Why is being a victim such a popular identity today? Who exactly claims to be a victim? Who benefits and who loses from the struggles over victimhood in our public culture? Drawing on examples from the struggle over reproductive rights in the US (and the Roe vs Wade overturning), I discuss a theory of victimhood as a particular kind of politics, a "politics of pain," that participates in social struggles for power and domination – that is struggles over who owns the languages of pain, who deserves to be protected as a victim and who should be punished as perpetrator. In the current context of illiberal politics, I demonstrate how victimhood is weaponized by the far-right to perpetuate old exclusions and introduce new injustices in society, and I propose ways through which we can critically interrogate and reappropriate the politics of pain in the name of the most vulnerable amongst us.

Comentário: Sofia José Santos e Angeliki Sifaki (CES)  | Moderação: Júlia Garraio (CES)


Nota biográfica

Lilie Chouliaraki is Professor in Media and Communications at the LSE. She has published extensively on the mediation of human vulnerability, humanitarian and human right communication, the ethics of witnessing and, more recently, the cultural politics of victimhood. Her book on the topic, Wronged: The Weaponization of Victimhood (Columbia University Press 2024), is currently being translated in Korean and Japanese, among others. Chouliaraki has published more than 90 articles in international, peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes and her book publications further include The Spectatorship of Suffering (2006), The Ironic Spectator. Solidarity in the Age of Post-humanitarianism (2013, ICA Outstanding Book Award) and The Digital Border: Migration, Technology, Power (2022).


Atividade no âmbito do projeto de investigação UnCoveR “Violência sexual nas paisagens mediáticas portuguesas”. DOI 10.54499/2022.03964.PTDC (https://doi.org/10.54499/2022.03964.PTDC)

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