25th Annual WGSX Colloquium - Sukaina Hirji, March 19

Sukaina Hirji, PhD (Princeton University), assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania specializes in feminist philosophy and will give a talk entitled "Resentment and Repair."

On one common way of thinking about forgiveness, true forgiveness is not a gift that can be bestowed unconditionally, but instead something that a wrongdoer must come to earn or deserve. I argue that this way of thinking about forgiveness cannot make sense of cases where an individual has suffered a serious wrong in an intimate relationship, where the wrongdoer has not—and perhaps cannot—come to earn or deserve forgiveness, but where the wronged party nonetheless takes steps to give up their resentment in order to restore intimacy, trust, and love in the relationship. In this talk, Dr. Hirji will argue that reflecting on the ways we often choose hope and repair over justice or fairness in our interpersonal relationships can point the way to a more abolitionist framework, one that resists thinking about relationships purely in terms of what we owe to one another.