Thread by @NeilShenvi

A thread on 'oppression':

"Oppression" is one of the many common words that has been redefined by critical theory. The Bible and the dictionary define oppression in terms of violence, coercion, and cruelty. In contrast, critical theorists define oppression 1/

in terms of subordination, which can be difficult to detect. For example, in her classic essay "Five Faces of Oppression" Iris Young presents five criteria for "determining whether individuals and groups are oppressed" and for making claims about 2/

"whether one group is more oppressed than another." Because oppression -according to critical theorists- is subtle and deeply embedded in the dominant cultural ideology, people may not recognize their oppression immediately. Therefore, they may have to be taught 3/

the ways in which they are being oppressed.

Perhaps the most fruitful approach to challenging this understanding of 'oppression' is in terms of phenomenology, the direct, day-to-day experience of subjects. @RealPatSawyer suggests, as an exercise, to have subjects 4/

make a log of the previous week, in one-hour blocks. During each hour, have the subject report what happened. Not what they felt or how they interpreted events or what they saw on the news, but the actual events that took place in their lives. If the day-to-day phenomenology 5/

of members of "oppressed" and "non-oppressed" groups are largely identical, our understanding of oppression may be inaccurate. 6/6