Research

Dissertation (Expected Defense: 2025)

The Ethics of Victimhood: How Victimhood Can Be a Positive Political Resource 

The growing use of victimhood rhetoric in politics has raised concerns among scholars, who often view victimhood as politically counterproductive and dangerous. However, is victimhood always detrimental to constructive politics? If victimhood can serve as a valuable tool for the oppressed, dismissing it solely as a danger overlooks its potential benefits and unfairly burdens the oppressed with the expectation to avoid, reject, or overcome it. 

My dissertation challenges this predominantly negative view by presenting a normative theory of victimhood, arguing that it can be a positive political resource for resistance and empowerment. This more expansive view provides a basis for exploring the ethical responsibilities of both victims and non-victims in fostering a constructive politics of victimhood. 

The first two chapters critically examine common negative perceptions of victimhood. In the first chapter, I challenge the idea that victimhood diminishes victims’ agency, as articulated by critics like Wendy Brown, who argue that using victimhood politically reinforces a binary of weak/good versus powerful/evil, trapping victims in a position of perpetual weakness. Drawing on feminist theories of vulnerability, I challenge this view by proposing an alternative conception of agency rooted not solely in control, but in navigating experiences of vulnerability. While all individuals are vulnerable in some respect, those oppressed experience vulnerability in disproportionately harmful and disadvantageous ways due to unjust power structures. Achieving this nuanced recognition can enhance victims' political agency by clarifying that certain forms of resistance align with their projects, values, and objectives. 

In the second chapter, I address the concern that victimhood fosters hostility and incivility, which critics argue erodes the foundations of democratic cooperation. I examine the arguments of Danielle Allen and Martha Nussbaum, who claim that victimhood often provokes retributory emotions that impede constructive political and moral relationships. I suggest, however, that victimhood can generate unique forms of emotional knowledge, or "affective knowledge," about the harms of oppression, which are invaluable to democratic dialogue. I contend that even hostile or disruptive expressions of victimhood can communicate essential insights into the harms faced by the oppressed. Uncivil forms of resistance, such as confrontational and disruptive protests, may serve to bridge the gap between victims and non-victims, conveying a kind of visceral understanding that conventional civil discourse often fails to achieve. 

The third chapter outlines the ethics of victimhood. The prevailing view suggests that victims should distance themselves from a sense of victimhood for constructive politics, and that they are mere recipients of help rather than bearing any responsibility. I challenge both claims, arguing that the oppressed—particularly those with relative power and privilege within oppressed groups—may have a responsibility to accept and channel their sense of victimhood into transformative resistance. To guide such political efforts, I propose a set of normative standards for evaluating political uses of victimhood, grounded in avoiding simplistic binaries of good versus evil and mitigating competitive victimhood. I also outline ethical obligations for non-victims in their engagement with expressions of victimhood, addressing the question of whether it is ethically appropriate for them to evaluate how victims should relate to their own victimhood. 

By reexamining the political potential of victimhood, my dissertation creates space for a broader normative discussion on its constructive uses, rather than dismissing it as merely counterproductive or dangerous. This analysis also offers a fresh perspective on political ethics surrounding victimhood, raising a crucial yet often-overlooked questions: What should our attitude be toward the political use of victimhood? What responsibility do victims have regarding their sense of victimhood? My project calls for a principled, nuanced approach to these questions. 

Publications

"Victimhood as a Positive Political Resource" (Forthcoming in European Journal of Political Theory)

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

"Uncivil Resistance as Affective Communication"

Abstract: Proponents of civil political resistance often view it as a means of communicating injustices. In contrast, defenders of uncivil political resistance typically focus on its confrontational nature, aimed at destabilizing unjust institutions and practices. I argue, however, that uncivil resistance also holds significant communicative value. Through uncivil resistance, victims of oppression convey their affective knowledge—visceral, emotional insights concerning the harms inflicted by oppression. I begin by examining how victims’ emotional experiences can constitute knowledge based on whether their cognitive understanding of oppression aligns with these experiences. I argue that both “thick” and “thin” forms of affective knowledge can have communicative value under certain conditions. Furthermore, I argue that confrontational and disruptive acts of resistance can evoke a sense of vulnerability in those in power, an emotional shift civil methods often fail to achieve. This sense of vulnerability is crucial for fostering a deeper understanding of the harms of oppression, especially in contexts of significant power asymmetries. While this emotional understanding may sometimes lead the powerful to fortify their position rather than develop sympathy toward victims, it still holds important communicative value. 

Keywords: uncivil resistance; affective knowledge; political communication; anger; victimhood

"Empowering Victims to Speak: A Modified Speaking Back Policy"

Abstract: This paper presents the argument that a refined version of Katherine Gelber’s speaking back policy can better serve as a remedy for harms from hate speech than legal restrictions, such as criminal punishment. The speaking back policy requires that the government provide institutional, material, and educational support to enable victims of hate speech to overcome its silencing effects and to better counter it through their own speech. It has a potential to be a prototype of a remedy, yet it needs a few theoretical modifications. Specifically, the paper consists of two parts. The first part delivers a detailed explanation of why the speaking back policy has the potential to serve as a better remedy for hate speech harms than legal restrictions. Supporting Gelber’s claim that the speaking back policy not only ameliorates the harms of hate speech but also enables victims to exercise equal rights to free speech, the paper describes how this policy is a more comprehensive, fundamental, flexible approach than legal restrictions. The second part proposes two modifications to fully realize the strengths of the speaking back policy. First, it is argued that Gelber’s reliance on Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach to support the claim that victims need governmental support is under-motivated because Nussbaum’s arguments do not directly pertain to the issue at hand. As a constructive suggestion, Seana Shiffrin’s thinker-based theory of freedom of speech is incorporated into the theoretical framework of the speaking back policy to draw a tighter connection between moral agency and hate speech policy. Second, Gelber does not take into account the critical possibility that victims’ counter-speech itself, in some configurations of the relationships between the perpetrators and victims of hate speech, can constitute hate speech. As it stands, Gelber’s model cannot sufficiently identify the complexities of hate speech and counter-speech. Given this possibility, governmental support for victims’ counter-speech can only be justified under the condition that it does not constitute hate speech. The speaking back policy, therefore, should be modified to exclude hate-speech-as-counter-speech from governmental support.

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

In Preparation

"The Role of Ordinary Citizens in the Concept of Law: A Modified Hartian Theory"