Research

Dissertation (Expected Defense: 2025)

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

My dissertation challenges the prevailing negative attitudes toward the political use of victimhood and offers a comprehensive normative analysis of its political implications. It elucidates how victimhood can serve as a positive political resource for victims of oppression by analyzing the two most common negative perceptions of victimhood while presenting a case analysis of recent protests organized by a group of activists with disabilities in South Korea. Lastly, it proposes ethical requirements for both victims and non-victims engaged in the politics of victimhood. 

In the first chapter, I contest the notion that victimhood diminishes victims' agency ("perception of agency-diminishing victimhood"). I argue that recognizing one's victim status can enhance agency when victims move beyond a simplistic binary of good versus bad and acknowledge universal vulnerability while they recognize their victimization. 

The second chapter addresses the belief that emotional manifestations of victimhood threaten democracy ("perception of destructive victimhood"). I argue that the affective dimension of victimhood, including anger or retributory desires, can be beneficial for political communication essential to democracy. When non-victims feel invulnerable, victims' angry resistance inspired by their victimhood can effectively communicate their emotional experiences, an important role that rational, verbal, and non-confrontational communication often fails to serve in such circumstances. 

In the final chapter, I propose ways in which both victims and non-victims should approach victimhood to ensure its constructive role. I argue that, under certain conditions, victims may have obligations to accept and harness their victimhood to effectively resist oppression. I also propose normative standards for their victimhood-based political engagements. Furthermore, I argue for certain ways in which non-victims have obligations to respond to victims' claims.

Papers

"Victimhood as a Positive Political Resource" (Revised & Resubmitted at 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: The literature on resistance, across civil disobedience, protest, and social movement, often interprets political communication as rational, verbal, and non-confrontational. In this paper, I first identify two contrasting perspectives on resistance actions: a communication-oriented account, which posits that resistance communicates political causes to others, and an action-oriented account, which posits that resistance enforces certain actions on others rather than communicating. Then, I argue that both perspectives tend to understand communication narrowly. I propose that angry and seemingly uncivil forms of resistance serve as affective communication, conveying the emotional experiences of victims of oppression to non-victims rather than merely enforcing actions. Specifically, when powerful non-victims feel invulnerable and believe they have complete control over a political matter, effective communication of victims' emotional experiences necessitates angry resistance actions instead of rational, verbal, and non-confrontational communication. 

Keywords: political emotions; anger; victimhood; resistance; affective communication

"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"