Iris Marion Young

As Henry Farrell and Larry Solum note, political theory has lost a major voice before her time. University of Chicago obit here.

The distinction between political theory and political philosophy can certainly be exaggerated, but one difference, I think, is that political theory has done a better job of not being entirely dominated by John Rawls. The communitarian critics of Rawlsian liberalism did little to move in this direction, but Young’s Justice and the Politics of Difference is one the two most important books in moving political theory on to more interesting questions and approaches (the other being Bonnie Honig’s Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics). This book reminds us of something that should have been obvious, but that political theorists often forget–that we’re interested in ideas of justice because we want to make sense of–and overcome–injustice. While this hardly seems like an earthshattering insight, what this book so brilliantly does is shows us precisely what the implications of this observation are.

I teach a contemporary political theory course that I call “Justice and Democracy in a Multicultural and Global World.” The course begins with a bit or Rawls and a bit of communitarianism. But the course really gets going with Young’s Justice and the Politics of Difference. Not because she’s correct about everything; far from it. From the undergraduate’s perspective, it’s a bit heavy on the citations and repetitive. But she sets the agenda for thinking about justice in clear, applied ways. She draws on insights from poststructural and continental thought from Merleau-Ponty to Kristeva to Derrida to Heidegger–with exceptional clarity and precision. My students are troubled by ideal theory, and troubled again by their inability to articulated exactly what troubles them about it. Young gives many of them a vocabulary, and she gives them the sort of provocative and controversial claims about justice they can argue with. It’s a book that breathes life into a seminar, and it sets a marvelous tone for the rest of the course.

Her output was prodigious and diverse, from feminist phenomenology (everyone should read “Throwing Like a Girl”) to global justice, deliberation and activism, and a great deal more. Indeed, reviewing her CV I’m finding a great deal I’d like to read. She will be missed, but thankfully she’s left us with an impressive body of work that will continue to be read by political theorists for decades to come.