My dissertation defends the role of individual emotion in social justice movement building and critically interrogates the concept of what it is to be an ally to oppressed social groups, focusing on the experiences of allies as they attempt to undermine systems of structural oppression. In valuing individuals’ experiences and emotions in social movement building contexts, I go against the grain of traditional political philosophy where emotions have been denigrated as private and harmful, and against the grain of recent feminist philosophy, which focuses on structures of oppression rather than individual agents within such structures. Drawing upon twenty in-depth interviews with social justice actors, and thinking through white allyship and male allyship as case-studies, I examine the affective lives and political psychology of feminist men and anti-racist white women. Ultimately, I theorize how allies may transform themselves and the socially oppressive systems that they are complicit in perpetuating.

Chapter 1 presents an argument for the importance of empirically supported moral philosophy using qualitative methods, contra Experimental Philosophy (“X-Phi”) which traditionally uses quantitative methods. I argue that one reason to use qualitative methods in Philosophy is that they allow philosophers to practice a virtue associated with “care-knowing,” the virtue of relational humility, an idea developed in Vrinda Dalmiya’s Caring to Know. Chapter 2 begins with the idea that social justice spaces are affectively rich and full of social bonds, and perpetuation of dominant forms of life. They can therefore be the locus of prefigurative politics: “pre-figuring” the worlds they would like to bring into existence: for instance by practicing horizontal politics or mutual aid between members. I show that the affective richness of anti-oppressive spaces can produce new social meaning and belonging. To illustrate this point, I draw on the interviews I conducted with feminist men to show how being a part of feminist spaces buttresses the development of new masculinities for them and sometimes gives them intrinsic reason to continue to support feminism: feminism is “for” them too. Chapter 3 theorizes what I call “personal affective transformation,” which is the attempt by social justice advocates to transform their emotional orientations to their values and life choices so as to become better allies to the cause. For instance, the self-conscious decision of one of my participants to stop valuing middle-class goods like having a heterosexual marriage with children in order to focus her energies on what she saw as more revolutionary goals. My fourth and final chapter develops an account of “resistant political subjectivity,” drawing on Latinx feminist phenomenologists. Resistant political subjectivity locates the individual as she changes her orientation towards oppressive social structures, and is necessary (although not sufficient) for social transformation.