Research

Current Book Project

The Ethics of Victimhood: A Normative Theory for Resistance under Oppression (tentative)

This book project, based on my dissertation, develops a normative theory of victimhood that reclaims its political potential while addressing its ethical complexity. Challenging dominant views that portray victimhood as politically disempowering or destructive, I argue that, when engaged responsibly, victimhood can serve as a valuable political resource in resisting oppression. Grounded in the acknowledgment of universal human vulnerability, I conceptualize victimhood as a dynamic recognition of the unequal distribution of vulnerability experiences, rather than as a fixed identity. This recognition can enhance victims’ political agency and enable affective communication, thereby contributing to collective resistance.

Building on this account, I propose a normative framework for evaluating how victims engage their suffering and victim status. Rejecting both non-evaluative approaches and frameworks that focus solely on the imperative to avoid political uses of victimhood, I argue that victims may bear political responsibilities to engage their victimhood in ways that align with resistance to their oppression. To support this claim, I develop three model evaluative tests, accompanied by qualifying conditions that account for differences in types of harm, epistemic capacity, and social position within power structures.

By reorienting ethical discourse on victimhood toward the political goal of undermining injustice, this book offers a politically intentional ethics that guides, supports, and carefully assesses victims’ efforts to mobilize their suffering for transformative political action. 

Publications

2025, "Victimhood as a Positive Political Resource," European Journal of Political Theory, https://doi.org/10.1177/14748851241308809 

Abstract: Victimhood is commonly deemed negative. The dominant account of victimhood argues that leveraging victimhood involves asserting the moral superiority of the weak, leading to an oversimplification of complex political matters into moral binaries of good versus evil. According to this perspective, victimhood traps victims in a perennial position of weakness, thereby diminishing their agency. This paper challenges this negative perspective and argues that victimhood can enhance agency, serving as a positive political resource. When victimhood involves the acknowledgment of inherent vulnerability shared by all individuals, whether they are victims or non-victims, and concerns the unjust distributions of vulnerability experiences, it can empower individuals to overcome excessive self-doubt and transform their victimization into a political agenda. By examining the subway protests organized by Korean Solidarity Against Disability Discrimination activists, I demonstrate how recognizing the agency-enhancing potential of victimhood helps us better understand the political significance of these actions.

Keywords: victimhood; vulnerability; protest; disability; agency

Work in Progress

"What Does Provocative Resistance Communicate?" 

Abstract: What does provocative resistance communicate? Accounts of resistance as communication typically evaluate resistance actions by whether they persuade audiences or coerce recognition. I argue that these approaches overlook a distinctive communicative function. Under certain conditions, disruptive, offensive, or confrontational resistance operates as affective communication by generating an embodied, though imperfect, understanding of oppression’s affective toll among privileged audiences. Emotions like anger, anxiety, frustration, or humiliation enable audiences to register fragments of harms that otherwise remain abstract or distant. This communicative value is conditional: provocation must be situated in an intelligible political context and must not cross into direct victimization. Drawing on feminist theories of vulnerability and two South Korean cases—disability rights subway disruptions and online feminist “mirroring”—the paper reframes debates over persuasion and coercion, explains the structural devaluation of oppressed groups’ resistance as communication, and clarifies the ethical responsibilities of privileged individuals in engaging their own affective vulnerability.

Keywords: political resistance; affective communication; vulnerability; oppression; privilege

"Do Governments Have a Responsibility to Support Counter-Speech?"

Abstract: This paper argues that governments have a responsibility to support the counter-speech of hate speech victims, particularly in institutional settings such as schools and workplaces. Hate speech can silence its targets, especially when they lack the resources to respond effectively. Drawing on Seana Shiffrin's thinker-based theory of freedom of speech, I argue that this silencing undermines victims' moral agency—their ability to develop and express personal perspectives, beliefs, and principles through speech—particularly in contexts crucial to individual development and social participation. Because safeguarding moral agency is a fundamental governmental responsibility, addressing the silencing effects of hate speech is essential. However, punitive measures against hate speech are inconsistent with the thinker-based framework. I therefore propose a policy approach centered on supporting victims' counter-speech. To illustrate how this responsibility might be fulfilled, I refine Katherine Gelber’s "speaking back" policy, which calls on governments to provide institutional, material, and educational support to enable victims to respond. I suggest two theoretical modifications: first, the thinker-based framework offers a stronger normative foundation for this policy than Gelber’s reliance on the capabilities approach; second, it should consider the possibility that counter-speech may itself take the form of hate speech. 

Keywords: hate speech; counter-speech; speaking back policy; freedom of speech; thinker-based theory

In Preparation

"Can Meritocracy Survive Unfair Conditions? A Defense of Critical Meritocracy"

This paper argues that the legitimacy of meritocratic institutions depends on their responsiveness to critiques from those structurally disadvantaged by existing standards of merit.

"Rethinking Resistance: Victimhood and Agency in Feminist Perspective" (invited chapter for an edited volume)

This chapter challenges masculinist conceptions of resistance and reinterprets the role of victimhood in shaping women's political agency within collective resistance.