Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T07:25:55.630Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Overcoming Oppressive Self-Blame: Gray Agency in Underground Railroads

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

DAVID W. Concepción
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

After describing some key features of life in an underground railroad and the nature of gray agency, Concepción illustrates how survivors of relationship slavery can stop levying misplaced blame on themselves without giving up the valuable practice of blaming. Concepción concludes that by choosing a relatively non-oppressive account of self-blame, some amount of internalized oppression can be overcome and the double bind of agency-denial and self-loathing associated with being an oppressively grafted agent can be reduced.

Type
Oppression and Moral Agency: Essays in Honor of Claudia Card
Information
Hypatia , Volume 24 , Issue 1: Special Issue: Oppression and Moral Agency: Essays in Honor of Claudia Card , Winter 2009 , pp. 81 - 99
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 by David W. Concepción

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aristotle, . 1985. Nicomachean ethics. Trans. Terence Irwin. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Pub. Co.Google Scholar
Barry, Kathleen. 1979. Female sexual slavery. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice‐Hall.Google Scholar
Card, Claudia. 1990. Pluralist lesbian separatism. In Lesbian philosophies and cultures, ed. Allen, Jeffner. 125–41, Albany: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Card, Claudia, ed. 1991. Feminist ethics. Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Card, Claudia. 1995. Lesbian choices. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Card, Claudia. 1996. The unnatural lottery. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Card, Claudia. 1999. On feminist ethics and politics. Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Card, Claudia. 2000. Women, evil, and gray zones. Metaphilosophy 31 (5): 509–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Card, Claudia. 2002. The atrocity paradigm: A theory of evil. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Care, Norman S. 1996. Living with one's past: Personal fates and moral pain. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Davion, Victoria M. 1991. Integrity and radical change. In Feminist ethics, ed. Card, Claudia. 180–92, Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Dworkin, Gerald. 1972. Paternalism. The Monist 56 (1): 64–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frye, Marilyn. 1983. The politics of reality: Essays in feminist theory. Freedom, Calif.: The Crossing Press.Google Scholar
Houston, Barbara. 1994. In praise of blame. In Adventures in lesbian philosophy, ed. Card, Claudia. 144–62, Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Levi, Primo. 1989. The drowned and the saved. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Tessman, Lisa. 2005. Burdened virtues: Virtue ethics for liberatory struggles. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar