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Ann Ferguson and Mechthild Nagel (eds.), Dancing with Iris: The Philosophy of Iris Marion Young (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), ? + 268 pp.
Remembrance is the affirmation of what brought us here . . . But the narratives of the history of what brought us here are not fixed, and part of the creative and moral task of preservation is to reconstruct the connection of the past to the present in light of new events, relationships, and political understandings.1
Iris Marion Young (1949-2006) taught at Worcester Polytechnic, Miami University, the University of Pittsburgh, and was Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. She was an activist for social justice, a practice that informs all of her work. That work includes major contributions in the areas of feminist phenomenology, political philosophy, and ethics. Young was influenced by many important figures in European philosophy, such as Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty, Marx, Derrida, Irigaray, Arendt, Sartre, and Foucault, and at the same time engaged with the broad-ranging scholarship in the fields she worked in. Many of Young's papers are standout, remarkable, and influential pieces - "Throwing like a Girl" (also one of the best titles), "Women Recovering our Clothes," "Gender as Seriality," "House and Home," to name a few; likewise her books Justice and the Politics of Difference (1990), Inclusion and Democracy (2000), and Intersecting Voices (1997). As Carol C. Gould says in her paper in this book, in a memorable phrase that pinpoints what is special about it, Young's "work displayed an unusual philosophical daring" (199). This daring is seen in all aspects of her writing, in the choice of topics, in the method and argument.
This is the second collection of essays about Young's work, as a special issue of Hypatia was devoted to Young in 2008. The book aims to continue the lines of Young's thought, taking it further and engaging with it in a critical way. The authors in this volume are from a wide range of fields: philosophy, ethics, political science, law, women's and gender studies, geography, choreography, peace studies, and human rights. It is divided into five sections: first a homage, then a section on phenomenology and gender, next "Theorizing the State," and two sections on justice, one on ethics and...