Alycia LaGuardia

I develop a strategy of resisting oppression that is directed toward expanding the agency of other oppressed agents and is thus unhampered by some forms of internalized oppression. Using Simone de Beauvoir’s argument that freedom is intersubjective, I motivate intersubjective agency expansion which holds that even if internalized oppression has compromised the ability to resist for one’s own sake, oppressed agents can still marshal resistant agency on behalf of others. A secondary upshot of this strategy is that it may help repair some harms of internalized oppression. On this view, both resistance and repair are not solitary acts, but collective efforts. I first motivate the concept of ambiguous agency based on Beauvoir’s discussion of ambiguity and Qrescent Mali Mason’s concept of intersectional ambiguity. Specifically, I argue for the ambiguity between self-regarding and other-regarding forms of agency and hold that internalized oppression may harm the former but not necessarily the latter. I then develop the strategy of intersubjective agency expansion and its two forms: symbolic and direct agency expansion. Finally, I argue that a secondary upshot of this strategy is the repair of internalized oppression, and that this ought to count as a form of resistance to oppression.