Identities and Freedom Feminist Theory Between Power and Connection [Paperback]

How can we think about identities in the wake of feminist critiques of identity and identity politics? InIdentities and Freedom, Allison Weir rethinks conceptions of individual and collective identities in relation to freedom. Drawing on Taylor and Foucault, Butler, Zerilli, Mahmood, Mohanty, Young, and others, Weir develops a complex and nuanced account of identities that takes seriously the ways in which identity categories are bound up with power relations, with processes of subjection and exclusion, yet argues that identities are also sources of important values, and of freedom, for they are shaped and sustained by relations of interdependence and solidarity. Moving out of the paradox of identity and freedom requires understanding identities as effects of multiple contesting relations of power and relations of interdependence.

Introduction

Chapter 1. Who are We? Modern Identities Between Taylor and Foucault

Chapter 2. Home and Identity: In Memory of Iris Marion Young

Chapter 3. Global Feminism and Transformative Identity Politics

Chapter 4. Transforming Women

Chapter 5. Feminism and the Islamic Revival: Freedom as a Practice of Belonging

Conclusion

References

Weir breaks new ground, arguing for freedom as belonging: a form of freedom that
acknowledges the discipline and category ascription that shape our identities as well as our
elective and transformative practices, even those of subordination.
--Hypatia

Allison Weir'sIdentities and Freedomis an important book. It introduces a new direction in contemporary discussions around identity, a direction that is crucially necessary.... Weir has taken the very important discussion about identities and freedom into new territory. Because this is so, this book is a must-read for anyone who wishes to participate in the ongoing conversation about what we mean when we identify ourselves and others througl3l