MAPtastic New Academic Year: Yara Al Salman on how domination harms self-esteem

Join us for MAP’s first event in the new academic year to learn more about MAP, reflect on topics such as domination and structural injustice, and get to know new like-minded people!

MAPtastic New Academic Year:

Dr. Yara Al Salman on how domination harms self-esteem

Wednesday, 28 September, 17:00 – 19:00,

UU International Campus, Descartes building (PPE), Common Room

Program:

• Brief introduction to MAP
• Talk “No Comfort of Certainty: How Domination Harms Self-Esteem” by Dr. Yara Al Salman (see the abstract below)
• Plenary discussion
• Snacks and drinks

To register, click here. 

No Comfort of Certainty: How Domination Harms Self-Esteem

by Dr. Yara Al Salman

This lecture discusses the three wrongs that republicans agree are involved in domination, and argues that there is a fourth, underexamined reason that makes domination problematic. You are dominated when someone has power over you that they can exercise at their own discretion. Key examples of such arbitrary power include the power that a master has over a slave, a dictator over their subjects, and – under sexist marriage institutions – a husband over his wife. Republican authors argue that these and similar power relationships are problematic even when the dominators do not exercise their power in fact; just the fact that they could do so at their own discretion, is wrong. Theorists have offered three reasons for this: 1) domination involves a violation of people’s equal status, 2) it makes dominated persons uncertain about which projects they can pursue, and 3) it affects the behaviour of dominated persons, who will show extreme deference to their dominator and censor their own actions for strategic reasons, even without the dominator’s instructions. I will discuss these harms and show how they are connected, but I will also argue that there is a fourth, related harm that republicans have so far neglected. This is the effect of domination on people’s self-esteem. I argue that because dominated persons are often unsure about what the dominator will do to them or why, they will also be unsure that the way they try to placate dominators is a rational response or rather an exaggerated or even cowardly reaction. This will have a negative effect on how they view themselves.

About the speaker: Yara Al Salman is assistant professor in Ethics and Political Philosophy. Her main research interests are in political philosophy, and are about property, commons, freedom and domination, and democracy. Yara obtained her PhD in 2022 for the thesis Sharing in Common: A Republican Defence of Group Ownership, which was awarded with distinction (cum laude).

Everyone is welcome to attend the event, 1st year students are especially encouraged to join! 

If you have questions about this event, please contact Mark (m.l.whittle@students.uu.nl).