Feminism And The Politics Of Difference

Versions of Jacki Huggins's 'Pretty deadly tidda business' have appeared in Hecate vol. 17, no. 1; 1991, I lndyk, ed.; Memory (Southerly 3, 1991) HarperCollins, Sydney, 1991; Second Degree Tampering, Sybylla Feminist Press, Melbourne, 1992. Laleen Jayamanne's 'Love me tender, love me true ... ' was first published in Framework 38139, 1992. A version of Smaro Kamboureli's 'Of black angels and melancholy lovers' appeared in Freelance (Saskatchewan Writers' Guild), xxi, 5 (Dec. 1991-Jan. 1992). Roxana Ng's 'Sexism, racism and Canadian nationalism' appeared in Race, Class, Gender: Bonds and Barriers, Socialist Studies/Etudes Socialistes: A Canadian Annual no. 5, 1989. Trinh Minh-ha's 'All-owning spectatorship' has also appeared in her collection of essays When the Moon Waxes Red, Routledge, NY, 1991.

A collection of essays by women who have contributed to feminist theory in several academic disciplines. Designed for a broad international and multi-cultural audience, the book explores cultural specificity, its social representations and its theoretical and political power. The essays move beyond preoccupation with binary oppositions to examine such questions as who is authorised to speak for whom. Problems posed by identity politics and the possibilities for non-exclusive cultural and gendered positions are raised and explored.

"In this classic work of feminist political thought, Iris Marion Young challenges the prevailing reduction of social justice to distributive justice. The starting point for her critique is the experience and concerns of the new social movements that were created by marginal and excluded groups, including women, African Americans, and American Indians, as well as gays and lesbians. Young argues that by assuming a homogeneous public, democratic theorists fail to consider institutional arrangements for including people not culturally identified with white European male norms. Consequently, theorists do not adequately address the problems of an inclusive participatory framework. Basing her vision of the good society on the culturally plural networks of contemporary urban life, Young makes the case that normative theory and public policy should undermine group-based oppression by affirming rather than suppressing social group differences"--Provided by publisher.

Feminism, Theory and the Politics of Difference looks at the question of difference across the full spectrum of feminist theory from liberal, radical, lesbian and socialist theories to Black and post-colonial feminisms.

This study focuses on a set of issues at the forefront of feminist thought in the late 1990s: identity, difference and their implications for feminist politics. As feminism moves into an era in which differences among women, the multiple identities of woman and identity politics are all at the centre of feminist discussions, new approaches, methods and politics are called for.

A landmark work of political theory on the central importance of group identity and cultural pluralism in political life Justice and the Politics of Difference challenges the prevailing reduction of social justice to distributive justice, critically analyzing basic concepts underlying most theories of justice such as impartiality, formal equality, and the unitary moral subjectivity. Drawing on the experiences and concerns of social movements created by marginalized and excluded groups, Iris Marion Young shows how democratic theorists fail to consider institutional arrangements for including people not culturally identified with white European male norms of reason and respectability. Basing her vision of the good society on the differentiated, culturally plural network of contemporary urban life, she argues for a principle of group representation in democratic publics and for group-differentiated policies. Danielle Allen’s incisive foreword contextualizes Young’s work and explains how debates surrounding social justice have changed since—and been transformed by—the original publication of the book.

Historically, as well as more recently, women's emancipation has been seen in two ways: sometimes as the `right to be equal' and sometimes as the `right to be different'. These views have often overlapped and interacted: in a variety of guises they have played an important role in both the development of ideas about women and feminism, and the works of political thinkers by no means primarily concerned with women's liberation. The chapters of this book deal primarily with the meaning and use of these two concepts in the context of gender relations (past and present), but also draw attention to their place in the understanding and analysis of other human relationships.

The essays in this volume attempt to answer questions about gender in a variety of ways, but all see feminism as transforming the way we think about and act in politics