Research

Dissertation (Expected Defense: 2025)

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

My dissertation challenges the prevailing view that victimhood is politically counterproductive. I develop a normative theory that reimagines victimhood as a tool for resistance and empowerment, arguing that it should not be seen merely as a condition to be overcome. Instead, I propose ethical guidelines for both victims and non-victims to foster a constructive politics of victimhood—one that avoids moral binaries, mitigates harmful competition over victim status, and ultimately serves the collective efforts for justice.

The first two chapters of my dissertation critique dominant views of victimhood. The first challenges the claim that victimhood diminishes agency, instead defining agency as the ability to navigate experiences of vulnerability. Drawing on feminist theories of vulnerability, I argue that victims, by recognizing unjust distributions of vulnerability, can use this awareness to shape their resistance actions. The second chapter examines the communicative role of victimhood-driven resistance, particularly its ability to challenge the emotional privilege of powerful non-victims, who can remain emotionally detached while victims bear the emotional burden of political change. The final chapter outlines an ethics of victimhood, detailing the responsibilities of victims—particularly those with relative privilege—and non-victims in engaging ethically with victimhood politics. 

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

"Challenging Emotional Privilege: Resistance as Affective Communication"

Abstract: This article examines the communicative potential of resistance from an affective perspective, focusing on subway protests organized by Solidarity Against Disability Discrimination (SADD) in Seoul, South Korea. Targeting rush-hour commuters, these protests provoked anger, frustration, and anxiety. While conventional accounts emphasize persuasion as the primary communicative function of resistance, I argue that such protests serve as affective communication, challenging non-victims’ emotional privilege by forcing them to confront their vulnerability. This disrupts affective power relationships, where the emotional burdens of political change are unequally distributed between victims and non-victims. Then, I highlight a communicative dilemma victims face: while pursuing either persuasion or affective communication in isolation risks failure, non-victims’ refusal to acknowledge their vulnerability forces victims to prioritize one at the expense of the other. This dilemma poses a significant normative challenge, leading to the systemic devaluation of victims’ resistance and necessitating a reassessment of how resistance is evaluated.

Keywords: affective communication; affective power relationship; communicative dilemma; resistance; emotional privilege

"Does the Government Have a Responsibility to Protect Victims of Hate Speech?"

Abstract: This paper argues that governments have a responsibility to protect and support victims of hate speech. Hate speech can silence its targets, particularly in contexts where they lack the resources to respond effectively. Drawing on Seana Shiffrin's thinker-based theory of freedom of speech, I argue that this silencing effect undermines victims' moral agency—their ability to develop personal perspectives, beliefs, and principles through free speech. Since safeguarding the moral agency of all individuals is a governmental responsibility, I argue that punitive measures against hate speech are not justified under the thinker-based framework. Instead, I propose a policy approach centered on supporting victims' counter-speech. To illustrate how this responsibility can be fulfilled, I refine Katherine Gelber’s "speaking back" policy, which calls on governments to provide institutional, material, and educational support to help victims overcome the silencing effects of hate speech and respond through their own speech. I suggest two theoretical modifications: first, the policy is better motivated by the thinker-based approach than by Gelber's reliance on the capabilities approach; second, it should consider the possibility that counter-speech may itself constitute hate speech.  

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

In Preparation

“Beyond Coercion: Self-Exploitation and the Case for Work Hour Limits”

"The Ethics of Non-Victims: Navigating Victimhood Politics"

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