Tamara Fakhoury
Tamara Fakhoury
Tamara Fakhoury
What does it mean to resist oppression?
When is resistance morally appropriate?
Read my research statement here
Publications
Violent Resistance to Sexual Violence
Hypatia, 2025
Some victims of sexual violence fight back, seriously harming their abusers as a way of taking power or exacting retribution. Although violence always raises moral questions, there is nevertheless something impressive about those whose actions succeed in posing a formidable challenge to their oppression. The aim of this paper is to offer two ways of thinking about the ethical value of such non-ideal acts of resistance. First, violent resistance may allow victims to maintain ground projects that are being undermined by their abusers. Second, violent resistance may display what I call the virtue of audacious integrity - a willingness to take moral risks, that is, to act in ways that may arouse severe moral censure, in order to uphold one’s values. Both explanations illustrate that victims of sexual abuse may choose to engage in violent resistance for a variety of ethical reasons, including but not limited to paradigmatic moral considerations.
Wadi Climbing: Quiet Resistance in the West Bank
Radical Philosophy Review, 2024
Palestinian rock climbers in the West Bank ascend towering limestone cliffs despite being forcibly dispossessed and targeted by Israeli military and violent settlers. This paper examines their actions from the perspective of Quiet Resistance – a form of resistance where one is motivated by personal reasons to pursue activities that are obstructed by oppression. I explain what Quiet Resistance is, how it differs from political protest, and what makes it distinctively valuable. Then, I explain how Quiet Resistance allows the Palestinian climbers to maintain sources of meaning in life under oppressive circumstances. Further, as a form of symbolic action, it allows the climbers to forge a profound connection to their land.
Visions of Peace and Nonviolence in Pop Culture, ed. J. Kling, Co-authored with Philip Bold, forthcoming 2025
Eliminating sexual violence requires understanding where it comes from and why it happens. We must learn to detect when the grounds for violence are being built up so that we can promptly take them down. How can we improve our ability to notice the subtle practices of sexism and make them a matter of critical reflection? The aim of this paper is to show how film can enhance critical perception of the social conditions that give rise to sexual violence in particular. We do this by way of a specific example, showing how Joyce Chopra’s 1985 film Smooth Talk serves to display the complex circumstances that make sexual violence likely – thereby illustrating Frye’s philosophical insight about the interconnected mechanisms of oppression.
Non-Normative Behavior and the Virtue of Rebelliousness
Journal of Value Inquiry, 2023
For many people subjected to systemic injustice, life under oppression involves participating in what philosophers have called “non-normative behavior,” or behavior that fails to comply with oppressive norms. Discussions of the value of such actions tend to emphasize the benefits they have for other people who are subjugated. I argue that while benefiting others is a noble goal, there are oppressed persons for whom such altruistic reasons do not apply. For all that, acting non-normatively may still be ethically worthwhile. I highlight another source of value for non-normative behavior, stemming from one’s personal projects and relationships. Finally, I argue that having a disposition to engage in non-normative actions in the right way - a trait which I call rebelliousness - is a virtue under oppression, the right reasons for which include both altruistic and non-altruistic concerns.
Violent Resistance as Radical Choice
Feminist Philosophy Quarterly, 2023
What reasons stand in favor of (or against) violent resistance to oppression? I distinguish two kinds of normative reasons that bear relevantly in such a practical deliberation. I argue that in addition to reasons of impartial morality, victims’ personal projects and relationships may also provide reasons for (or against) violent resistance. Moreover, there is no guarantee that conflicts will not occur between such reasons. Thus, some acts of violent resistance may arise from situations of radical choice in which impartial moral reasons and personal reasons pull the agent in opposite directions. Regardless of what we ultimately think agents facing such decisions ought to do, all things considered, recognizing such conflicts is crucial for understanding the circumstances that give rise to violence and for better sympathizing with victims who are pushed to such extreme modes of resistance.
Oppositional Anger: Aptness without Appreciation
Social Philosophy Today, 2021
What makes anger an appropriate response to systemic injustice? Let us assume that it cannot merely be its positive effects. That is, sometimes we should be angry even when getting angry is bound to make things worse. What makes such anger appropriate? According to Amia Srinivasan (2017), counterproductive anger is only apt if it passes a necessary condition that I call the Matching Constraint: one’s personal reason for getting angry must match the fact that justifies their anger. When the Matching Constraint is satisfied, anger can be an intrinsically worthwhile way of affectively appreciating injustice. I argue that the Matching Constraint is incorrect. More precisely, I take issue with its status as a necessary condition on apt anger. Anger can be an apt response to injustice even when it fails to be a form of affective appreciation. Often enough, one does not know why they are angry, or one is angry for reasons other than those that justify their anger. For all that, it may still be appropriate for them to be angry. After presenting several cases of apt anger that fail the Matching Constraint, I suggest an alternative standard for aptness based on the general function of anger in our psychology. On my view, anger is apt when and because it alerts one, however coarsely or crudely, to threats against one’s values.
Quiet Resistance: The Value of Personal Defiance
What reason does one have to resist oppression? The reasons that most easily come to mind are those having to do with justice—reasons that arise from commitments to human equality and the common good. In this paper, I argue that there are also reasons of love—reasons that arise from personal attachments to specific people, projects, or activities. I defend a distinctive form of resistance that is characteristically undertaken for reasons of love, which I call Quiet Resistance. Contrary to theories that build reasons of justice into the definition of resistance, I argue that we have strong reason to consider Quiet Resistance a genuine form of resistance. Finally, I argue that the reasons in favor of engaging in Quiet Resistance help to explain its distinctive value. In short, when one engages in Quiet Resistance, one’s actions are valuable in large part because they allow one to maintain respect for one’s personal values and meaning in life under oppressive conditions.
Eight Dimensions of Resistance
Pacifism, Politics and Feminism, ed. J. Kling, 2019
Resisting oppression evokes images of picket lines and crowds of protestors demanding large-scale reform. But not all resistance is political or publicly broadcast. Some acts of resistance are done alone, privately, aim to achieve purely personal goals, and may not even be recognizable as resistance by others. I present a taxonomy of resistance to oppression that distinguishes acts of resistance along four dimensions: their subject (who is resisting? An individual or a group?), target (what is being resisted? a public policy or private circumstance?), scope (whose interests are being defended or advanced by the act of resistance?), and tone (does the resistance aim to send a message to the public?). The taxonomy brings to light a range of actions that tend to be neglected and that ethical theories of resistance should be able to accommodate.
In Progress:
Audacious Integrity: On the Value of Imperfect Resistance
Sometimes oppressed individuals resist their oppression by engaging in actions that are morally fraught. This paper explores the ethical value of such actions, which I call imperfect resistance. I begin by explaining what imperfect resistance is, distinguishing it from nonviolent resistance, impure dissent, and uncivil disobedience. Then, I argue that imperfect resistance can demonstrate what I call the virtue of audacious integrity - a willingness to take moral risks, that is, to act in ways that may arouse serious moral censure, to stand up for one’s values for good reasons. Audacious integrity is a virtue for oppressed people because it allows them to make formidable challenges to their oppression. While audacious integrity is not exclusive to imperfect resistance, it is especially striking in this context. Whereas many individuals might become immobilized by the moral risks and uncertainties of resisting oppression, those exhibiting audacious integrity act decisively, guided by their best judgment about how to respond to the injustices they face.
How to Resist a Double Bind
Philosopher Marilyn Frye famously described the double bind as “the most characteristic and ubiquitous feature of the world as experienced by oppressed people” (Frye 1983). Because oppression saturates life with such dilemmas, resisting double binds should be central to the struggle against oppression. Yet the very structure of these binds makes resistance difficult to imagine, let alone achieve. My current research on double binds seeks to clarify what it means to resist them. I argue that these no-win situations rely on stereotypes and other oppressive narratives to constrain a person’s choices and impose harm—often by leveraging the power of shame. Drawing on examples from the feminist, civil rights, and Palestinian liberation movements, I suggest that one way to resist double binds is by reinterpreting one's options through values that directly challenge the normative assumptions sustaining them. In doing so, individuals may be able to evade or lessen some of the harms these binds impose-for example, by avoiding the shame often associated with defying dominant norms. This kind of resistance draws its strength from communities rooted in counter-oppressive values—like genderqueer, nonviolence, and sumud—that empower individuals to see beyond imposed limits and act with transformative clarity.
Sumud and the Ethics of Resistance in Palestine
For Palestinians, sumud (Arabic: صمود) is a foundational value signifying steadfastness in remaining on the land and resisting Israeli occupation. Through sumud, Palestinians assert their collective presence and ability to live meaningfully in a world that insists they should vanish. It is embodied in everyday acts such as rebuilding homes after demolition, circumventing watchtowers to tend ancestral olive groves, crossing military checkpoints to reach work, sport climbing the cliffs of Ramallah despite the threat of detention, and teaching the traditional art of tatreez (embroidery). This paper examines the philosophy of sumud, considering how it compares to MLK’s philosophy of nonviolence and exploring how it enables Palestinians to resist the colonial forces that structure every aspect of their lives. I focus in particular on its practice in colonial prisons, where invoking sumud allows Palestinians to subvert interrogation techniques—not only by surviving them but also by diminishing their effectiveness as instruments of political domination.
Reasons to Resist (book project)
What does it mean to resist oppression? When is resistance morally appropriate? When is it meaningful? These are the central questions explored in Reasons to Resist. Drawing on real-world cases, the book rethinks both the philosophical concept of resistance and the normative frameworks used to assess it. It argues that resistance need not be public, communicative, or morally pristine to matter. Many important acts of resistance fall outside the dominant paradigm of protest, and the motivations behind them are often more varied than typically assumed. Challenging the view that moral obligation is the sole—or even primary—basis for evaluating resistance, the book offers a more expansive ethical framework that takes seriously the full range of values that inform human agency. It contends that the ethical significance of resistance often lies in how it navigates morally fraught conditions, rather than in its conformity to a single moral value or ideal. Ultimately, Reasons to Resist advances a humanistic ethics of resistance, one that sees it not only as a moral duty, but as integral to living a meaningful life under oppression.
Public Philosophy
“Meet Tamara Fakhoury: Philosopher, Artist, Educator” by Sofia Haan, UMN CLA (invited interview)