Construction of Victimhood and its Fragmentation within National Frameworks
(2023) Memory Fragmentation from Below and Beyond the State — ISBN: [9781003147251], published
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- Abstract
- (en) Memories of past suffering play an important role in the construction of group identities and solidarity. While victimhood memories remind the group of their vulnerability and suffering, they can also elevate their visibility and status, leading to an enhanced sense of uniqueness, moral entitlement, or even superiority. Starting from the emergence of nationalist movements in the late eighteenth/early nineteenth century, the central organizational axis of collective memories was nations. Victimhood identity, therefore, was primarily linked to national identity. From the second half of the twentieth century, national master-frames were slowly replaced by those on the sub-national or even supra-national level. Reasons for this are detected in the development of international memorial culture, increase in civil wars, growing individualization of suffering experiences, and in new patterns of identity construction across multiple lines of belonging. This chapter postulates a novel typology of victimhood identity along the We-They-Them lines. “We” represent the in-members of the group; “They” includes groups with whom the solidarity and association are possible; “Them” designates groups seen as perpetual opposition. Fragmentation of victimhood identity can develop in two ways: positively, it can lead to the better articulation of specificities in the suffering of different groups, ensuing in better understanding and larger circle of “We”; negatively, it can lead to competition and antagonisms among the victim groups.
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Odak, S. (2023). Construction of Victimhood and its Fragmentation within National Frameworks. In Anne Bazin, Emmanuelle Hébert, Valérie Rosoux, Eric Sangar (ed.), Memory Fragmentation from Below and Beyond the State. Rooutledge. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/278633