Oppression
This note is about oppression and oppression theory, especially on distributed oppression, more-than-human implications, 4E cognition, oppression in design, etc.
Definitions
Oppression is...
“[...] the vast and deep injustices some groups suffer as a consequence of often unconscious assumptions and reactions of well-meaning people in ordinary interactions, media and cultural stereotypes, and structural features of bureaucratic hierarchies and market mechanisms [...]”
"all oppressed people suffer some inhibition of their ability to develop and exercise their capacities and express their needs, thoughts, and feelings. In that abstract sense all oppressed people face a common condition."
Five 'faces' of oppression:
- exploitation
- marginalization
- powerlessness
- cultural imperialism
- violence
Young, Iris Marion. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.
In Application to Nonhuman Beings
Dubeau, Mathieu. “Species-Being for Whom? The Five Faces of Interspecies Oppression.” Contemporary Political Theory 19, no. 4 (2020): 596–620. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41296-019-00363-7.
Gruen, Lori. “The Faces of Animal Oppression.” In Dancing with Iris: The Philosophy of Iris Marion Young, edited by Ann Ferguson and Mechthild Nagel, 161–72. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Wage Slavery
"It is the impossibility of living by any other means that compels our farm laborers to till the soil whose fruits they will not eat, and our masons to construct buildings in which they will not live. It is want that drags them to those markets where they await masters who will do them the kindness of buying them. It is want that compels them to go down on their knees to the rich man in order to get from him permission to enrich him. . . . What effective gain has the suppression of slavery brought him? . . . He is free, you say. Ah! That is his misfortune. The slave was precious to his master because of the money he had cost him. But the handicraftsman costs nothing to the rich voluptuary who employs him. . . . These men, it is said, have no master—they have one, and the most terrible, the most imperious of masters, that is need. It is this that reduces them to the most cruel dependence."
1767, Simon Linguet
References
Aagaard, Jesper. “4E Cognition and the Dogma of Harmony.” Philosophical Psychology 34, no. 2 (2021): 165–81. https://doi.org/10/g83w9g.
Fabry, Regina E. “Self-Narration in the Oppressive Niche.” Topoi, 2024. https://doi.org/10/g83tvk.
Liao, Shen-yi, and Bryce Huebner. “Oppressive Things.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 103, no. 1 (2021): 92–113. https://doi.org/10/g83w9q.
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