Abstract

This dissertation is about social injustice and how to eradicate it. I focus on discrimination and the institutions and categorical practices that enable it. There is much disagreement about the moral relevance of racial and ethnocultural categorization and about the political salience of sociopolitical identification. These forms of categorizations and identifications are sometimes deemed to be key elements of a misguided white supremacist framework. I attempt to pinpoint the real locus of problems of racism and other forms of discrimination in order to provide an adequate framework of investigation to analyze and assess appeals to political identification for solidarity. I argue that such identifications are key for resistance to oppression. They are thus essential elements for the promotion of social justice. I argue in favor of the maintenance of non-exclusionary sociopolitical identifications. I provide a conceptual framework for the study of concrete situations of oppression patterned after Gramsci's concept of hegemony. I argue that the conceptual framework of hegemony makes accessible sophisticated analyses of situations of oppression. Such analyses take into consideration the various elements that contribute to the efficacy of systems of oppression. They also take into consideration the historicity of any given situation and its impact on oppression. I develop a conception of the self that enables partnerships amongst people and facilitate social justice endeavours that make it possible for human beings to consider themselves as connected to one another in the quest for social justice and equality