Stanley, Erica; (2023) Victim Agency and Resisting Oppression: Balancing Responsibility and Blame. Masters thesis (M.Phil.Stud), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This thesis examines how best to articulate victim agency within the responsibility to resist oppression. Oppression transforms victim agency, imposing severe constraints on their resources and choices. This creates the risk that any account of victim responsibilities may end up ‘Victim Blaming’: victims, with little control over their situation, may inescapably fail their responsibilities of resistance and thus be judged blameworthy, this blame becoming yet another oppressive factor. However, victims are not completely powerless in the face of oppression either, and to treat them as incapable of meaningful agency may also wrong them. To overcome this challenge, theories must reconcile the claims of victims’ generally functioning agency with oppression’s transformative effect, doing so through various argumentative tools I dub ‘frameworks’. I examine two such frameworks, both re-conceptualising agency under oppression. First, the ‘Excuses Framework’ argues that some victims fail to resist due to moral ignorance or coercion and, in having their agency temporarily impaired, ought to be excused from blameworthiness. Second, the ‘Structural Responsibility Framework’ draws on Iris Marion Young’s Social Connection Model to argue that we should conceptualise responsibilities to resist not in terms of individual agency and blameworthiness but rather, as collective and constructive, lessening charges of cruelty and overblameworthiness. I argue neither succeeds in avoiding problematic victim blaming. By accommodating oppression’s transformative effect by depicting victim agency in a weakened state, both frameworks undermine the value of imperfect agency. Rather than turning away from these frameworks, I suggest we take a pluralistic approach guided by an additional principle of affirming and encouraging imperfect agency wherever possible. This involves incorporating these frameworks (and others) where relevant as piecemeal improvements to a more accurate depiction of oppression, positing the responsibility to resist fundamentally as opening oneself up to moral criticism and collective discussion towards furthering the goals of resistance.

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