among feminists (women and men) as a power of those who pledge to work together to fight relations of subordination” (Allen 1999, p. 109).

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various areas of life—political, familial/personal, or material. Thus, they can be said to share a formal interest to achieve that access to shape their choices in those areas, even though their content interests as divided by class, race, religious belief etc., may be in conflict. On this analysis, we could see achieving these formal interests, e.g., the right to vote, to own property, to have reproductive choice, to be legally protected from male violence, as necessary social conditions to improve each woman’s position vis-à-vis the men in the polity or more specific social grouping. An empirical argument for an inclusive social justice solidarity could be based on the need for a massive women’s movement across race, class, and other social domination differences to achieve women’s formal interests. The popular way of putting this interest-based argument in the U.S. second-wave socialist feminist movement was the slogan: “we can’t be free until everyone else is free”2. Iris Young (1997b) deals with this problem to some extent in her paper “Asymmetrical Reciprocity: On Moral Respect, Wonder, and Enlarged Thought” in which she critiques both Seyla Benhabib and Hannah Arendt for assuming that communicative democracy requires the symmetrical reciprocity of putting oneself in the other’s shoes. She points out that this way of thinking of the kind of enlarged moral thought necessary to act collectively for the common good encourages people to emphasize only the commonalities between them, rather than be sensitive to their differences. But Young too does not discuss the material conditions necessary for this sort of transformational solidarity to occur, as opposed to the sort of social movement identity politics that create affinities, and spacial or institutional connections which together create what she calls “differentiated solidarity” (Young 1994a, 2000).

Network Solidarity, the Solidarity Economy, and Solidarity Justice Fortunately, the capitalist globalization processes in which we are all involved have created contradictions or conflicts between material subsistence needs, ideological expectations, and national and ethnic sovereignty demands that have created oppositional networks, grassroots politics, and alternative economies both within and between nation-states that some have come to call the Solidarity Economy. Alternative local solidarity economies now exist in all countries, 2 The problem with this argument is that it may not be an empirically plausible claim for all women, particularly when one considers the vast amount of political, familial/personal, and material choices that wealthy white women have in advanced capitalist societies. Are they not in fact “free” in all the senses that really matter? On the other hand, one may argue that even very wealthy women can be victims of lack of self-esteem, and love dependencies on men that perpetuate their continued lack of equal choices in a love relationship, for example, being victims of male violence. If they were able to feel solidarity with other women they would also benefit themselves because of the mutual aid and reciprocity involved in solidarity relations, which could allow them to challenge the internalized sexism that impedes their freedom to leave such abusive relationships.

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including the United States, and there are also transnational links between these economies at the nation-state level. For example, the new Latin American political-economic block, MERCOSUR, encourages trading and economic in-kind exchanges not based on the market logic of profit. Such exchanges between Venezuela and Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Uruguay are explicitly made on the basis of solidarity to meet peoples’ human needs. For example, Venezuela sends Cuba oil, while Cuba sends doctors to work in poor Venezuelan neighborhoods. And Venezuela has been initiating, through the state-owned oil company Citgo, low-priced oil to poor communities in the United States which are exchanges not sanctioned by the U.S. government. And feminist NGOs, such as Women to Women International and the Global Fund for Women, are supporting alternative solidarity economic networks which allow women in the North to support women’s cooperatives and human rights associations in the South. A feminist historical materialist method can help us to understand the contemporary historical development of a distinctive Solidarity conception of Social Justice based on socialist-anarcho-feminist visions. Workable and sustainable alternative visions and values which challenge the values of an existing society in a way which undermines justifications for the existing economic order can only be based on the actual development of alternative social relations of production and political decision-making, that is to say, alternative political economies, which give people a realistic and not just utopian understanding of what is fair and just. In the late 1800s Marx critiqued the social democratic Gotha Program of German social democrats for its utopian attempt to promote the principle, from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs, for he argued that a capitalist system which rewards capital not labor can ultimately only promote principles of justice that are based on rendering unequals to unequals, e.g., based on one’s property or capital, including human capital, or work/“merit” (Marx 1875/1977). But while Marx concluded that only internal critiques of justice can be offered of capitalist justice, new spaces of political economy have opened the possibility of an external critique of capitalist paradigms of justice, which elaborates more egalitarian norms of social relations in these collective spaces outside of the capitalist logic. The anticorporate globalization social movements, helpfully furthered by successive international and regional conferences of the anticorporate globalization World Social Forum since 2001, have created alternative economies which are strong enough to challenge the neoliberal and welfare state conceptions of Justice based on unequal property rights that the hegemonic capitalist political economy promotes. These alternative spaces include worker-owned cooperatives and social movement-controlled micro-lending loan funds, which many empowerment projects for women are based on, such as SEWA, the South Indian self-employed women’s organization. These spaces are operating under the principle of Justice as solidarity, that is, from each according to their

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ability, to each according to their needs, where all are understood to be working for the good of the collective whole. These are not isolated examples of coops or individual projects, but whole networks of people which are forging what Bowman and Stone (2004, 2006) call a solidarity economics, and what Alperovitz (2006) calls a commonwealth tier alongside of the capitalist economy and centralized nation-state3. One implication of the Solidarity paradigm of Justice is that it requires those engaging in solidarity practices to transform their own identities so that they reconceive what their common interests are. No longer can they simply identify their interests with those constructed under dominant white supremacist capitalist patriarchal systems as “citizen worker/consumer” (Mohanty 2003) if they are among those lucky enough not to be forced to be illegal immigrants in a country not of origin; nor identify their interests with simply surviving by following the norms and practices of the hegemonic economies and ideologies, if they are among the unlucky ones who are the poorest citizens whose consumer activities only allow meeting basic survival needs, or who are immigrants whose initial situation leads them to acquiesce with the competitive individualist survival values of the capitalist job market. Rather, participating in solidarity alternative economic networks provide them the material base to transform their identities toward a more collective vision that sees their enlightened interests as connected with a radical change in the total system so that institutional, political, economic, and social structures would coincide more closely with the Ability-Need principle of Solidarity Justice. They thus have both the material and the emotional possibilities to form the kind of empathic connections with individuals, associations, networks, and groups that will allow them occasions to participate in and develop practices that reinforce and expand social spaces and processes which operate under the Ability-Need Solidarity principle. Elsewhere, I have recently argued that the crisis in unpaid or low-paid caring work in wealthy countries of the North has created a new motivation for a new democratic socialist-feminist vision of an economy and household organized so that people could achieve their right to care for family and community members in a viable fashion (Ferguson 2007). Concrete solidarity work has become a possibility not just for feminist women, but for women and men who have the possibility to connect to labor, environmental, fair trade, and other solidarity networks which allow them to come to a changed understanding of their long-range interest. Such a transformed understanding of self-interest connects to a notion of collective good

3 There are also transnational labor union connections, such as those between the UE in the United States and FAT in Mexico, and other labor union solidarity, as well as NGO solidarity around immigrant rights and against free trade policies in favor of fair trade policies, some of these organized through network solidarity (cf. Gould 2007). Women’s rights and women’s groups with other social justice foci, for example women for peace such as Women in Black, Code Pink, and Madre, or global women’s rights groups such as Women Living Under Muslim Laws, have been organizing women’s delegations and global conferences to form solidarity networks.

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only achievable by challenging the structural injustice or injustices in solidarity projects in which those with what I have called elsewhere “bridge identities” (Ferguson 1998)—a process of pivoting one’s perspective toward that of different others—are able to empathize, bond, and struggle along with those oppressed by such structures.4 To conclude, we might connect this transformed understanding of one’s self-interest with that of radical humanists Karl Marx and Iris Young, who posit in their various ways that the goal in life ought to be for humans to be able to choose, promote, and develop their own capabilities in a democratic fashion. Marx thought this would only be possible in a society without exploitation, i.e., in going from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom (Marx 1844/1977); while Young thought it required social justice movements which were successful in overcoming oppressive and exploitative structures to promote what she took to be the goal of justice, i.e., promoting democratic self- and collective development of individuals’ capabilities (Young 1990a).

Conclusion In this chapter I have defended Iris Young’s political responsibility paradigm of social justice as an important step in conceptualizing global justice, and I have also used work by Carol Gould, bell hooks, and Amy Allen to argue that we need to supplement such a paradigm with a solidarity paradigm of social justice. I have argued that this is a realistic not a utopian possibility because the material and social solidarity networks have already developed which makes this a viable paradigm. The solidarity paradigm of justice is one that is preferable to cosmopolitan universalist approaches (Kant), and is also one based on a nonidealist approach to the ethics of justice, like that of Iris Young’s in Justice and the Politics of Difference (1990a).

4 Examples of such bridge identity formations would involve all those in groups forming the solidarity networks I mention above, either in face-to-face meetings or in group-to-group communications on the Internet or through representatives to local, regional, and international conferences or meetings that allow them concrete understandings of each groups’ particular problems and struggles in ways that suggest that uniting in common struggle can strengthen them in their fight for social justice.

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Varieties of Global Responsibility: Social Connection, Human Rights, and Transnational Solidarity Carol C. Gould

In her last papers, Iris Marion Young developed an important position on global responsibility, which she called a “social connection” model (Young 2004, pp. 365–388; Young 2006c, pp. 102–130). This approach was advanced to supplement existing “liability” models of responsibility and to articulate a conception of our moral responsibilities to counter the structural injustice characteristic of contemporary globalization processes. In this chapter, I will be concerned to analyze Young’s model and to consider it in the context of other approaches to our obligations to people at a distance, especially that of Pogge. I will go on to delineate some other varieties of global responsibility—particularly in regard to fulfilling people’s human rights—that hold importance in this new domain, as I have argued previously, and will also link these conceptions of global responsibility to a notion of transnational solidarities. Young’s final papers fit well with, and carry forward, her overall trajectory in social and political theory, and exemplify her usual courage in tackling directly the difficult philosophical issues that emerge from contemporary social and political practice. In the various phases of her work, a connection of this sort between theory and practice has been evident: in her early work on socialist feminism; in the emphasis she placed on domination and oppression within theories of justice; in her focus on difference and its impact on the public sphere; in the centrality she gave to democratic theory and inclusiveness; and finally, in her recent work on global justice and responsibilities. In my view, all this work displayed an unusual philosophical daring, in which An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the Special Session in Honor of Iris Marion Young, American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division, April 7, 2007. I would like to thank the participants in that session, as well as Francis Raven, for helpful comments and suggestions.

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Young worked through numerous difficult issues, going beyond prevailing understandings. Substantively, I especially appreciate the supple analysis Young gave of oppression throughout her work, and the connection she drew in Justice and the Politics of Difference (1990a) between justice and the critique of domination. Young was a master of the analysis of social groups and made important and lasting contributions to our understanding of them (though I remain a little uncomfortable with some of her proposals for group representation and group vetoes in politics). Her work on democracy helped place the focus on inclusion as well as on deliberation, though there I would differ with the idea that democracy is primarily instrumentally valuable in leading to just outcomes. The last chapter of Young’s Inclusion and Democracy (2000) dealing with self-determination as nondomination is also highly suggestive in understanding democracy in a global context. I would add that throughout her work Young was preeminently a social philosopher and helpfully emphasized the role of affect in addition to reason in social and political processes. I would like to focus here on Young’s two articles on global responsibility and global justice, in which she considers the question of how to properly conceptualize the moral responsibility of individuals in relation to the structural injustice resulting from economic globalization, and articulates a view of shared responsibility for global harms that affect distant people. Responsibility in global contexts is of course a very current issue, which has been approached in various ways by consequentialist thinkers, as well as more deontologically oriented ones. Young delineates a view that is informed by both feminist and progressive social and political theory, and one that also comes to grips with contemporary analytic approaches. Although there is much writing currently being published on the issue of obligations to distant people and on responsibility for global harms, Young was one of the leaders in explicitly theorizing this issue and she has proposed an important model for understanding it. I will critically and appreciatively analyze Young’s suggestive account and propose a somewhat different approach in that context. I will then go on to delineate certain other forms of global responsibility that I suggest supplement the sort that Young discusses.

Young’s Social Connection Model Young’s views on what she alternately calls a new social connection model of responsibility for remedying global injustices, or a new sort of political responsibility, are presented with reference to the practical case of people’s responsibilities to deal with the structural injustices involved in sweatshop labor. In her model, Young importantly ties the general issue of unjust global

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institutions and global harms to the personal responsibility of individuals, but not by simply supposing that the global problems can be dealt with adequately through an aggregation of disparate actions by individuals, e.g., by calling on people to live more ethically or in the case at hand to simply avoid buying sweatshop-produced clothing. Young was acutely aware that social and institutional problems need to be approached through social movements and political change, rather than simply by individual commitment to principle or any set of separate individual actions. Yet, as she also emphasizes, we need to go beyond a general progressive call for changing social and political institutions to figuring out how individuals are to act in these unjust situations to help effect change and to take responsibility for future-oriented action to eliminate or minimize global injustice. In this context, she primarily calls for collective action to remedy unjust situations, but also argues for personal choices that would avoid or mitigate harm. Examples would be corporate heads taking action to avoid violating the human rights of workers, consumers not purchasing sweatshop-produced goods, and individuals contributing to NGOs or social movements oriented to eliminating specific oppressive situations. A key feature of the social connections approach is its helpful emphasis on structural injustice. According to Young, Structural injustice exists when social processes put large categories of persons under a systematic threat of domination or deprivation of the means to develop and exercise their capacities, at the same time as these processes enable others to dominate or have a wide range of opportunities for developing and exercising their capacities. Structural injustice is a kind of moral wrong distinct from the wrongful action of an individual agent or the willfully repressive policies of a state. Structural injustice occurs as a consequence of many individuals and institutions acting in pursuit of their particular goals and interests, within given institutional rules and accepted norms. All the persons who participate by their actions in the ongoing schemes of cooperation that constitute these structures are responsible for them, in the sense that they are part of the process that causes them. They are not responsible, however, in the sense of having directed the process or intended its outcomes. (2006c, p. 114) Young appeals here to a conception of domination that has roots in Marx’s theory of alienation, in which he transformed Hegel’s more general notion of objectification into a conception of the distinctive forms of domination and exploitation characteristic of capitalism. As in my own account of domination (e.g., 1978), as well as in C. B. Macpherson’s (1973) earlier one, Young proposes that the problem with such structural domination lies in the ways in which the

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lack of access to conditions restricts people’s development and exercise of their capacities.1 Two questions immediately present themselves, however, in relation to Young’s further claim—explicit in her model—that all people who participate in these social processes are responsible for them, in a sense that would usefully go beyond the wholly abstract notion that they give rise to these processes by taking part in them and maintaining them. One problem is that the criterion of taking part in such processes seems necessarily vague in application. The scope of application of participation in a social process extends to everyone who “belongs to” the cooperative system or even indirectly contributes to it, as can be seen from the following quotation from Young’s text: The social connection model of responsibility says that individuals bear responsibility for structural injustice because they contribute by their actions to the processes that produce unjust outcomes. Our responsibility derives from belonging together with others in a system of interdependent processes of cooperation and competition through which we seek benefits and aim to realize projects. Even though we cannot trace the outcome we may regret to our own particular actions in a direct causal chain, we bear responsibility because we are part of the process. Within this scheme of social cooperation, each of us expects justice toward ourselves, and others can legitimately make claims on us. Responsibility in relation to injustice thus derives not from living under a common constitution, but rather from participation in the diverse institutional processes that produce structural injustice. In today’s world, many of these structural processes extend beyond nation-state boundaries to include globally dispersed persons. (2006c, p. 119) Young’s position here has the distinct advantage of showing how responsibility can extend beyond a nation-state, but it seems to apply to everyone within these extensive systems, even those who have a very minor role. The difficulty would seem to be the standard one that where everyone is responsible, no one is. Of course, Young recognizes that people should not be held equally responsible. Thus she writes that “Persons stand in systematically different and unequal social positions due to the way institutions operate together” (2006c, p. 124). Nonetheless, perhaps because of her concern to recognize the agency

1 My own discussion of domination as control over the conditions of agency is originally in Marx’s Social Ontology (Cambridge MA: MIT Press 1978), e.g., p. 161; as “social domination” in “Contemporary legal conceptions of property and their implications for democracy,” Journal of Philosophy 77, no. 11 (November, 1980): 716–729; in “Socialism and democracy,” Praxis International, 1(1) (April, 1981): 49–63, reprinted in Democracy: Key concepts in critical theory (1993, pp. 246–256), among other articles; and in Rethinking Democracy (1988), esp. pp. 38–39 and pp. 42–43.

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of the oppressed, as well as to avoid “turning off ” corporate executives by excessively blaming them, Young ends up arguing that On the social connection model, workers share responsibility for combating sweatshop conditions and ought to be organized in order to do so. Nevertheless, especially where freedom to organize is not recognized or not enforced, they can discharge their responsibilities only with the support of others, often faraway and relatively privileged others, who make public the workers’ grievances, put pressure on the agents that would block their unionization, and give them material aid. (2006c, p. 124) The implication that the exploited workers share responsibility for the systems that oppress them seems counterintuitive, at least from a view that takes seriously the fact of their exploitation itself. It seems that here Young goes too far in her claim that everyone is responsible for these systems. We can grant that this might be the case on a very abstract level, and also that oppressed people have some residual freedom of choice within even dismal surroundings, and moreover, that they are participants in the systems by which they are oppressed. But her overly broad view seems to lose the very point of the critique of oppression and domination in the first place—namely, that those who are dominated or exploited specifically lack access to the conditions that they need and further that because of the power of these systems they cannot change them. So, holding them responsible, while perhaps not amounting to “blaming the victim” as on the liability model that Young criticizes, seems unfair to them, since the systems that dominate them are not of their choosing. And they “participate” in them only in an equivocal sense of being in some sense coerced to do so. Some agents are interested and very willing participants (corporations) and others (the exploited workers) are usually reluctant participants, having no real choice not to do so. We need not appeal to a strictly Marxist analysis to recognize the degree to which some sort of class analysis of this sort remains the case within current economic globalization processes. I would suggest, then, that we need something more than abstract participation in a system of structural injustice to generate the relevant sorts of global or at least transnational responsibilities. Indeed, I have proposed that in addition to holding the wrong people responsible, a participation model holds too many people responsible. Because of the interconnectedness of the current global world, vast numbers of people are involved in some way in all manner of social processes that have dominating or oppressive aspects. So, it would be important to couple a view of structural injustice with an adequate political economy that shows the ways in which transnational corporations are leading agents in these processes and sweatshop workers are in large measure subject to them. This in no way denies the agency of the workers. Indeed, it is because

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of our recognition of the importance of their agency that normatively it is necessary to rectify these exploitative systems. We can go on to speculate that perhaps there is a conflation of two senses of responsibility in Young’s analysis that might helpfully be kept distinct. The first would be responsibility arising from causing or contributing to some action or process—especially harmful ones, and the second is responsibility to or for someone, in a sense of responsibility to do things for them or with respect to them. Although, as Young points out, the first sense is usually explicated in terms of a backward-looking liability model, in which individuals are held responsible for particular actions, perhaps it would be possible to expand this model in a more shared or collective direction without simply eliding it with the second sense of responsibility. In the second sense, individuals are said to be responsible either for taking care of others or for positively creating conditions in which other people can flourish. (There are, of course, important connections between these two senses, and I will briefly discuss those in the concluding section.) I believe we do need a sense of responsibility of the second sort. Indeed, I would suggest that at least in the sense of creating conditions for flourishing, it can extend even more broadly than Young proposes, namely, to all human beings. But this remains an abstract requirement that in turn needs to be given narrower institutional interpretations and applications that specify these responsibilities. In this connection, we can wonder whether Young gives enough attention to the creation or transformation of institutions that would eliminate the modes of injustice she describes, as I will note further below. Beyond this general human responsibility for helping to provide the conditions for flourishing, I would propose that there is another set of mutual obligations that arise within cooperative systems and communities that are transnational or cross-border (though not fully global), but I would not identify these cooperative systems in the way that Young does. Rather, I would identify them as communities or institutions oriented around what I have called common activities, e.g., within voluntary associations, or firms, or even local or regional political communities. Within these associations, where people engage in common projects, they have obligations of reciprocal recognition of each person as a co-agent in these processes, including the rights of these others to codetermine these processes, i.e., to participate in deliberations concerning these common activities. In the case of such associations, the obligations and rights do in fact arise from taking part in them, but I do not think that systems of structural injustice are associations of this sort. Rather, to the degree that groups or agents can be identified as exploiting others through the activities or institutions of which they are a part, or can be identified as dominating others through these systems, these groups ought to be held responsible and accountable to these others. It is likely, as Young argues, that the liability model is inadequate for such cases by not providing any account of shared or

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collective responsibility, but this suggests the need for reforming such a model to make it more adequate to these cases. In addition, it is indeed crucial as Young suggests to take a more forwardlooking stance in order to produce genuine reform, but I think that is better approached in two ways, in terms of institutional transformation to eliminate structural oppression and domination; and in terms of an approach centering on human rights and democratic input, as I have argued elsewhere. I will return to the types of global responsibility involved in this latter approach and to its relation to the elimination of oppressive systems in the final section of this chapter.

Young, Pogge, and the Role of Transnational Corporations Young’s analysis is nuanced and helpful but we have seen that there are some questions that can be raised about its full adequacy. In this context, we can observe an interesting connection between her analysis and Thomas Pogge’s work on global justice. Like Pogge, Young calls our attention to eliminating global harms and specifically to structural injustice within economic globalization. Both authors make an appeal to the relevance for responsibility of participating in a social and institutional system with others where this has the effect of harming the global poor (in Pogge’s case) or of leading to the oppression or domination of groups of people (in Young’s account). Yet there is a significant contrast between their approaches: Pogge argues that Western nations harm the global poor by imposing a system on them that exploits their resources and denies them opportunities for free trade and in this way systematically deprives them of the possibilities of fulfilling their human rights. Accordingly, he goes to some trouble to lay out the causal connections involved here in order to argue for obligations on the part of rich nations and of the individuals within them to remedy this situation in order to meet their negative duty to avoid depriving people of the possibility of fulfilling their human rights. In contrast, Young sees Pogge’s analysis as at least partly appealing to what she has called a liability model of responsibility for global injustices of which she is critical (although she notes that she is not seeking to replace all reference to liabilities in her own analysis). Instead of focusing on liability, Young proposes, as we have seen, that everyone connected within systems that result in injustice, especially forms of domination, have responsibilities to work to eliminate the injustices in the ways that they can. However, juxtaposing their views, we can raise some concerns about each approach to global responsibility—one that applies to Young’s distinctive social connection account and another that seems to apply to Pogge’s account as well as to Young’s. As already intimated, a problem with Young’s approach is that in her effort to avoid talking very much about liability, the important causal

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connections that Pogge foregrounds may be relatively neglected. There seems an element of truth in Pogge’s claims that Western nations are responsible in the sense of liable for imposing exploitative institutional arrangements on developing nations and for benefiting from this (although Pogge himself does not emphasis this factor of benefiting). Yet, as Debra Satz and others have pointed out against Pogge, there is a certain unfairness in holding everyone in Western nations responsible for the relevant deprivations (Satz 2005, pp. 47–54) because, as I would put it, workers in these Western economies often have little role in these exploitative decisions. And although Young recognizes factors of power and privilege in determining how much one can do to help, her “social connection” model at the same time seems necessarily to downplay these crucial differences in accountability, and she explicitly seeks to hold everyone accountable for rectifying the situation. Along these lines, another question can be raised about both Young’s and Pogge’s accounts, one that I raised earlier in my remarks about Young on capitalism. In the case of Pogge [as I have argued elsewhere; (cf. Gould 2007a)], the emphasis he places on “Western nations” and the WTO unfortunately neglects the role of global corporations in this process of deprivation; accordingly Pogge sees genuinely free trade almost as a panacea. Likewise, we have suggested that, perhaps surprisingly given her earlier work, in Young’s social connections model the fact that everyone participating in these processes is held accountable does not do justice to the premier role of global corporations, which after all seem to be the driving force behind contemporary economic globalization. Young is right that to focus on corporations and their executives exclusively, without any regard to the participation of working people and consumers, would not be correct. But it appears that a social connection model might well lead us to treat corporations as at one with all the other participants in these systems—consumers, producers, suppliers, media, etc.—whereas they are major players (perhaps along with nation-states). Accordingly, I have to differ from Young in her assertion that “When executives of multinational retailers or consumers who shop at retail outlets hear the claims of anti-sweatshop activists as laying blame on them for the conditions under which goods are produced, they rightly become indignant, or scoff at the absurd extremism of the movement” (Young 2006c, p. 125). While Young is right that the problem is not personal but structural, I have suggested that the difference in responsibility between global corporations and the exploited workers is not adequately conceived as a matter of degree. Young’s further proposal that what one should do to fulfill one’s responsibilities here depends on the factors of power, privilege, interest, or collective ability to remedy the situation, also does not seem fully adequate to deal with the structural nature of the injustices at stake. I suggest that there is a need for structural transformation in these institutions themselves, such that the workers within them participate in their direction. Beyond this, really dealing

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with these deep problems of contemporary globalization will require new, more representative systems in social, economic, and political life (including in transnational contexts) and the introduction of democratic accountability into the relevant emerging institutions of global governance. Thus, I would suggest that institutional problems require institutional solutions, though this is of course not to absolve individuals of their obligations to help create such institutions.

Human Rights, Global Responsibility, and Transnational Solidarity I would now like to turn to the broader question of the role of social connection responsibility to other sorts of responsibilities that may be involved in global justice. As I noted, both Young and Pogge place the emphasis on participating in institutional, social, and political structures or systems with others as grounding our responsibility for the harms and inequalities that result. Both also emphasize rectifying injustice as the main focus of global responsibilities, with Pogge in particular at pains to deny that his view entails positive duties. He seems concerned to convince even libertarians that they are obligated to stop supporting systems that exploit the global poor. In Pogge’s case, the emphasis on connectedness in a social system as a ground of responsibility has the unfortunate consequence (cf. Gould 2007a) that in the absence of these connections we have no obligations to help fulfill people’s human rights (Gould 2007a). He seems to posit certain luxuriant societies that can be supposed to be self-sufficient. Pogge of course does believe that there are positive obligations that flow from the negative duty to avoid harming. If Young were arguing analogously, then the characterization that she gives of positive and future-oriented obligations to act by virtue of our social connectedness would not yet be sufficient to settle her position on whether there are independent positive moral obligations to fulfill human rights globally (since it is clearly possible to have positive obligations that flow from a negative duty—as in Pogge’s duty “to avoid depriving”). Beyond this, however, there is a substantial body of criticism, in my view well-founded, directed at Pogge’s notion that avoiding depriving others of rights fulfillment is simply a negative duty. Philosophers have suggested that his view tacitly appeals to a positive duty of aid. Whether or not this is the case for Pogge, my own view is that global justice does also involve positive obligations or responsibilities to help or aid others, and I would suggest that this needs to be an important part of an account of our global responsibilities. I believe that these positive duties, obligations, or responsibilities are best formulated in terms of a conception of human rights, and I have argued for this in previous work (Gould 1988, esp. chapters 1 and 7; Gould 2004). That is,

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in addition to avoiding participating in systems of injustice, and correlatively working to eliminate such systems, I believe we have responsibilities to help others in fulfilling their human rights. However, there is a natural and forceful objection to this, one that has unfortunately led Pogge and others to eschew this notion. The objection is one of impossibility. If helping to fulfill people’s human rights is held to be a duty or obligation or responsibility owed to each and every other person, and human rights include also economic and social rights, prominently a right to means of subsistence—then we simply cannot help everyone to fulfill them. Consequently, Pogge rejects such an “interactional” account of human rights, in which they are claims that hold on individuals, in favor of an institutional one in which we have obligations to avoid imposing institutions that make it impossible for people to fulfill their human rights. But there is a more natural way of articulating these responsibilities for which I have argued. That is, not only do we have an obligation to avoid imposing exploitative institutions but we have an obligation to work to establish economic, social, and political institutions that will make it possible for everyone to fulfill their human rights. On this view, the institutional application arises as a practical interpretation of our general (interpersonal, if you will) obligation to help people meet their human rights. On my approach, then, human rights hold in principle as claims of each on all others in virtue of our interdependence. But they can only be realized practically through devising social, economic, and political institutions that would serve to fulfill them. These institutions have heretofore been more bounded than the world as a whole and it is probably best that they remain bounded, though not limited to nation-states. Note that this account also entails an appeal to our interdependence as a ground for obligations to meet human rights, the most basic of which can be cashed out in terms of those conditions for action that constitute fundamental human needs. Because of our vulnerability and our dependence on others to realize these needs and to help frame and condition our individual and collective projects, I argue that the obligation to respect and meet human rights falls in principle on all others. I have suggested that these rights arise from the social (rather than strictly legal) claims that people necessarily make on others for providing these conditions for activity. (Note that Young too in her early work makes a helpful appeal to such processes of claiming.) Practically, however, the fulfillment of human rights can only be accomplished through delimited social, economic, and political systems, and thus the generality of the claims have to be specified in order to be effective. Thus for Young, social connection is a ground for responsibility to avoid or eliminate harming others globally, where this is understood within institutional frameworks. Young cites O’Neill’s idea that we are responsible if we presuppose or rely on others. I think these claims are plausible for the case of harming others, though I have indicated that structural transformation, including

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of work, is required for dealing with the sorts of exploitation that are Young’s focus. But I have suggested that beyond the avoidance of harm, a more general obligation needs to be articulated, one that has emerged especially clearly in view of globalization. That is the obligation to help introduce and sustain institutions that will serve to fulfill people’s human rights. There is indeed a complex relation between these two senses of obligation or responsibility, in my own approach. To the degree that the harm in question consists of structural forms of oppression or exploitation that serve to constrain people’s agency, then freedom from this domination is an aspect of negative freedom (which constitutes an addition to the standard notions of civil liberties and political rights). The agency in question requires the availability of conditions for its (positive) development, where these conditions include both social ones (especially recognition) and material ones, and where these conditions can be specified in terms of human rights. Since this agency is equal, I have argued that we need to operate with a principle of equal positive freedom as our principle of justice, understood moreover as equality through differences. On this view, human rights enter as basic conditions for self-transformation, and require an institutional framework, including democratic forms of participation for their fulfillment (Gould 1988, esp. chaps. 1, 5, 7; Gould 2004, esp. chaps. 1 and 9). It can be seen from this brief sketch that the critique and overcoming of structural injustice and the positive efforts to institutionalize modes of realizing human rights are closely related to each other. We can suggest further that the requirement of attending to the impact of one’s own participation in systems of oppression is an important implication of this view, as would be participating in movements working toward eliminating injustice and positively establishing frameworks for human rights fulfillment. This may involve social movements, but also political and legal innovations. Crucial in this process is what I have called transnational solidarity. Thus I have elsewhere proposed that the general obligation to help meet each other’s human rights as well as to work to eliminate oppression gives rise to, and is sustained by, new forms of solidarity (Gould 2007b). As a globally relevant norm, solidarity can be articulated in terms of an obligation to act in support of particular others at a distance (or to stand ready to aid these others), with whom one shares a commitment to the achievement of justice. I have also proposed that such solidarity need not take the form of general human solidarity (indeed, perhaps even cannot take this form), but rather of networked transnational solidarities (Gould 2007b). It thus remains limited to action or a disposition to act in overlapping solidarity movements, oriented to the elimination of oppression or suffering and to the meeting of basic needs. I suggest that solidarity in this sense involves a form of social empathy, or an understanding of the distinctive situation and difficulties of other people or groups. Unlike relations based on personal empathy, solidarity can thus hold among associations as well as among individuals. But it goes beyond empathic

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feelings and a commitment to justice, to action in support of these others in the ways that they judge helpful. In this sense, it requires receptivity as well as deference to these others. Since action is not always possible, a disposition or readiness to act is also required, and dispositions of this sort need to be more widely cultivated. There is a strong element of voluntariness retained here, in that it is up to people to choose which solidarity movement or network they want to take part in. But I would suggest that there is a certain responsibility to be part of some solidarity network or other, if human rights are to be eventually fulfilled more globally. Moreover, it is plausible that the process of participating in solidarity actions and movements can itself enhance commitment to the realization of human rights. Through the expansion of social empathy, it can serve to motivate a broader respect for these rights themselves. One additional dimension of responsibilities in this global, or at least transnational, context can be added to this account, a dimension already implied in the earlier discussion of “common activities.” This additional sort of responsibility is in fact derived from the more traditional political responsibility that Young finds appealing in Hannah Arendt’s account, but which Young appropriates for her own social connection model (Young 2004, pp. 375–377).2 I see something like Arendt’s political responsibility implied in a rather separate case from the ones on which Young focuses. Like Arendt, I think it is possible to speak of the sort of political responsibility that is involved in a nation-state or political community, where people act in common to realize shared projects. In my own democratic theory, I have called these “common activities” or “joint activities” (in a way that I now recognize shows some influence from Arendt). Unlike Young, I suggest that these common activities, and indeed political communities more generally, play an important new role in global justice contexts, in the form of cross-border or transnational communities. Thus, we can recognize the collective and shared responsibilities that come from membership in a given political community (in Arendt’s sense) as applying also when these communities are cross-border as they are increasingly becoming. This is not, then, a form of responsibility for global harms but is a more projectoriented responsibility, where there are shared and overlapping goals. Like Young’s own model, and like the responsibility to foster institutions to realize people’s human rights discussed earlier, it is future-oriented and social. In the final part of this chapter, then, I have proposed that there are in fact several senses or varieties of global responsibility, which are interrelated in complex ways. There is the responsibility associated with the functioning of exploitative or dominating global economic and social systems, which Young forcefully articulates, but which I have argued should be understood somewhat 2 Young there cites Hannah Arendt, “Collective responsibility,” in Amor Mundi: Explorations in the faith and thought of Hannah Arendt, ed. J. W. Bernauer (Boston: Martinus Nijhoff 1987), pp. 45, 47.

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differently. I have suggested that we should accept her account, but with more weight placed on the responsibility of global corporations and with greater attention to the role of structural transformation, including in democratic control of work, to eliminate systemic exploitation. Beyond that, I have proposed that we have a responsibility to move positively to establish institutions that will enable everyone to fulfill their human rights, though it is practically important to divide this work into more delimited local and regional efforts, coupled with new means for minimizing global inequalities and enabling democratic input into the institutions of global governance. We can also recognize the obligations that we have within our social, economic, and political communities, whether they are traditionally local, or national, or newly cross-border. Membership in these communities generates more familiar obligations, but it is important to remember that since some of these communities are truly transnational or even global, their scope can be quite broad and will require new forms of transnational representation. There may indeed be more than these varieties of global responsibility, but I would suggest that there are at least these. In addition, we can see that new transnational solidarities are required as a means of achieving global justice concretely. We can say, then, that we have obligations to work to support particular individuals or groups elsewhere whom we can identify as oppressed or suffering, out of a commitment to achieving justice. But this conception of solidarity not only points to a new sort of obligation but to a new way of meeting the demanding obligations of global justice and human rights. As embodying an important element of voluntariness as to where to devote one’s efforts to support others, it importantly helps to create on-the-ground relationships through which we reciprocally meet our more general obligations to support others and to pursue the establishment of human rights. In any case, it is clear through all this that Young has called our attention to an important new domain for philosophical reflection, namely, that of articulating how individuals and groups can be responsible for rectifying global injustices, in a way that is demanding but also plausible. This connection of theory to practice is only one instance of Young’s manifold and important contributions to social philosophy.

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On Immigration Politics in the Context of European Societies and the Structural Inequality Mode Máriam Martínez

The concepts of exclusion and inclusion lose meaning if they are used to label all problems of social conflict and injustice. Where the problems are racism, cultural intolerance, economic exploitation, or a refusal to help needy people, they should be so named. —Iris Marion Young, Inclusion and Democracy Comme Socrate selon Platon, l’immigré est atopos, sans lieu, déplacé, inclassable. (…) Ni citoyen, ni étranger, ni vraiment du côté du Même, ni totalement du côté de l’Autre, il se situe en ce lieu “bâtard” dont parle aussi Platon, la frontière de l’être et du non-être social. As Socrates said, according to Plato, the immigrant is atopos, without place, transferred, unclassified. (…) Neither citizen, nor foreigner, nor truly to the side of Self, nor totally to the side of Other, he stands in this “bastard” place which Plato speaks of, the frontier between social being and social not-being. —Pierre Bourdieu, La double absence

Many of the central ideas in this chapter were inspired by a very first draft of an article called “Structural Injustice and Politics of Difference,” which Young sent to me when I met her in the fall of 2005 at the University of Chicago. I am responsible for any interpretation of any argument that I took from it. I would like to thank Mecke Nagel and Ann Ferguson for their help in improving this chapter. I thank Rafael del Águila for his indispensable advice. Most of all, thanks to Tom, who has read several drafts and has discussed many ideas with me. I dedicate with enormous love this chapter to him and to my parents, Aníbal and Ramoni.

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Introduction: The Appeal to a Structural Level of Social Life in Immigration Politics In the last few decades, most of the Western liberal democracies have had to face the challenge of reassessing immigration policies in order to achieve the satisfactory inclusion of immigrant communities, particularly Muslim minorities. Issues of identity and cultural distinctiveness are growing in these democracies, where aims for assimilation are being addressed with new measures of immigration control, taken mostly by conservative governments in the form of security regimes that try to preserve a “national identity or character that all members share” (Young 2000, p. 252). The presence of so many new people in European cities like Paris, London, or Amsterdam has shown how such claims for unity and common good within the aspirations of national identity have favored some social groups while positioning others, especially Muslims, as the deviant Other (Young 2000, p. 81). In this chapter I advocate considering issues of immigration politics as a matter of social justice. I endorse Iris Marion Young’s concept of social justice as “the institutional conditions for promoting self-development and selfdetermination of a society’s members” where self-development means access to opportunities for developing capacities, and self-determination represents being able to determine one’s actions (Young 2000, pp. 31–33). I believe that an appropriate interpretation of these ideals in the particular situation of immigrants’ inclusion suggests that they ought to be considered primarily as structural groups rather than cultural groups. From a social justice perspective it does not matter if the source of the subordinate position of immigrant social groups in European societies is a different set of practices, conventions, music, language, or visual images. What matters instead is that because of this difference they stand in a structural position in which they find more obstacles to the pursuit of their interests and skilled professions; a structural position in which they have a small range of opportunities to achieve and develop autonomy or exercise their capacities. Social group difference as structural differentiation here is a resource for the sake of social justice because it “allows us to notice structural relations of dominance and subordination among groups that raise important issues of justice for individuals” (Young 2000, p. 102). Thus, this chapter is focused on what Young has termed the Structural Inequality Model in relation to immigration politics in Western liberal democracies, and especially in European societies, where conflicts arising from group differences are evaluated with a substantialist logic that tends to reduce difference to identity, ethnicity, nationality, or religion. I rely on Young’s conviction that basing difference on structures of work, sexuality, and embodied normativity rather than on identity politics increases the likelihood of promoting justice. The chapter aims to approach immigration politics by paying attention to

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the experience derived primarily from structural differentiation and structural inequalities, because the “identity assertions of cultural groups usually appear in the context of structural relations of privilege and disadvantage” (Young 2000, p. 106). Muslims in many societies in Europe, for instance, claim the right to wear traditional dress in public spaces at the same time that they experience employment discrimination, marginalization in political participation, expressions of xenophobia, violence, or harassment (ibid). I suggest that attending to cultural difference here improperly narrows the scope of issues of social justice that first ought to guarantee material resources and the ability to exercise capacities (cf. Young, p. 134). These material resources that usually have been preserved in most of the democratic welfare states in Europe are the object of restrictions under the argument that these coming waves of non-European immigrants are making it necessary to renew the traditional redistributive welfare policies. (Wolfe and Lausen 1997, pp. 231–55, cited in Young 2000, p. 243) The appeal to a structural level in this chapter seeks to concretely identify four aspects of “structural injustice” that are not well captured by liberal strategies of accommodation and integration of immigrants in which principles of tolerance require mostly that “the migrants be perceived as affirming the values and sociocultural accomplishments of the majority of society” (Young 2000, p. 220). I point out the four aspects of critique as social and political outcomes that result from this structural differentiation and the structural inequalities that affect immigrant social groups: 1. Racism as a form of structural injustice is disappearing in liberal discourses from general view, leaving in its place concerns about ethnic and religious differences. In this case, the Structural Inequality Model raises issues of stigma, exclusion, and discrimination rather than problems of ethnic or cultural differences, and affirms that the “primary claims of justice refer to experiences of structural inequality more than cultural difference” (Young 2000, p. 105). 2. The liberal logic of tolerance and its limits obscure social processes of normalizing behaviors that produce individual discrimination. According to Young, this logic of normalization operates by marking the practices of immigrants and cultural minorities as deviant when compared to the normal as defined by culturally hegemonic groups. 3. From the liberal perspective, issues of gender are sometimes hidden by general problems of religion where women normally are treated as the objects of the debate (Young 2000, p. 62). In the case of the affaire du foulard, or affair of the veil, in France for instance, religion has displaced other relevant questions about gender discrimination such as the sexual division of labor, gendered processes of socialization, and the establishment of hegemonic norms that limit real opportunities for women. (Young 2005a, p. 22)

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justice: democracy and inclusion 4. The arena of civil society is displaced by a state-centered conception of political action that maintains the traditional division of public and private. Under this logic, the public is regulated by the state, which decides what is permitted, supported, or required, and what is forbidden or must be relegated to the private in order to guarantee the neutrality and homogeneity of the public.

Identifying these four areas of analysis that background the Structural Inequality Model means assessing inequality and theorizing social justice for immigrant social groups through systemic relations of oppression. Structures in Young’s account denote “the confluence of institutional rules and interactive routines, mobilization of resources, and physical structures, which constitute the historical givens in relation to which individuals act” (Young 2005a, p. 20). The Structural Inequality Model thus attends to systemic factors of social structures and institutions in which people behave under constraints in ways that inhibit their capacities (Young 2001a, p. 9). Young has theorized these four important facets of the Structural Inequality Model throughout her work. I do not claim, however, that these four areas exhaust her approach. There may well be many other possible aspects, and even those that I have chosen could deserve a deeper exploration. I have found these four particularly important, first, because they pay attention to group difference for the sake of a concept of social justice concerned with equal opportunity to develop capacities and well being and not just freedom and autonomy. Second, because they seek to challenge liberal conceptualizations such as the relation of public and private, rather than search for the accommodation of emerging social conditions to the status quo. Third, because The Structural Inequality Model assumes that perspectives of individuals are incommensurable. I want to show how it frames and positions women’s issues quite differently from the way that identity and multicultural politics constructs them, where gender issues usually serve to test other principles and ideas and not as ends by themselves. Finally, I seek to approach ethnic difference from a model that connects physical attributes and bodily characteristics with structures. I aim to deal with ethnic difference in a way that reflects on the processes of socializing bodies that serve as excuses for structural inequalities, because the institutional and social environment is biased due to standards for body aesthetics that devaluate and structurally position some people abjectly. I believe that some of these ideas are not so familiar in traditional perspectives and discussions about immigration politics for European scholars and contexts.

Racism versus Ethnicity and Cultural Difference As I have said above, in this chapter I propose addressing issues of social group difference related to the process of immigrant inclusion in European societies

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through Young’s account of structural injustice, because I believe it better captures concerns about physical attributes, socialized body types, and processes that naturalize body characteristics against others which appear as inferior or deviated. Approaching structural processes of racism from this view supposes that what is constituted as problems of cultural and ethnic mutual identification in relation to the presence of immigrant groups, especially Muslims and North African in European cities, ought to be observed as a process that normalizes a body aesthetic. This process in turn determines which people are most appropriate for low-status work1 (Loury 2002, pp. 15–55; Young 2001a, pp. 1–18), for being structurally located as deviant, inferior, or stigmatized, and for living in segregated places. This pattern, according to which undesirable work is done primarily by people of color, can be observed to a large extent in the case, for instance, of Afro-Caribbeans in several British cities, and in migrant populations from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East in Amsterdam, Brussels, or Paris, which mirrors similar patterns of employment discrimination and residential concentrations in suburbs that have become racialized ghettos (Young 2000, pp. 106, 202, 219). According to Young, what differentiates race from ethnic issues is the way in which body features are vilified. While ethnicity seems to be reduced to cultural difference, racial oppression involves “existing as a group perceived as having ugly bodies, and being feared, avoided, or hated on that account.” (Young 1990c, p. 201; Young 2000, pp. 122, 152). Thus, from her writings we can identify at least three structures of racial inequality that produce structural injustice and reinforce inequalities among social groups, particularly biased against immigrant groups. First, racial inequality rises from processes of normalization that determine that physical and other undesirable jobs are more appropriate for people pertaining to racialized groups (Young 2001a, pp. 1–18; Young 2006a, pp. 92–93; Young 1990, p. 122), reserving for them the lowest social status and the lowest average incomes (Young 2000, p. 206). Structures of racial inequality are essential to discussions of justice in the division of labor because the devaluation of members of racialized groups determines the proper type of work for its members according to a hierarchal status. In Europe, immigrants from North and Sub-Saharan Africa, Turkey, and Latin America have been marked as other and restricted to certain positions in the social division of labor (Young 2000, pp. 106, 219). Second, racial inequality rises from processes of stigmatization that “structure everyday interaction and subjectivity at nondiscursive levels of practical 1 The stigma of racialized bodies of African-American in United States is the result of process of normalization and devaluation of body types that determines the proper work for some people. According to Loury (2002), stigmatization of African-Americans could have its origins in the division of labor of slavery. Similar patterns of stigmatization could have resulted from the legacies of colonialism in Europe. See Abdelmalek Sayad, La double absence (1999, pp. 53–94).

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consciousness and unconsciousness” (Young 1990c, p. 202). These processes of stigmatization affect the way people react to others according to what is marked as deviated, based not only on ideals of beauty but also standards of comportment, of sociability, and guidelines of moral respectability. Justice here does not imply the recognition of cultural practices but rather the challenging of processes that normalize attributes of persons and, by extension, the behavior of these persons. In the United States, norms of intelligence, respectability, and professionalism are more typically associated with whites than African Americans (Young 2006b, p. 99), while in Europe similar patterns that stigmatize body types and cultural behaviors can be observed to a large extent. It can be said, for instance, that the cultural difference of Pakistanis in England also carries a racial stigma in this sense. (Young 2006b, p. 101) The third structure of racial inequality represents another source of structural injustice and refers to segregation as a process of residentially concentrating members of social groups that have been bodily stigmatized; this also implies exclusion from privileges and benefits (Young 2000, pp. 196–228). Although Young’s work focuses mostly on processes of segregation in America represented by Black neighborhoods in cities such as Chicago, Cleveland, Newark, or New York, she dedicates some of her writings to the phenomena of residential racial segregation in European cities and documents how many patterns in those processes follow very similar codes of interpretation and explanation (Young 2000, pp. 201–204). The origins of both cases are quite different but the results are similar. While in the United States racial segregation is largely the product of the historical stigma of blackness in America, racial segregation in Europe is extremely related to the reception of immigration through which large populations from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East remain concentrated in European cities such as London, Berlin, Amsterdam, or Paris. Young points out how many of the people who have Asian, African, Middle Eastern, or Caribbean origins are treated as foreigners even if they were born in European countries, because they remain segregated in these European cities (Young 2000, p. 219). Process of segregation in the United States and in Europe share, however, a common structure of racial inequality based on “racialist social structures of privilege and disadvantage” that produce limits on substantive opportunities for developing capacities (Young 2000, p. 203). Young points out that some scholars have debated about the genesis of these residential concentrations as spaces formed by ethnic enclaves rather than ghettos resulting from exclusion by the white majority2 (Young 2000, pp. 199, 203). Although those neighborhoods could be thought of that way, they still usually have “notable disadvantages such as having poor transportation access, poor-quality housing for the price, location near unpleasant 2 On this topic she quotes the work of authors such as Peter Marcuse (1997, pp. 228–64) and Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton, American Apartheid (1993, pp. 1–7).

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industrial facilities” and they also “carry associations of danger and stigma that make majority cultural groups move from them” (Young 2000, p. 204). These conditions certainly suggest that these neighborhoods are founded on social segregation. To the extent that it is not clear if these concentrations simply result from the members of ethnic communities’ preference for living close to those with whom they share cultural affinities, I suggest that they ought to be considered primarily as racially concentrated neighborhoods that feed conditions of structural inequality. However, in order to challenge this stigma that they carry I propose Young’s principle of Differentiated Solidarity as an ideal that assumes respect for the choices of the people that want to live together, at the same time that it requires mutual obligation and solidarity between those in urban spaces for providing services and keeping a sense of justice commitment and solidarity among them (Young 2000, p. 201).

The Process of Normalization versus the Logic of Tolerance and Its Limits In her work, Young distinguishes in modern society three categories of nondistributive issues of justice: the social division of labor, decision-making power, and the establishment of hegemonic norms or what she calls “normativity.”3 Normativity refers to images, expectations, and social and institutional rules that “make some persons or behaviors more valuable than others” (Young 2006a, pp. 94–96). In this sense, Young’s concept of normativity relies on processes of normalization, an idea that she mainly borrows from the work of writers such as Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and Michael Warner. Following the argument that some structural injustices such as stigmatization, racism, and exclusion are not well captured by the liberal framework of tolerance and its limits, I endorse Young’s project of theorizing those types of issues by bringing them into an account that puts more emphasis on processes of normalization. I propose that issues of immigrant exclusion should be primarily concerned with issues of normativity rather than issues for the recognition of cultural expression and self-government. Normalization, in Young’s view, constitutes a major source of oppression in our contemporary societies. By normalization she refers to “processes that construct experience and capacities of some social segments into standards against which all are measured and some found wanting, or deviant” (Young 2006b, p. 96). Processes of normalization tend to privilege the experience of some people at the same time that they render invisible or deprecate the experience of others. Normalization transforms difference into deviance because 3 Although she speaks about these axes frequently, she develops them more rigorously in “Lived Body vs. Gender” (2005a) and “Taking the Basic Structure Seriously” (2006a).

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social and institutional norms expect certain attributes and behaviors from people for whom the exhibition of such behaviors is untenable or impossible. Thus understood, normalization is a source of structural oppression because in these cases the structure itself construes their difference as a problem and tends to exclude those who do not meet its norms. Processes of normalization produce stigmatization and disadvantage (Young 2006b, p. 97). Stigmatization because it constructs some people as “outliers,” deviants, or misfits and thus devalues their social status according to hegemonic norms of respectability, intelligence, beauty, morality, and ethics. Secondly, processes of normalization produce systematic disadvantages in terms of access to resources for developing skills and capacities for achieving opportunities. In that sense, stigmatization and disadvantage not only have enormous consequences for reaching positions of prestige, for accumulating wealth and so on, but also, there are substantive implications for subjectivity in terms of self-respect and valuation in the sense that being recognized as an equal by others constitutes the first step for developing a positive sense of the self 4. In traditional approaches of politics of recognition such as those of Charles Taylor (1992), conflicts concerning assertions for equal status and equal respect normally are reduced to claims for cultural expression. While it is important to differentiate claims for toleration of distinct cultural practices from those concerned with stigmatized and disadvantaged positions, I suggest that in discussing claims from ethnic immigrated minorities in Europe, such as Muslims, North Africans, or Latin Americans about freedom of cultural expression in public spaces, their marginalized status in society, labor markets, and political institutions should also be taken into an account. Framing issues of politics in relation to group difference under the liberal paradigm very often implies focusing on the “value of tolerance more than that of inclusion in a diversely interacting public” (Young 2006b, p. 101). In regard to cultural and religious groups in Europe these politics of difference arise primarily from differences of nationality, culture, or religion. According to Young, this logic of tolerance supposes envisioning limits constructed by the normal and deviant that “normalize the experience of some group members and marginalize others” (Young 1997a, p. 5). Indeed, it normalizes a discourse in multicultural debates about limits of toleration and claims of immigrant minorities that tends to obscure other issues about structural inequalities such as differences in access to spaces and resources, to opportunities for developing capacities and well being, or for pursuing positions in labor markets as an equal, that ought to be at stake in these debates. The logic of tolerance is based on liberal politics concerned with rights of liberty, autonomy, and freedom 4 On the Hegelian idea of identity as constructed dialogically through processes of mutual recognition see Taylor (1992, p. 25).

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of expression while the Structural Inequality Model aims to highlight issues of equal opportunity. In this chapter I suggest that issues about inclusion of immigrants ought to be approached primarily on these terms.

The Displacement of Gender Issues From the 1970s through the early 1980s, theories and social movements emerged under the formula of multiculturalism. The central concern of these politics can be understood as the reaction of the formal liberal legal equality (as equal treatment) at the expense of assimilation and rejection of difference. Multiculturalism encourages cultural diversity and seeks equal respect for others’ ways of life. However, cultures very often do not accept this principle of equal respect to everyone. Okin (1999) and Nussbaum (2000), very concerned with equality and rights for women within multicultural contexts, have remarked on the patriarchal condition of every culture and the subordinate state and lack of opportunities that women suffer in relation to men in every country of the world, but especially in developing countries, where “gender inequality is strongly correlated with poverty” (Nussbaum 2000, p. 3). Multiculturalism very often is figured as the framework in which issues of gender inequality are used to test theories and approaches about tolerance, and where assumptions for gender justice are invoked in discussions of equal treatment. Bhikhu Parekh for instance, has listed twelve cultural practices that most frequently provoke intercultural conflicts, among which at least seven of them concern the status of women. These practices refer to issues such as those of marriages, wearing or taking off the Islamic veil, and the Muslim withdrawal of girls from some educational practices such as sports (Parekh 2000, pp. 264–65). According to Young, bringing these conflicts under a liberal paradigm supposes mostly framing gender issues in terms of toleration and its limits and then suppressing other structural issues of exploitation, marginalization, or subordination that usually affect women. In the last section I relied on Young’s account in order to criticize the theoretical construction whereby tolerance is understood as the accommodation of one group to another’s practices and forms of cultural expression and argued that this logic contributes to structurally positioning persons as deviant-Other because it tends to normalize the experience of some groups while marginalizing others. The liberal logic of accommodation and assimilation bases the terms of the public debate on a notion of difference that is reduced to just cultural practices and holds that the State has the power of allowing and tolerating. In these debates, women’s voices tend to get lost because the rhetoric and discussions about religion, special rights, and the preservation of cultural distinctiveness are very often not framed in terms that promote the inclusion of their voices. In such discussions one can easily come to appreciate, as Martha

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Minow pointed out, the multiple “ramifications of different ways of theorizing differences” and how fragile difference is when it so easily risks becoming “assimilated into old categories of thinking so that it loses its novelty and its message” (Minow 1990, cited in Gilligan 1993, p. xi). Dealing with difference in multicultural debates supposes keeping a resonance in which equality still means sameness, because the questions and terms of these discussions are framed around the affirmation that women should have the same rights as men, and so, for example, shouldn’t cover their heads in public. This is a normalized discourse in which difference refers to a cultural practice that will be tolerated or not, depending on the degree to which liberal rights can be extended. I suggest that difference in these debates ought to mean primarily that one explicitly acknowledges the other, and that one hears her perspective, incommensurable with one’s own. What has been referred to as l’affaire du foulard in France has been approached as a specific practice of cultural membership in which religion has gained more attention than specific issues concerned about gender justice. The practice of the veil suggests the problematic for the liberal state is whether or not to tolerate it, depending on the political and institutional spaces, and the personal choice of those who wear it. The State here, which did intervene, invoking the principles of egalitarianism and autonomy, “act(ed) as the champion of women’s emancipation from their communities of birth” in a paternalist and oppressive position which, however, “some women resisted (. . .) not to affirm their religious and sexual subordination so much as to assert a quasipersonal identity independent of the dominant French culture” (Benhabib 2002, p. 94). In this case, religious identity became the main banner under which claims for specific rights were addressed. I argue in this chapter that framing these issues on multicultural and liberal accounts primarily tends to displace issues of gender justice such as the sexual division of labor, processes of gender socialization and gendered hierarchies of power. The sexual division of labor persists in the assumption that “women devote primary energies to taking care of children and other dependent family members” (Young 2006a, p. 93), so women very often find substantive obstacles for developing other capacities. Socialization of girls remains oriented toward caring and helping. These social differences produced by the division of labor and process of socialization are fundamental for gendered structural inequalities to the extent that because of them women very often stand in a position more vulnerable to poverty and abuse than men (Young 2005a, pp. 22–23). These axes of gender structures such as the sexual division of labor and processes of gendered socialization also produce gendered hierarchies of status and power and gender stereotyping that limit real opportunities for women in labor market expectations, social positions, and public recognition. This set of issues of gender justice are related to general assumptions, social conventions, and habits that stigmatize or devalue

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women. According to Young, all those aspects of social interactions and meanings are normally captured by recent political theory and multicultural debates under the general term of culture “to refer primarily to differences between groups based on ethnicity, nationality, or religion” (Young 2006a, p. 95). In her account the term of culture refers more to “symbols, images, meanings, habitual comportments, stories and so on through which people express their experience and communicate with one another” (Young 1990c, p. 213), while culture from multicultural approaches take nation, ethnicity, or religion as paradigmatic of culture.5 For Young culture relies more on communicative action than on a substantial and coherent entity distinguished entirely from other or others’ single substantial cultures. Despite the fact that they typically defend a position in which cultural difference should not be rigid and enclosed, multicultural approaches, however, tend to freeze conventional habits into natural practices because they speak about culture as a substantive, static, and bounded entity limited to attributes of nationality, costumes, ethnic groups, or religion. The term culture is too vague to capture these issues of gender justice as well as is the notion of recognition which also “slides between several meanings, the most common of which do not focus on the issues of stigmatization and exclusion to which (she) want(s) to call attention” (Young 2006a, p. 95). The term recognition usually invokes problems of acknowledging ways of living and questions of self-government, while issues of gender justice are more concerned with other aspects, meanings, symbols, bodily habits and stereotypes that function to limit the opportunities of many women for selfdevelopment and self-determination. That is, these latter aspects may restrict the conditions of equal opportunity to develop capacities and decide if I want to wear the veil or not, to decide for myself if I experience that as an oppression or as an expression. They also may restrict me from being free to “pursue (my) life in (my) own way” because I participate in determining my own action and the conditions of my action. (Young 2000, p. 32). Certainly liberal approaches to multicultural debates would not have any objections to these principles of selfdevelopment and self-determination. These principles, however, usually come separated from the claims for cultural freedom and expression in multicultural debates which take national, ethnic, and religious groups as the only kind of group at issue, leaving too little space for the gender issues at stake. Above I have pointed out that in addition to culture, it is necessary to give an account that speaks about structural inequalities associated with gender, about material resources, habits, meanings, and forms of communicative action that denigrate images and expectations about women. I think that these interactive norms that produce the gender division of labor, processes

5 See Young (2006a, p. 97), where she quotes three authors as paradigmatic examples of this usage of culture, despite the “different implications of culture for politics” that they exhibit: Will Kymlicka in Multicultural Citizenship (1995); Brian Barry, Culture and Equality (2001); and Seyla Benhabib, The Claims of Culture (2002).

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of gendered socialization, and gendered hierarchies of power are not well conceptualized under the paradigm of recognition politics. In relation to this, the third aspect of the Structural Inequality Model refers to the necessity of specifically looking for female voices in order to express a number of questions that end up being displaced by general debates about religious identity, tolerance, and its limits and claims for recognition of cultural difference. These debates usually ignore structural biases against women or are arenas where gender issues serve as mere instruments to test and define the frontiers for the application of liberal rights. In the case of the veil in France, in spite of the fact that there was a public discussion about issues of democracy and difference in multicultural societies, “the girls’ voices were not heard in this heated debate (so) the voices of those whose interests were most vitally affected by the norms prohibiting the wearing of the scarf under certain conditions were silenced” (Benhabib 2002, p. 117). As Young says, this logic usually operates by “displacing and silencing the other as she might speak in a different, incommensurate register.”6

The Displacement of Civil Society Many of the theories and proposals associated with multicultural and liberal approaches focus on the relation between state policy and the presence of ethnic and religious difference in Western democracies. Struggles about difference in these contexts are grounded in the logic of tolerance, and its limits for accommodating what are defined as cultural practices within the barriers of liberal principles and rights. Will Kymlicka, Charles Taylor, Bhikhu Parekh, and James Tully have all taken the important step of “politicizing culture” by challenging basic concepts of normative political theory, theorizing claims from a large variety of movements and oppressed cultural minorities and treating these issues as a matter of serious discussion.7 Liberal-democratic states face the challenge not only of accepting cultural diversity but also of encouraging it as a value. Discussions about cultural diversity, however, very often are centered on constitutional and formal rules that derive from state regulations. While it is important to recognize the function of state institutions in coordinating and administrating issues concerning

6 See Young (1997b, p. 44). I find in this article interesting insights about processes in which members of privileged groups—in this case, men—very often try to represent the perspective of members of oppressed groups—in this case, women—and how by doing that they end up silencing or restricting female voices and founding the terms of the debates in a manner completely disconnected from female voices. I think this is a suggestive example of her “asymmetrical reciprocity.” 7 It is important to note that all these authors have been criticized precisely for this reason of “politicizing culture,” included Young herself. See Barry (2001, p. 276).

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the integration of immigration policy, in the specific case of inclusion of ethnic minorities, civil society represents a vital space for “promoting inclusion, expression, and critique for deep democracy” (Young 2000, p. 156). The term civil society refers to “the entirety of social life outside state institutions” and also “a sector of private associations that are relatively autonomous from both state and economy” (Young 2000, pp. 157–58). This private sector independent from state and economy designates what Habermas calls the “lifeworld” in which communicative interaction represents the primary structure. In her writings, Young invokes an essential role of that primary structure in promoting social justice, and then she criticizes those liberal accounts that, in approaching issues concerning politics of difference, tend to narrow political struggle just to state policy. I suggest that her Structural Inequality Model provides significant insights for extending issues of structural injustice beyond public policy because it recognizes this arena of civil society as a necessary terrain for political action. Liberal state-centered policy usually does not recognize this “lifeworld” as a location of structural injustices and implicitly maintains the traditional political division of public and private. Debates about culture and difference are focused on questions concerning to what extent the state ought to permit, support, or relegate to the private specific cultural practices in order to preserve the neutrality and homogeneity of the public. Justice then becomes an issue of public matters where public implies only state representative institutions. Many of the problems described in this chapter generate exclusion and marginalization for immigrant groups in a way that they are not likely to be addressed as problems by state institutions and legislators. Processes of segregation and normalization, for instance, are enacted through social backgrounds in a way that they cannot be confronted merely from institutional places. It is often enormously difficult for these groups’ oppression to be expressed in public discourses coming from high-level spheres of bureaucracy and state policy. On the other hand, the production and reproduction of structural inequalities such as racism against cultural minorities continues to arise in social networks in spite of laws guaranteeing equal rights when immigrants become naturalized. For that reason, many of these marginalized groups have found alternative ways of expression in order to articulate their experiences and social perspectives. Thus, civil society has become a useful space of intervention through aesthetic and political discourses built on affirmative expressions for denigrated groups. These social groups have invented new political imaginaries and created new strategies of action in which cultural artifacts as well as aesthetic and political discourses have made possible political platforms of resistance and destabilization from normative codes that produce inequalities, exclusion, and marginalization. Young follows Seyla Benhabib’s insights on that topic to affirm that it is in this domain also where multicultural conflicts ought to have a place, to the

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extent that approaching these issues under a liberal paradigm usually supposes “to solve (them) through a juridical calculus of liberal rights.”8 Liberal political theory very often ignores the unofficial public sphere as a vital site for deliberation and communicative interaction, as a sphere of political contestation and action. What Young calls communicative democracy (Young 1993, pp. 23–42) aims to solve this displacement of civil society from political liberalism by recognizing both state representative institutions and civic institutions “as potential sites for democratic communication among citizens, and between citizens and public officials” (Young 2000, p. 167). This framework for communicative democracy is analogous in many ways to the dual-track approach to politics that Seyla Benhabib mentions in order to distinguish deliberative democracy from political liberalism, where the public sphere normally ignores non-state dimensions of politics (Benhabib 2002, p. 119). Benhabib’s proposal to conceptualize the domain of the unofficial public sphere as the terrain in which deliberative and communicative democracy focus on solving multicultural conflicts is helpful to make this distinction. I do agree with Young, however, that demands for cultural recognition and expression, such as the claims Muslims in European cities make to wear the veil, should not be divorced from the marginalized status of the members of these groups.

Conclusion It is widely agreed among scholars that Young’s notion of social group probably represents one of the most controversial contributions of her work. It is striking that in Justice and Politics of Difference “social group” defines identity, and in Inclusion and Democracy “social group” has an empirical character that empties the concept of any reference to identity. Group-differentiated domination and oppression are central to a politics that aims to solve problems of inclusion of immigrants. But immigrant social groups are also culturally different and have “incommensurable perspectives” that do not result just from experiences of oppression and domination. Young does not directly address the question of the inclusion of immigrants in much detail but she highlights very interesting keys for doing so. In this chapter I take some of these keys to argue that problems of immigrant inclusion arise primarily from structural social group differences, and the processes of normalization, racialization, and subordination that accompany them. I argue that we should consider immigrants as social groups with differences originally generated from structures of power and social positions rather than

8 Benhabib (2002, pp. 21–22) references the following liberal approaches: Rawls’s model of overlapping liberal consensus, the model of liberal egalitarianism of Brian Barry, and the model of pluralist interlocking power hierarchies of Ayelet Shachar among others.

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from ethnic or religious affiliations. I have tried to use this idea also as a way to endorse a political public where difference does not remain in an enclosed set of attributes of social groups, but rather in a fluid and changing set of relations from which people express and develop their subjectivities. I believe, however, that considering immigrant social groups as structural groups risks ignoring or repressing the significance of culture for some of them. It seems to me that sometimes culture and structure are in Young’s writings oppositional categories that imply an exclusionary election. I think that public space ought to be the place for dealing with difference in a context of dialogue that allows the best conditions for inclusion, where inclusion is political participation and political participation means that the voices of all the members of immigrant groups are heard on differences of social position and cultural affiliation. I do agree with Young that this dialogue should escape from homogeneous tendencies that suppose a degree of transparency between subjects while paradoxically many of them remain invisible. I have centered this chapter on four aspects of the Structural Inequality Model, but I do not claim that they are definitive in providing an account that gives us a different way of looking at social justice for immigrants. I do hope they show that the political vocabulary about immigration very often implies euphemisms that hide problems of racism when they speak about “conflicts of ethnicity,” processes of normalization when they speak about problems of tolerance and its limits, or processes of gender socialization that many times are hidden by religious issues. I have tried to use my imagination for other interpretations of social realities when speaking about immigration conflicts because from Young’s work I have come to appreciate that imagination may be a tool from which to start to identify and open up possibilities for thinking. That is probably the reason why she was a teacher in critical thinking, although those of us who had the chance of meeting her know that the masterpiece was not just her work but herself.

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4

Women’s Work Trips and Multifaceted Oppression Ibipo Johnston-Anumonwo Being employed is an essential aspect of meaningful participation in society for most people. Access to jobs for different social groups is thus a relevant topic of inquiry. Since, like men, a majority of employed women work outside the home, an examination of women’s commuting is one way to appraise women’s access to jobs. This chapter will give a conceptual and empirical analysis of women’s work trips, using analysis of the multiple faces of oppression posited by Iris Young (1990a). The premise of the chapter is that this situation of many working women, that they have more difficulty in getting to work, denies equitable access, and therefore can be tied to social structures of oppression. Based on evidence from empirical research in a variety of U.S. cities, I present an analysis of women’s commuting using Iris Young’s conceptual framework of different types of oppression which she identifies as marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, exploitation, and violence. The chapter focuses on problems faced by women working outside the home in the context of pervasive de facto residential segregation. Their socioeconomic, locational, and mobility characteristics are analyzed to understand the nature of the oppression associated with their work trips. For instance, to what extent does the stereotype that connects motherhood with short trips uphold or undermine the claim that cultural imperialism is involved in judging these women’s oppression? How might a multifactorial investigation of job type, monetary compensation, and trip length underscore the intricate links between powerlessness and exploitation for working women? What, if any, form of violence do women encounter while commuting? I synthesize findings to these questions and show that the conceptual framework of Iris Young’s (1990a) faces of oppression is both versatile and

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relevant for interpreting racial and gender differences in employment access. Housing-jobs mismatches and transportation constraints that restrict women’s access to jobs contribute to their marginalization in the labor market. The sample of findings reveals that many African American women continue to endure relatively long commutes to get to work because of, and in spite of, transportation, locational and socioeconomic hindrances. I conclude this chapter by discussing the implications of multifaceted oppression in analyses of women’s work trips.

Connecting Commuting with Multiple Faces of Oppression Do people have jobs? What are some constraints on people’s access to jobs? What jobs do people do? Where do they work? How much do they earn? How do they get to their workplace? These are all questions that can be addressed within a framework that examines connections between commuting and multiple faces of oppression. Young cites unemployment as a form of oppression she terms marginalization because jobless people may be confined to lives of social marginality (Young 1990a). Inadequate access to jobs because of the location of one’s home can lead to joblessness. Since the length of the separation between the home and the workplace is an indicator of access to employment, a focus on the work trip can reveal expedient job access or lack thereof. Another form of oppression, powerlessness, refers to social class injustices wherein the powerless group lacks the authority or opportunity to negotiate favorable conditions; while exploitation, a third face of oppression, occurs when a group does not benefit from their labor while others do. According to Young, powerlessness can be caused by the social division of labor between nonprofessionals and professionals, with the later group represented in positions of power and privilege. And in her conceptualization of exploitation as a face of oppression, Young emphasizes inadequate compensation, financial or otherwise, that benefits one group at the expense of another. Marginalization, powerlessness, and exploitation all refer to inequality within the context of employment. They are the faces of oppression that place attention on the resources to which people have access, the material benefits possible from waged work, and the opportunities to exercise significant control in the employment context. In essence, these faces of oppression are about which group of workers benefits from whom, who is dispensable, and who gets to work to start with. For powerlessness and exploitation, I look at conventional labor market variables, occupation type, and employment earnings, to analyze these two faces of oppression. Regarding work trips, the empirical literature shows that high status workers are generally in a better position to afford long commutes compared to low-waged workers (Hanson and Pratt 1995; Ihlanfeldt 1992; McLafferty and Preston 1997).

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Cultural imperialism, a fourth face of oppression, involves the universalization of a dominant group’s experience and culture, and its establishment as the norm. The culturally dominated undergo a paradoxical oppression in that they are both marked out by stereotypes and at the same time rendered invisible (Young 1990a). Young uses the stereotype that women are good with children as an example of group marking. This example shows the dominance of a patriarchal ideology such that motherhood as a pervasive gender role will influence women’s commuting behavior. However, the experience of motherhood is not necessarily a universal one for all women if one considers a race–gender nexus. Indeed Collins (1991) emphasizes that African American women have long integrated economic self-reliance with mothering. She states that “in contrast to the cult of true womanhood, in which work is defined as being in opposition to and incompatible with motherhood, work for Black women has been an important and valued dimension of Afrocentric definitions of Black motherhood” (p. 124). Since Black women’s mothering attributes do not conform to white cultural standards, and women may differ then in the degree to which their status as mothers influences their commutes, I compare the influence of household responsibility on women’s commute between white and Black working mothers. Although empirical evidence on the role of household responsibility on trip length is mixed (Sultana 2003), a study by Preston et al. (1993) found that Black mothers had longer trip times than white mothers, a finding that suggests that the touted norm of short commutes for working mothers applies more to white women. Last but not least, Young states that violence is a systemic form of social injustice and she identifies it as a fifth face of oppression. Although my own studies do not include empirical measures of violence, I address the relevance of violence in women’s commuting later in my concluding remarks. Finally, any attempt to conceptually or empirically link commuting with the faces of oppression must also recognize the insidious milieu of U.S. residential segregation that Young describes (Young 2000).

Social Justice, Residential Segregation, and Locational Access to Jobs If members of any given group of workers encounter difficulty in transportation due to their locational access to work, this constitutes a significant form of inequity because they could be excluded from being full functioning members of society. Unemployment or other conditions of not having access to useful participation in life are forms of social injustice because the people affected are potentially subjected to severe material deprivation and related marginal status. Jobless people experience marginalization, and inadequate locational access to jobs can lead to joblessness, which in turn can lead to poverty. As an indicator

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of access to employment, the separation between the home and the workplace is appropriate for analyzing equitable job access. A brief review of the literature on housing patterns and commuting follows. There has been little change in patterns of racial residential segregation in the United States (Denton 1994; Massey and Hajnal 1995). Because of their relative concentration in central cities, the growth of employment in suburbs impacts Black workers’ access to jobs, and increasing numbers of African Americans are commuting outward to suburban workplaces (Pisarski 2006). Since there continue to be residential differences between whites and Blacks (Jencks and Mayer 1990; Young 2000), an important dimension in geographical access to employment is the experience of workers who commute from inner city residences to suburban workplaces (i.e., “reverse commuting”). The combination of constrained access to suburban housing and to suburban employment for African Americans connects the reality of residential immobility with adverse employment outcomes. Some researchers conclude that persistent racial disparities in access to employment still limit the full economic participation of Black workers in U.S. metropolitan areas (e.g., Dickerson 2007), a situation which is contrary to the ideal of inclusion that Young advocates in a democratic society (Young 2000). A variety of reasons underlies the geographies of home and work for African Americans. They range from preference, poverty, and prejudice to a host of discriminatory exclusionary policies. Some of these include avoidance, hostility, and direct attacks from neighbors; or negative selling and steering by landlords and real estate agents; or loan denials by banks. All of these behaviors are examples of Young’s faces of oppression in that they represent harmful consequences, disrespectful behaviors, and systematic restrictions or limits on housing choices for people of color. In spite of the 40 year old Fair Housing Act, a combination of subtle and blatant unfair practices including white flight, redlining, and/or predatory lending continue to make residential location patterns strongly differentiated along racial lines. Thus research findings on workplace access can best be understood in cognizance of the structural character of residential segregation in the United States (Darden and Kamel 2000, Young 2000). Meanwhile, there is some debate about whether women’s relatively shorter work trips when compared to men’s should be interpreted as advantageous or not (Hanson and Pratt 1995; England 1993). A parallel debate evaluates the extent to which ethnic minorities in U.S. cities suffer greater job accessibility constraints than do nonminorities. Inquiries about racial disparities in employment accessibility are central to the spatial mismatch hypothesis. First proposed by Kain (1968), the hypothesis contended that, compared to white residents, inner-city ethnic minorities have poorer access to jobs because of their concentration in segregated residential areas that are distant from, and poorly connected to, major suburban centers of employment growth. Poor access leads to high rates of unemployment and, for those persons able to overcome

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varied barriers and find work, poor access is reflected in long journeys to work (see Holzer 1991; Kain 1992; McLafferty and Preston 1997; and Preston and McLafferty 1999 for some thorough reviews). However, the evidence from the literature is ambiguous largely because of key shortcomings in empirical analyses; for example, some studies inadequately control for ethnic and racial differences in the locational and socioeconomic factors known to influence work trips, while others tend to exclude the impact of suburban workplace location. In correcting for these shortcomings, studies that have examined the role of suburban residence versus inner city residence on the labor market outcomes of Blacks and whites or the degree of racial differences in access to transportation, employment location, residential mobility, and unemployment levels (e.g., Stoll 1996; Mouw 2000) generally support the spatial mismatch hypothesis. Even though early research on the effect of the exodus of jobs to suburban locations on the workplace accessibility of inner city African Americans rarely included female workers, later studies have investigated spatial mismatch concerns and commuting constraints of women (e.g., McLafferty and Preston 1992, 1997; Sultana 2003; Thompson 1997). In the next section, I synthesize results from a set of studies on women’s commuting (Johnston-Anumonwo 1995, 1997, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004; Johnston-Anumonwo and Sultana 2006) as the empirical basis for applying the intersections of different faces of oppression recognized by Iris Young.

Empirical Analysis and Findings Are there significant racial and gender differences in work trip behavior? Do people of color spend a longer time commuting than whites? Does unequal access to private automobiles lead to differences in the time spent traveling to work? Is location of the workplace responsible for any difference in work trip length? Is there any difference in the commute times of workers with similar socioeconomic attributes? The range of factors necessary for answers about work trip disparities makes a database like the U.S. Census Public Use Microdata Samples (PUMS) appropriate because it contains information on individuals’ socioeconomic characteristics and their work trips. In 1980, for the first time, the database included information on work-trip length (i.e., minutes spent traveling from home to work as reported by the respondent), so as of the 2000 census, it is possible to conduct some longitudinal analysis over a period of 20 years. The travel mode is the means of transportation that the worker uses to get to work e.g., public transit or private automobile. Residence and workplace location is either central city or noncentral city (i.e., suburban). I use the standard information on race/ethnicity, occupation, presence of children, and employment earnings that are available in census sources. The cities that I examine are Rochester, New York, Kansas City, Detroit, Miami, and Buffalo,

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and I include only respondents who are 16 years and older. In the rest of the chapter, I collate and interpret the empirical findings on ethnic inequalities in commuting as evidence of multiple and overlapping faces of oppression.

Marginalization: Transportation and Locational Access Findings of three aspects of work trips—travel mode, trip length, and suburban destination show marginalization. travel mode: women of color rely more on public transportation. The results for Buffalo and Kansas City in 1980 show a clear and anticipated pattern of Blacks depending on public transportation more than whites. Also, in 1990, higher percentages of Blacks use public transit in Kansas City and Detroit; as well as in Miami where Latina women depend more on public transportation than do white women (Table 18.1). Since much research attest to the relatively lengthening effect of public transportation (especially bus transportation) on travel times (e.g., McLafferty and Preston 1992), greater public transit use by people of color is expected to increase their average work-trip time; hence one should rightly compare the travel times of workers with the same travel mode only. work trip length: auto use reduces travel time. When the work-trip times of private automobile users are examined, the racial difference is small (and is rarely statistically significant). As shown in Table 18.2 (unlike the overall trip length of workers in the full samples), the difference among women auto users is minimal—around 1 minute. Taylor and Ong (1995) found that among workers with automobiles, there is no racial difference in commuting time, and on this basis they suggest the importance of an “automobile mismatch” in the sense that people of color are less likely to have cars and to use private automobiles for their work trips. Next, I summarize differences in travel time among auto users with similar location or socioeconomic profiles. suburban workplace: black reverse commuters spend a longer time getting to work. Focusing on those workers with suburban destinations, the findings show that among reverse commuters, Black women spend a longer

table 18.1. Women’s Use of Public Transportation (percent) 1980

1980

1990

1990

1990

Buffalo

Kansas

Kansas

Detroit

Miami

White

Black

White

Black

White

Black

White

Black

White

Latino

9.9

33.6

3.5

21.5

1.4

12.7

0.8

10.9

3.2

6.7

Source: Johnston-Anumonwo (1995, 2000, 2001, 2003).

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women’s work trips and multifaceted oppression table 18.2. Women’s Average Work-Trip Time (minutes)

Full sample Auto users

1990

1990

1980

1990

2000

Kansas

Detroit

Buffalo

Buffalo

Buffalo

White

Black

White

Black

White

Black

White

Black

White

Black

20.2 20.3

22.6 21.2

21.1 21.2

23.9 22.3

18.1 17.1

22.8 18.5

17.8 17.5

21.2 18.1

19.5 19.3

23.7 20.4

Source: Johnston-Anumonwo (1995, 2000, 2001); Johnston-Anumonwo and Sultana (2006).

table 18.3. Reverse Commutes of Women Auto Users (minutes)

Auto Users

1980

1990

1980

1990

2000

Kansas

Detroit

Buffalo

Buffalo

Buffalo

White

Black

White

Black

White

Black

White

Black

White

Black

20.0

26.0

23.5

25.4

20.3

26.1

19.2

23.5

20.7

23.7

Source: Johnston-Anumonwo (1995, 2000, 2001); Johnston-Anumonwo and Sultana (2006).

time than white women. The difference in 1980 was 6 minutes in Kansas City (Table 18.3). Table 18.3 also displays trends for Buffalo in 1980, 1990, and 2000 where the gap between Black and white reverse commuters has reduced from almost 6 minutes in 1980 to 3 minutes in 2000. The results are consistent with the spatial mismatch hypothesis that inner city Blacks have long commutes to suburban work destinations, and the specific finding for Buffalo is evidence of remaining travel time differences among inner city women auto users even in 2000. In short, both cross-sectional and longitudinal data show that women of color have relatively less access to both adequate transportation modes and suburban workplaces. The empirical findings that I have summarized thus far document the restricted workplace access of African American women, observations that can be interpreted as marginalization. Regarding the three socioeconomic factors that I examine, occupation, child status, and income (to verify powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and exploitation, respectively), the common expectations are that low-status, low-wage workers will be less able to afford long commutes. In fact Black women can be expected to have shorter commutes since their lower earnings or more domestic obligations would disallow long commutes. First I compare differences in women’s trip length by occupation, followed by child status and by income.

Powerlessness, Cultural Imperialism, and Commute Length Powerlessness can be illustrated through differences between nonprofessionals and professionals, the latter being the privileged social group. One indicator

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justice: democracy and inclusion table 18.4. Differences in Women’s Trip Time by Occupation

(Minutes) Service occupations Clerical, sales, and technical occupations Professional/managerial occupations

1990

1990

Buffalo

Detroit

White

Black

White

Black

14.8 17.3 19.6

19.6 17.4 16.7

17.0 21.2 23.3

21.5 21.8 22.7

Note: Auto users only. Source: Johnston-Anumonwo (1995, 2000).

of this face of oppression is occupation status or position at the workplace. I focus on service workers. service workers: african american women service workers spend a longer time getting to work. It is only among service workers that the longer commutes of African American women are significant. Whereas there are no differences between Black and white women who are in clerical, sales, and technical occupations, African American women service workers spend more than 4 minutes longer than white service workers (see Table 18.4 for data on Buffalo and Detroit). Also, Black professionals do not have longer travel times—a finding that fits Iris Young’s claim that professionals are privileged in relation to nonprofessionals. These results are similar to those reported for 1980 by McLafferty and Preston (1991) and Johnston-Anumonwo (2000) for service workers in metropolitan New York City and Detroit respectively. In those studies, African American women spend over 7 minutes and up to 10 minutes longer on average for their home-to-work trip than European American women. Although the time difference has reduced between 1980 and 1990, a significant fraction of working women are still employed in service occupations (Ehrenreich 2001); thus if the occupational and locational elements of the restructured metropolitan labor market continue to evolve as they have over the past two decades, such that African American women remain concentrated in service jobs, and service jobs continue to suburbanize, then compared to European American women or to other groups of workers, African American women (even when they use a car) are the ones most likely to experience the disadvantage of long commutes to relatively low-waged service jobs in suburban locations. working mothers: african american mothers spend a longer time getting to work. In the study areas where child status was examined, Black mothers spend a longer time than white mothers (available results shown for Rochester and Buffalo in 1980, as well as for Detroit in 1990—see Table 18.5). One would expect no racial difference among women with the same child status. On the contrary, this finding underscores the paradox inherent in cultural

women’s work trips and multifaceted oppression

237

table 18.5. Work Trip Time of Mothers

(Minutes)

1980

1980

1990

Rochester

Buffalo

Detroit

White

Black

White

Black

White

Black

15.4

20.6

16.0

19.7

20.8

23.0

Note: Auto users only. Source: Johnston-Anumonwo (2000, 2004).

imperialism because Black mothers’ commuting does not conform to an uncontested expectation of convenient short trips among women with children. As employed women who combine motherhood with waged employment, the case of these African American mothers with longer travel times than white counterparts exposes the inaccurate universalization of women’s motherhood experiences. Further, women on welfare are stereotyped as Black women who are lazy and do not work, but precisely because the analysis is about gainfully employed mothers, this finding also undermines the stereotype of Black welfare mother which is a controlling image that is designed to oppress (Young 1990a; Collins 1991). But Young is clear about the overlapping and interlocking character of the multiple faces of oppression. It is in this light that I jointly examine indicators of powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and exploitation in the next section. women with long commuting times: qualitative contrasts. The 20-minute one-way commute is a standard cutoff mark in national-level summaries of commuting statistics. For instance, Pisarski (2006) differentiates between relatively short commutes (under 20 minutes), and those exceeding 20 minutes, or even much significantly longer commutes that exceed 60 minutes. In the metropolitan areas studied, women with relatively “long” commuting times (over 20 minutes) are generally those with opposite direction commutes. They are white women who live in the suburbs but work in the central city, and Black women who live in the central city but work in suburban locations. To clarify the situation of these women with above average commuting times, I compare characteristics of the two groups of opposite direction commuters and find significant contrasts in occupations, income, and child status. Specifically, the white women with long suburb-to-city commutes are far more likely to be in managerial/professional jobs, and less likely to be mothers; while Black women with city-to-suburb commutes (reverse commuters) are more likely to be in service jobs and earn lower average incomes (Table 18.6). These are crucial qualitative differences. Other than their long average travel time, white suburb-to-city commuters are relatively well-placed by their higher socioeconomic status and fewer dependent children. The findings

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table 18.6. Differences among Women with Long Commutes 1990

1990

Buffalo

Detroit

White women Suburb to city Travel time (minutes) Percent managers/ professionals Percent service workers Percent mothers Full time annual income ($)

Black women City to suburb

White women Suburb to city

Black women City to suburb

24.7

23.5

30.6

25.4

39.3

11.8

41.9

16.8

7.8

32.9

7.5

17.4

32.3 22,296

43.4 20,927

29.3 26,967

41.5 21,770

Note: Auto users only. Source: Johnston-Anumonwo (1995, 2000).

that Black reverse commuters earn less and appear to have greater child care responsibilities amplifies the interpretation that the long work trips of Black reverse commuters are more constrained than the long trips of whites with suburb-to-city commutes. Indeed corroborating earlier evidence exists showing that long commutes by whites who live in suburbs are compensated by higher wages while this is less likely to be the case for inner city Blacks (Ihlanfeldt and Young 1994). It is thus appropriate to check whether women’s wages correspond with trip length.

Exploitation: Constrained Commutes for African American Women For exploitation as a face of oppression, Iris Young stresses compensation, including monetary remuneration. I investigate the element of exploitation in commuting by comparing commuting time differences vis-à-vis employment earnings in Buffalo. For the present purpose, a simple typology of four commute types classifies workers on the basis of short versus long commutes, and low versus high incomes. I include only full-time workers (those who worked 35 hours or more a week) in the analysis in order to remove the effects of reduced income due to part-time employment. Respondents with earnings below $25,000 are considered low-income workers; while trips shorter than 20 minutes in 2000 are considered short trips. In the typology (Table 18.7), I differentiate “convenient” and “compensatory” commutes from “compromised” and “constrained” commutes, the former pair being commutes to high-wage jobs. Compromised commutes are those in which either the worker forgoes a higher income for a shorter commute or the

women’s work trips and multifaceted oppression

239

table 18.7. Typology of Commutes

High income (=>$25,000) Low income (