Mina Suk
Lilly Fellow and Lecturer in Humanities and Political Science: Valparaiso University
1998 Intern: Dept. of Health and Human Services, Congressional Liaison Office
Biography
Mina Suk was a 1998 APAICS Summer Intern and was placed Department of Health and Human Services, Congressional Liaison Office, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Legislation Irene Buen
Education
The Johns Hopkins University, Ph.D. (2012, expected)
Department of Political Science
Political Theory & Law and Politics
Harvard University, M.T.S. (2002)
Harvard Divinity School
Christianity and Culture
Amherst College, A.B. (1999), magna cum laude with Distinction
Interdisciplinary Studies & Political Science
Dissertation
"The Suffering Self: Relation, Vulnerability, and Inspiration"
In my dissertation, I argue that suffering is a vital dimension of democratic forms of selfhood and of the self's relation with the other. Drawing from St. Augustine of Hippo, Emmanuel Levinas, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, I claim that the self's experience of being wounded by the other can be understood as the experience of relation itself. The suffering of the wound-which is neither literal nor metaphorical, but visceral and affective-constitutes the experience of an embodied self in a relation with the other who, by definition, always wounds. I use the notion of relation as the experience of being wounded by the other, and the notion of selfhood as a constitutive vulnerability to this wounding other, to rethink the norms of selfhood and relation in contemporary politics. Whereas Martha Nussbaum, Judith Shklar, and George Kateb variously articulate the liberal stance that a commitment to the self implies a commitment to freedom from suffering, I argue that the self, in a democratic gesture of self-affirmation, can welcome the pain brought about by the relation with the other. I contend that to welcome this pain is to affirm one's vulnerability as the condition of one's very relationality. My claim, both descriptive and normative, is that democracy is a politics and an ethics of vulnerability, one in which our relations with one another require an attentiveness to the political and ethical meaningfulness of suffering-openness, responsiveness, and finally, inspirationality.
Research Interests
Political theology, subjectivity and alterity, animals, embodiment, language, violence
Upcoming and Recent Conference Presentations
"Liberalism and the Violence of Relation"
Western Political Science Association, Portland, Oregon, March 2012
"The Legal Theology of Sanctuary: Giorgio Agamben, Walter Benjamin, and Elvira Arellano"
Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, March 2011
"Kateb's Embodied Liberalism"
Western Political Science Association, San Francisco, April 2010
Upcoming and Recent Teaching
Animal Ethics (Spring 2012)
Freshman Seminar: Emerson and Whitman (Spring 2012)
Texts and Contexts I: Traditions of Human Thought (Fall 2011)
The Judicial Process: Morality, Interpretation, Democracy, & Social Change (Spring 2011)
Interpretation: Self, Culture, and Society (Spring 2011)
Problems in Political Philosophy: Justice (Fall 2010) (with co-instructor)
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