Event overview
Professor Lilie Chouliaraki will discuss her new book, 'Wronged: the weaponization of victimhood' (Columbia University Press, 2024)
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), Professor Chouliaraki will 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, Professor Chouliaraki will demonstrate how victimhood is weaponized by the far-right to perpetuate old exclusions and introduce new injustices in society. She will propose ways through which we can critically interrogate and reappropriate the politics of pain in the name of the most vulnerable amongst us.
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 Wronged: The Weaponization of Victimhood was published in 2024 by Columbia University Press 2024 while some of her other books include The Spectatorship of Suffering (2006), The Ironic Spectator. Solidarity in the Age of Post-humanitarianism (2013) and The Digital Border: Migration, Technology, Power (with Myria Georgiou, 2022).
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 20 Mar 2025 | 5:30pm - 7:00pm |
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