Files
Abstract
In conversation with Judith Butler and Paul Ricœur, this dissertation argues that structural evil, characterized by vast socioeconomic and cultural systems that perpetuate inequality and violence, tragically deforms moral character and agency while normalizing its destructive patterns of action and perception. Consequently, I ask: When systems of power perpetuate harm while disavowing accountability, how can persons respond without reproducing the very logics and habits they seek to resist? What does moral responsibility for persons formed by structural evil require? I argue that critical forms of understanding as well as innovative, self-transformative, and reparative moral practices are needed. By drawing on Butler’s performative theory of identity and Ricœur's hermeneutics of selfhood, I explore how tragedy and comedy can reflect the paradoxes and perils of our situation to us while opening imagination for otherwise ways of being. Tragedy brings finitude and fallibility and the urgent need for change into center view, while comedy forges imagination for countercultural ways of being. Building on that foundation, I argue that lament and laughter are not merely affects or aesthetic practices, but critical moral responses that enable individuals and communities to navigate and protest the constraints of structural evil while forming themselves otherwise. Lament, understood as a communal expression of grief and protest directed towards a powerful other, allows for the acknowledgment and articulation of suffering, facilitating a cathartic process that interrupts cycles of self-blame and despair. Laughter, conversely, disrupts norms and fosters resilience, enabling the imagination of new possibilities beyond the confines of existing structures. I conclude that lament and laughter are regenerative moral practices that can continually reorient persons toward a more just and humane society, while fostering hope, repair, and creativity in the face of overwhelming systems. Ultimately, I aim to contribute to ongoing discussions in theological ethics and practical theology about the importance of working with vulnerability to orient toward the ongoing challenges and gifts of interdependency in practical social ethics.