15 thoughts on “6 | Moral Economies of Victimhood”
Chaimae Chouiekh
Across all three readings, I felt that one central question emerged: Who gets to be recognized as a victim, and on what terms and under which institution? Whether in Sarajevo or Colombia, the authors argue that victimhood is not just about suffering but about narrative control, political legitimacy, and institutional recognition. The works of Golubović and Krystalli expose how victimhood is both constructed and contested, shaped by power structures that dictate whose pain matters and whose stories are left unheard.
Golubović highlights the silencing of Serb women in post-war Sarajevo, who find themselves erased from dominant war narratives. As she notes, “Serb suffering in Sarajevo is mostly absent from both the public sphere and from academic research”, leaving these women in a precarious position where speaking about their trauma risks being interpreted as revisionism rather than recognition. This silence is not just a personal choice but a forced political erasure, which has a very gender aspect to it. Women are too often silenced to not paint their male counterparts as perpetrators.
Krystalli’ offers a striking contrast by exploring how Colombian victims must actively claim and perform their suffering to be recognized. As she argues, “to be a good victim, one must be recognizable”, meaning that victimhood is often racialized, gendered, and bureaucratically categorized. Another trope that fuels the “perfect” victim and how that should look like. The state’s transitional justice process privileges those who fit a predefined mold of suffering, often rural, Indigenous, and Afro-Colombian women while sidelining others who do not conform to this expectation. This mirrors Golubović’s discussion of “hierarchies of suffering”, where some pain is more visible, more legible, and thus more worthy of recognition than others.
The research ethics chapter complicates this dynamic further by questioning how academics, journalists, and humanitarian organizations contribute to the commodification of victimhood. Krystalli acknowledges this tension when she notes: “Everyone wants to talk to a victim”, exposing how victims are often forced to retell their trauma for the benefit of outsiders seeking testimonies rather than justice. Her conversation with Carlos is particularly revealing: “If you really want to understand the category of ‘victim,’ don’t study the victims. Study the people producing them.” This shift in perspective challenges the extractive nature of trauma research, pushing us to ask: Who benefits from these stories being told? And what does recognition truly offer beyond symbolic acknowledgment?
The themes of silence, institutional power, and forced narratives of suffering in these readings resonate deeply with current global crises. Consider the contrasting portrayals of Ukrainian versus Syrian refugees in Western media—one group is welcomed as victims of aggression, while the other is often framed as a security threat. Similarly, the hierarchies of victimhood in the Israeli-Palestinian genocide dictate who is mourned in international discourse and who remains invisible. Krystalli’s discussion of bureaucratic victimhood also recalls the experience of undocumented migrants, who often cannot claim victim status because they do not fit into the state’s predefined legal frameworks.
One of the most compelling insights from these readings is that silence itself can be a form of agency. Golubović shows how Serb women’s refusal to speak is an act of survival, an implicit resistance against a system that refuses to acknowledge their suffering. Krystalli echoes this when she writes about how some Colombians refuse to register as victims, fearing that doing so will define them solely by their trauma. This forces us to ask: Is silence a way to resist the structures that police who can be seen as a victim, or does it ultimately contribute to erasure?
What are the consequences of requiring victims to “perform” their suffering to be recognized? Can silence ever be an effective form of resistance, or does it inevitably lead to invisibility?
This week’s readings delve into the false dichotomies and victim and perpetrator narratives, highlighting the institutional frameworks that shape what it means to be a “good victim” and the politics that inform victimhood. I was particularly drawn to the points raised around what it means to be a good victim, and the institutional supports designed to favor certain victims over others.
Gulobović’s article on the moral economies of victimhood in Sarajevo delves into the various hierarchies of victimhood and victimhood as a resource. She explores how moral constructions of victimhood fail to acknowledge complexity, ambiguity, and co-existence and discusses how concessions from those not seen as “pure” victims are often seen as threat or negation (Golubović, 1183). Krystalli adds to the idea in a slightly different language, saying, “the suffering of ‘good victims’ is more likely to be believable and grievable”, and that ‘trouble-making victims’ may struggle to receive attention, access resources, and form relationships that are essential for navigating the bureaucracy of victimhood (Krystalli, 9).
While Golubovic cites the siege of Sarajevo and the Rwandan genocide as cases to demonstrate conflicts where certain victimhood narratives have received more social agreeance and bureaucratic attention, I can’t help but draw parallels to the ideals of the “perfect” victim in sexual assault cases. Victim-blaming, for example, is used as a tactic to tarnish the character of a survivor, therefore impacting the resources, including financial and legal recourse, they might be able to access in seeking justice. I also think of the student encampments for Palestine and the “trouble-making” narratives invoked by academic institutions to shut them down. One aspect of victimhood that the readings don’t mention at length is the role of race in shaping the perfect victim. In thinking about race, I think of what it means to be seen as a “worthy” migrant or asylum seeker.
I know there are much more worthy crises to discuss, but these ideals of the perfect victim have also seeped into discourse about celebrity feuds, including the ongoing trial between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni. The reason I bring this up is because of the way the public perception of both Lively and Baldoni has evolved as new details come to the surface. Because Justin Baldoni is known for his work advocating for women, many of his fans were quick to defend him, disbelieving that he could be both a public-facing feminist and capable of sexual harassment. And because Blake Lively is rumored to be difficult to work with and seemingly unlikable for other reasons, people called into question whether her allegations were falsified. Other takes have critiqued these understandings, saying that feminist advocates can be abusers and that unlikeable people can still be victims of abuse. In her chapter on ethics and methods, Krystalli says “There are neither pure heroes nor perfect villains in this book” (Krystalli, 97), and this case offers a pop culture take on it.
Kystalli ends the third chapter by saying that they think more about joy – as a method in and throughout the research process. What does incorporating joy as a research method look like?
Judith Butler’s concept of grievability (2009) stayed with me throughout the three readings. In Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?, Butler questions, “Whose lives are considered valuable, whose lives are mourned, and whose lives are considered ungrievable?” (Butler, 2010, p. 108). Grieving, in this context, shapes public and collective mourning, influencing the victim-perpetrator dichotomy in post-war Sarajevo. This has led to an asymmetrical perception of who is, and who should be, considered a victim.
Before engaging with the works of Butler and Goluvoci, I had not really thought about the hierarchy of recognition in post-war contexts, specifically, who is deemed as grievable. Their work also made me more aware of the rigid binarism through which we categorize victims: innocent or guilty, pure or impure, good or bad, leaving little room for complexity or gray areas. Thus, I see the validity in Goluvoci’s argument that victims should be recognized as complex and multifaceted, as “refusing to recognize narratives of complex victims only drives them underground and renders the internal violence of the siege ungrievable.” At the same time, I acknowledge the challenges of recognizing certain ‘perpetrators’ as victims.
Kystalli’s quote, “In many different kinds of transitions from violence, being a ‘good,’ ‘photogenic,’ or ‘desirable’ victim matters for access to spaces, institutions, and resources,” made me think about how this dynamic operates within journalism. Consider the Missing White Woman Syndrome, a term coined by journalist Gwen Ifill to describe the disproportionate media attention, and resource allocation in cases involving missing white women, such as Gabby Petito. Gabrielle Petito was a 22-year-old white influencer from Florida who embarked on a van road trip alongside her male fiancé and never “returned” home. Her “disappearance” uncovered the repetitive troubled media coverage of feminicide cases brought to light in color-coded manners downgrading them as simply kidnappings, honor killings, or ‘homicides,’ In Gabby’s case, her whiteness, youth, and perceived “innocence,” along with her growing online presence, contributed to the public’s emotional investment, extensive media coverage, and heightened interest in solving her case. She fits into the archetype of the ideal victim. In contrast, missing trans individuals and BIPOC are often erased from headlines and dehumanized in media portrayals, as their bodies are criminalized and deemed disposable.
The underrepresentation of missing Black women reminds me of Krystalli’s claim that there are hierarchies within transitional justice that shape political identities through the concept of the ‘good victim’ impacting justice-seeking processes and resource allocation. In the case of Colombia, “imaginations of victimhood … have a location (rural), a skin tone (dark), and a gender (female).” In this case, by positioning the Colombian periphery as victims, researchers continue to downplay the “urban dimensions of the conflict,” further marginalizing them.
Reflecting on Krystalli’s The Politics of Silence, I began to think more about the role of silence, particularly when it is not coming from the victims themselves. For example, Krystalli’s conversations with her interlocutors, some of whom wanted their real names to remain in the research, made me think further about what this omission meant for them. This raises important questions: What are the implications of enforced anonymity? What does it mean when victims claim “We cannot be silenced anymore,” yet find their names replaced with pseudonyms?
After completing this week’s readings, I am interested in thinking through how Golubovic and Krystalli’s writings reveal how labour extends to emotional, bureaucratic, and narrative dimensions of victimhood. As Golubovic and Krystalli describe, victims engage in forms of labour—whether in navigating state bureaucracies or maintaining silence. This labour is not only gendered but also racialized and politicized.
As Krystalli writes, victim status is not passively granted; it must be actively performed and maintained. Victims must engage in testimonies and paperwork—forms of unpaid labour required to be seen as “good victims.” Krystalli explains that there is a “labour associated not only with receiving official recognition as a victim, but with continuing to advocate on behalf of and care for those who identify as such” (15). This also resonates with Golubovic’s writing on how Serb women engage in silence as labour. In both situations, victims negotiate the terms of their labour to fit into state-sanctioned categories of suffering.
One of the things that I am still thinking through is how not all victims are required to do the same amount of labour. Some are instantly recognized, while others must fight for legitimacy. This is evident whenever we think about conventional systems of justice in the West. Then I ask, who is required to labour for recognition and who is simply given it?
As an aside, while I was reading Golubovic’s writing, I could not help but draw parallels to how we think about Holocaust exceptionalism and Jewish suffering. Holocaust exceptionalism functions as a moral hierarchy of suffering, positioning Jewish suffering as uniquely incomparable. In both cases, there’s a politics of recognition at play. The demand for “a clean separation between victims and their perpetrators” (1175) means that “any blurring of this line, any suggestion of fault or complicity, may taint the victim as inauthentic and thus undeserving of compassion” (1175). I don’t have a question here, just maybe something for the class to think/talk through.
The readings explore how narratives of victimhood are constructed, challenging dominant frameworks that create rigid moral hierarchies, where some forms of suffering are recognized while others are ignored or erased.
Golubovic’s study of Serb women in Sarajevo highlights the politicization of victimhood and how suffering can be selectively recognized or erased. The rigid victim-perpetrator binary, which casts Bosniaks as victims and Serbs as aggressors, leaves no space for Serb women to articulate their suffering. This exclusion, which Golubovic frames as the moral economy of victimhood, underscores that victimhood is not merely a personal experience but a political resource that can be granted or withheld. The idea that victimhood functions as a scarce resource (only available to one side) is thought-provoking. It raises questions about how societies rebuild after violence when some voices are systematically silenced, how reconciliation is achieved if certain experiences remain unacknowledged.
In “Living Ethics and Methods as Questions,” Krystalli highlights the ethics of researching victimhood. Her discussion serves as a reminder of how easy it is to fall into the trap of portraying victims as either objects of pity or as static symbols of suffering, rather than acknowledging their agency and the complexities of their experiences. Krystalli calls for a more self-reflexive approach, urging researchers to recognize how their own biases, assumptions, and positions shape the way they see and represent victims. This underscores the importance of avoiding oversimplification in peacebuilding work and ensuring that researchers go beyond merely collecting stories for a narrative, instead engaging in a process that genuinely respects the voices of those affected.
Krystalli’s another work, “The Political as a Feminist Question,” critiques how transitional justice processes create hierarchies of victimhood, elevating some victims over others based on ideological or political considerations. The idea that some victims are seen as more deserving than others struck me as a reminder of the moral economies of suffering—the way certain types of suffering are legitimized while others are overlooked. This highlights that victimhood is not just about pain but also about recognition, power, and politics. It recalls how transitional justice systems often categorize, rank, and selectively recognize victims to fit broader political agendas.
Question:
In post-conflict societies, can these hierarchies be dismantled or are they inevitable? How can transitional justice address these contradictory realities of war?
This week, the readings were really impactful for me in reflecting on my own role as a person in academia and research, and the power that I have to shape collective memories. While I do not work in public policy or transitional justice areas, Krystalli’s insightful reflections on her approaches to her work provided a fresh perspective for me, even for my work in public health. Her reflections on how her own portrayals of victims and victimhood could oversimplify the realities of experiences of violence and injustice were particularly compelling. She explains how she had to keep in mind that portrayals of victimhood are often sanitized to fit the idea that victims are inherently ‘good’ and represent a monolithic group of people or experiences. Researchers like Krystalli have the power to shape these narratives through the sorts of perspectives that they seek and choose to portray. Golubovic’s paper provides an example of how researchers can expose and challenge the “hierarchies of victimhood” (Krystalli, p. 96) that have tended to take place in contexts of violence by showing how complex victimhood really can be. For me, this is a really powerful reflection, as I am thinking now about how my own choices of whose voices and what stories to centre in my work has reinforced certain ways of understanding an experience or event, while silencing others.
Additionally, Krystalli’s reflections on her choices about where and how to focus her work illustrated even further the power that researchers have in shaping narratives about conflict, violence and injustice. Her choice to focus on urban centres, rather than rural regions of Colombia, came after careful deliberation about how leaving urban settings and people out of the conversation about the conflict could encourage these people to remove themselves from the conflict and occlude the the responsibilities that these people have/take to reconciliation efforts. Further, her choice to focus on interlocutors involved in the Mesa so as to avoid requiring people to share their experiences only for the benefit of herself and her research was so compelling as well. Her choice not to seek accounts from individuals who did not identify as victims to respect their decision to remain silent as a form of agency really complemented this. I have had several discussions with peers about how research can feel exploitative at times, as no matter how well-intentioned the researchers are, the benefits of the research often do not reach those who participate. Krystalli’s careful deliberation of how to conduct her project so as to address these sorts of dilemmas feels really useful for me for how I might consider conducting my own work in the future. Specifically, her creativity and resourcefulness in finding unconventional yet justified methods of conducting her work are inspiring me to think more creatively about how to conduct ethical research in the future. More than that, her work also is inspiring me to think more deeply about my own power as an academic in shaping narratives of past and present experiences of injustice. Those of us who have this power are key players in the politics of victimhood, and we should use this power very carefully and intentionally.
Q: How do we, as graduate students, have a role in shaping collective memory and the politics of victimhood?
While I was already aware of the Bosnian genocide committed by Serb forces, I had never considered the experiences of innocent civilians, specifically Serb women in Sarajevo, who did not participate in the violence but still endured immense suffering during the siege. The author does not attempt to equate Serb suffering with that of Bosniaks or to minimize the atrocities committed by the Bosnian Serb army. Rather, Golubović challenges the strict dichotomy between “victims” and “perpetrators,” exploring how individuals, like Serb civilians who remained in Sarajevo, occupy complex spaces within these categories. These women, though ethnically aligned with the perpetrators, were themselves subjected to violence, displacement, and loss. Golubović argues that acknowledging such nuanced experiences does not undermine the severity of the genocide; instead, it complicates our understanding of how post-war societies process trauma and assign blame. The article highlights how certain narratives are silenced because they do not fit neatly into dominant discourses of victimhood, emphasizing the importance of recognizing the varied and intersecting experiences of those affected by conflict (Golubović, 2019). Krystalli’s work further deepens this conversation by examining how societies categorize and respond to different types of victims. She argues that not all victims are treated equally—some are seen as “good victims,” those who fit societal expectations of innocence, passivity, and deservingness of sympathy. Others are labeled “complicated victims,” whose experiences or behaviors deviate from these norms, making it harder for them to gain recognition or support (Krystalli, 2024).This framework is especially visible when examining media portrayals of global conflicts. In Western media, “good victims” often come from white, European backgrounds, such as Ukrainian refugees, who receive widespread sympathy, media attention, and political support. In contrast, victims from Middle Eastern or Muslim backgrounds, such as Palestinians, are frequently portrayed as “complicated” and are met with skepticism, indifference, or even blame. This disparity reflects Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism, which describes how Arab and Muslim communities are stereotyped as barbaric, violent, and unworthy of compassion (Said, 1978). For example, during the war in Ukraine, there was extensive media coverage, celebrity advocacy, and political action against Russia. In contrast, the ongoing conflict in Palestine receives far less attention. Only a handful of celebrities have spoken out, and many align with Israel, the oppressor in this context. This selective empathy highlights how victimhood is politicized and racialized, determining who is deemed worthy of support and whose suffering is rendered invisible (Krystalli, 2024).
This week, the readings were really impactful for me in reflecting on my own role as a person in academia and research, and the power that I have to shape collective memories. While I do not work in public policy or transitional justice areas, Krystalli’s insightful reflections on her approaches to her work provided a fresh perspective for me, even for my work in public health. Her reflections on how her own portrayals of victims and victimhood could oversimplify the realities of experiences of violence and injustice were particularly compelling. She explains how she had to keep in mind that portrayals of victimhood are often sanitized to fit the idea that victims are inherently ‘good’ and represent a monolithic group of people or experiences. Researchers like Krystalli have the power to shape these narratives through the sorts of perspectives that they seek and choose to portray. Golubovic’s paper provides an example of how researchers can expose and challenge the “hierarchies of victimhood” (Krystalli, p. 96) that have tended to take place in contexts of violence by showing how complex victimhood really can be. For me, this is a really powerful reflection, as I am thinking now about how my own choices of whose voices and what stories to centre in my work have reinforced certain ways of understanding an experience, while silencing others.
Additionally, Krystalli’s reflections on her choices about where and how to focus her work illustrated even further the power that researchers have in shaping narratives about conflict, violence and injustice. Her choice to focus on urban centres, rather than rural regions of Colombia, came after careful deliberation about how leaving urban settings and people out of the conversation about the conflict could encourage these people to remove themselves from the conflict, and miss the responsibilities that they have/take to reconciliation efforts. Further, her choice to focus on interlocutors involved in the Mesa so as to avoid requiring people to share their experiences only for the benefit of herself and her research was so compelling as well. Her choice not to seek accounts from individuals who did not identify as victims to respect their decision to remain silent as a form of agency really complemented this. I have had several discussions with peers about how research can feel exploitative at times, as no matter how well-intentioned the researchers are, the benefits of the research often do not reach those who participate. Krystalli’s careful deliberation of how to conduct her project so as to minimize these sorts of dilemmas feels really useful for me for how I might consider conducting my own work in the future. Her creativity and resourcefulness in finding unconventional yet justified methods of conducting her work are inspiring me to think more creatively about how to conduct ethical research in the future. More than that, her work also is inspiring me to think more deeply about my own power as an academic in shaping narratives of past and present experiences of injustice. Those of us who have this power are key players in the politics of victimhood, and we should use this power very carefully and intentionally.
Q: How do we, as graduate students, have a role in shaping collective memories and the politics of victimhood?
I try so hard not to bring up topics or conversations we had during PPGA Women, Peace, and Security, but this week’s readings heavily reminded me of some of those conversations. Who is considered a victim? What are the implications of victimhood after mass violence, particularly one related to ethnic conflicts?
Last term we discussed how the dichotomy of victim and perpetrator that Golubović talks about is unfit to really capture the very complex relationships before, during, and after an armed conflict. We saw examples of women fighters in Sri Lanka, and I mentioned at some point how nuns in Mexico, in order to not only keep their religious order running but to survive and continue their mission, have to constantly negotiate and engage with members of drug cartels. And, we also talked about the very complex social dynamics women captured and children born in captivity by the LRA in Northern Uganda experience when they came back to their villages and families; to many of these families, the mere fact that the women were kidnapped and that their children were most likely the children of a member of the LRA meant they were no longer victims, but rather the perpetrators.
I am also reminder of the several testimonies of German women following the WWII and the sexual violence they experienced after both the Allied powers arrived in Berlin. For many of the soldiers, the women were also part of the regime, and while there is no doubt that there were collaborators, where exactly do we put those German women, who really might not have known about the Holocaust or did not contribute to the armed efforts? Are they perpetrators or are they victims? As Krystalli explains, there are “good victims”, who are most likely to be remembered by history and whose stories and lived experiences also set a benchmark of what is deemed as “acceptable” to have suffered. Anything less and you are no longer a victim, anything more and you might just be doing it for attention. Anything outside of that spectrum and you no longer fit within the standards of victimhood.
These type of conversations often leave me with the same questions as when I started the readings, and sometimes there are so many complicated and difficult dynamics that not only is it hard to make sense of it, but also it leaves me wondering why are we trying to make sense of something so complex when we, as human beings, might be the most complex beings to ever exist. I also do not know if I’m making any sense so please do ignore if that is the case.
Questions:
Is there a lexicon that could potentially be used instead of “perpetrator” and “victim”?
How do we navigate this dichotomy and the complexities that it brings up within families/loved ones?
To start, these readings were both frustrating and insightful; I am certain they will remain on my mind for some time.
I found that the politics of victimhood explored by Krystalli and Golubović revealed the complexities and contradictions of how suffering is recognized, rationalized, or disregarded. Krystalli’s discussion of how victimhood is constructed by bureaucracies, NGOs, and transitional justice apparatuses highlights that victim status is not only about experiencing harm but about being acknowledged as a “good” victim. Golubović’s research on Serb women in Sarajevo demonstrates how the moral economy of victimhood contributes to some experiences of suffering becoming invisible, especially when they challenge strict dichotomies of “perpetrator” and “victim.”
Golubovic’s quote that stuck out most to me just so happens to capture this idea: “Acknowledging the suffering of one’s enemies does not mean justifying their political cause, absolving them of guilt for the violence they also inflicted, or declaring the suffering of both sides to be equal. It means recognizing their lives as grievable.” This, although challenging to sympathize with, is an essential topic in discussions about justice and reconciliation, questioning rigid narratives that determine whose pain deserves recognition. It made me think about who then gets to be seen as a victim. And who (or what) determines whether a group and their suffering are worthy of grief (or of being grievable)?
The difficulty of these questions is incredibly apparent in the context of Palestine. Palestinians have been denied recognition as “good” victims for decades; instead, their suffering is often framed as an unfortunate but necessary response to a singular event. It is used to justify ongoing militarization, genocide, displacement and occupation of families. Unlike other groups who fit into the mould of the innocent or passive victim, Palestinians are seen as “messy” victims, often blamed for their oppression due to narratives that conflate their identity with resistance or terrorism. Their grief, displacement, and deaths are frequently rendered ungrievable by those who have the power to create change and provide aid in the dominant geopolitical discourse.
This disparity becomes even more evident when comparing the global response to the war in Ukraine and the war in Gaza. While Ukrainians have broadly been accepted as victims and refugees, with their suffering acknowledged and widely condemned, Palestinians continue to be denied the same recognition in places of power. Ukrainians are seen as fighting a just war, one that aligns with Western interests and narratives of self-determination for security purposes. In contrast, Palestinians are often dismissed because of power dynamics, preconceived notions, and the “messiness” of their struggle. “It’s a complicated issue.” This inconsistency highlights how the politics of victimhood dictate whose suffering is legitimized and whose is dismissed as an unfortunate byproduct of a complex conflict.
This brings me to my question(s):
* Does the idea of a “perfect victim” exist in the public imagination? If so, what criteria must a group meet to be deemed worthy of empathy?
* What do we lose when our mould for victimhood can’t accommodate complexity and collective humanity?
I define victims as civilians who are exposed to violence and war, and who are often the most directly affected by the consequences of war. This is because they are the most innocent group in a conflict. But after reading this week’s assigned materials, I have gained a deeper insight into the definition of a victim, and from an objective point of view, a victim does not need to be defined by anyone, because it exists naturally. In reality, however, the identity of victims is complex, as victims are not just a specific group established from one perspective, but require different perspectives to look at the complex relationships that result from the interactions between the various groups. As Krystalli (2024) suggests, in the history of the Colombian conflict, there is no clear line between perpetrators and victims. For example, some of the members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) joined the war involuntarily. In this case, although they are also part of the armed forces in the war, they are also “victims.” This special relationship between perpetrator and victim adds to the complexity of their identity.
In addition, I was impressed by a concept introduced by Krystalli (2024), namely Photogenic Victims. This demonstrates that there is a difference between victims, whether or not they can be defined as a victim is not shaped by their experiences, but by the government and the media. I personally do not support this practice, which demonstrates a strong social injustice. Even this is completely incompatible with the framework of global transitional justice, as the experiences of those groups defined as non-victims (as in the case of FARC) are not only unremembered, but they are socially excluded.
Meanwhile, Serbian women suffered from the controversy over the definition of victimization after the war, where their form of victimization was not determined by their experiences, but by the state and politics (Golubović, 2019). Serbian women from the group of perpetrators were marginalized in political relations to the extent that they were unable to display their personal ethnic perceptions in public areas, despite the fact that they had absolutely nothing to do with the war. This reminds me of the way silence as testimony in last week’s reading demonstrated them as victims while protecting them from social injustice.
How can it be ensured that every victim is treated equity in the framework of a justice transition?
Last semester, we had a guest speaker who asked us to ask ourselves, “how do I perpetuate micro-violences in my own body and to those around me?” I’ve thought about that question often since. Often, I think that I have unlearned a form of violence that had been taught to me, raging against that violence should I see it perpetuated against others only to find myself perpetuating that violence against myself on a micro-level. Somehow, the rules are different when it’s me.
…but they’re not, because we ultimately treat others the way we treat ourselves. Especially those close to us. I learned to hate my soft belly from my mother, whose mother enforced that same hatred in her.
This week, I found myself asking the same question, in the context of victimhood. As Dr. Baines asks, who are the victims? Who decides?
I think, when we experience violence, we must first decide for ourselves if we are a victim and what that means. Then, if we choose to share that experience with others, we must shape our narrative, “‘self-stag[ing]’ as victims in order to be legible as subjects of assistance or protection,” (Krystalli, 16) and in certain cases, as subjects with access to “compensation for harms suffered” (Krystalli, 21)
For myself, when I have experienced sexualized or gender-based violence, I have wondered if the harms I have suffered are enough to warrant assistance, protection or compensation. Sometimes, I have wondered if I have enough ‘moral currency’ (Krystalli, 20; Golubovic, 1181) even to receive compassion. (Am I innocent enough to be a victim? (Golubovic, 1175)) When I choose to share my experiences, I often wonder if I am really a victim or just performing victimhood? (And what is the difference when victimhood is a political construction?) These lines of questioning tend to be focused on how others may perceive a violence to have inflicted harm, not how I experienced the harm.
The experience of harm is more difficult to generalize to a victim group because it is such an intimate, individual experience. Like pain, there is no objective measurement for the experience of harm – perceptions of harm and pain vary wildly from person to person.
This line of inquiry may be a dead end when it comes to making policy because of the extremely variable nature of the experience of harm, but I think that ignoring the personal ways in which I have experienced harm are a micro-violence I perpetuate against myself. And in doing so, I must, inadvertently, perpetuate violences on others – reinforcing hierarchies of victimhood and reaffirming narratives of “pure” victims.
How do self-narratives of victimhood come up against social constructions of victimhood?
How do we perpetuate violences against ourselves and others with definitions of victimhood?
Once again I feel like I am coming to this blog post with like, the world’s most obvious and least sophisticated conclusions but man, jumping to conclusions really does a doozy on our ability to find truths. I also thought this week really highlighted what our language reveals about us, whether we like it or not. Obviously both Golubović and Krystalli both talk a lot about terminologies of victimhood and of perception. As Elena noted in her reflection, I try very hard to not constantly bring up conversations from last term, but these readings reminded me a lot of Elena’s very poignant red-thread question last term: where is war?
All these answers to this question were littered throughout the Golubović piece, from the woman who noted that she “thought a war was something that happened between two armies, on a battlefield. I didn’t know that it could be … like this” to Golubović’s reference to Nguyen, who asserted that “war grows on intimate soil, nurtured by friends and neighbours, fought by sons, daughters, wives and fathers.” Reading this, I wondered if Nguyen’s exclusion of “mothers” was deliberate or intentional and whether it meant anything; whether it was a deliberate choice or whether it was an unnoticed implication of an imagining of victimhood or whether I was reading too much into this. Then I thought about how well this answers Elena’s question. In the Ross reading last week, there is a contextual paragraph noting that South Africa has higher levels of rape of women than anywhere else in the world “not at war.” I remember thinking that that sounds like a war to me. I wondered about who gets to decide when systemic violence becomes conflict and when conflict becomes war, and what kinds of victims are imagined in that.
Luckily there is Krystalli to answer these questions, or at least make note that they exist. I will admit that I am a Krystalli fan and spent most of the time I had set aside for this reading, reading Krystalli’s Substack. I like Krystalli because Krystalli often challenges us to think in the most nuanced way possible, both to find truth in conflict and to make room for joy. I enjoyed reading about her pedagogical approach, encouraging students to do more than flaw-finding and the students asking how to do that. As students, we slip into critique so easily, but being The Most Critical does not reveal or construct The Most True Truths. In Eve Tuck (of whom I am also a fan)’s piece, she says that “it is a powerful idea to think of us all as litigators, putting the world on trial,” then asks if our litigation actually works and if it’s worth it. The costs of such litigation are often immense; Tuck focuses on what happens when we think of ourselves as damage, but the litigation she is referring to also plays into Golubović’s highlighted perils of “competition over victimhood”. After all, in a courtroom, you can’t be both victim and perpetrator. I do think it is important to find flaws and to put the world on trial, but also that it comes at great cost, and that we should take care to know these costs, to feel them and to make informed and nuanced decisions about what we do with them.
On her Substack (sorry, but we knew it was coming when I mentioned it, right?), Krystalli writes that her mother “was raised in a recurrent script of catastrophe, in a generational tradition of needing to repeat your histories of loss, lest somebody erase or deny them–or, worst of all, lest you yourself choose to forget them.” Krystalli is referring to her mother’s weekly calendars, which make note of things like “baby – flu” and leave no room for narrative or things like “baby – birthday.” I would wonder if this fits into Golubović’s explanation that stories forgotten are not just silenced and let go of, but “pushed into the private realm,” and into the weekly calendars shelved carefully on the bookshelf to be found by your daughter years later. My mother is very much like this, too.
Anyway, for some related optimism (and also from Krystalli’s substack):
“If we begin with the deaths, we always somehow end with the loves, with what is chévere and rico, with what brings delight. This is not a pre-decided order of things, nor a hierarchy that prescribes hope. It is simply the way conversations flow, unafraid to move from loss to light and back—and sideways, too, into the things we do not quite know how to speak of, even in our mother tongues. My budding Italian “mi piace” is replaced with “me encanta,” the phrase Colombians use to express what delights them, what they enjoy, what they love. I love that the phrase ‘me encanta’ has ‘song’ at the heart of it, and, if traced all the way to Latin, it contains the casting of a spell. In other words, magic.”
1. How do the ways the “world claims you” (or us, Krystalli) shape the way you imagine victimhoods?
2. When do you think of joy as a political experience?
This week’s readings led me to critically think about the nature of victimhood and how transitional justice mechanisms define and categorize victims and perpetrators. Golubović’s article helped me find the words to articulate the complexity and “greyness” that surround the idea of victimhood – that is, how some suffering is publicly acknowledged while some remain invisible, particularly when it is tied to the identity of the ‘perpetrator’.
Krystalli’s article also challenged dominant narratives that hierarchize victimhood in ways that erase those who do not fit a state-sanctioned definition of “victim.” This led me to reflect on my own politics and how I often resist acknowledging suffering on the side of the perpetrator, fearing it may delegitimize the trauma of the disproportionately harmed. I frequently feel this dilemma while engaging with news from Israel’s genocide in Palestine or closer home in Kashmir, where suffering is viewed through rigid binaries of black and white.
Another theme that cut across the readings was the expectation of the “perfect” or “good” victim. This reminded me of how certain crimes – where victims are white, upper-caste, or wealthy – gain more media attention and legal action than others. The politics of victimhood are not only shaped by war or transitional justice mechanisms but also by broader perceptions of whose suffering is worth recognising and acting upon.
A key insight from both authors was that transitional justice often assumes that speaking about trauma is inherently healing yet silence itself can be a form of agency and resistance. I thought it important to reflect upon some other ideas of silence I came across in other readings. As we saw in last week’s readings, some survivors, mostly women, remain silent to protect themselves from further harm. The Serb women in post-war Sarajevo found that their suffering is unwelcome. Their silence is not merely the absence of testimony but a response to a moral economy that does not accommodate the complexity of their experiences. Among refugee girls from Somalia who are forced to undergo female genital mutilation, the idea of the ‘muted voice’ becomes a sign of resilience in the face of patriarchal norms.
Krystalli’s discussion on joy as both a method and a political experience deeply resonated with me. She suggests that survival and resistance are not only about suffering but also about the pursuit of joy in the aftermath of trauma. This made me reconsider how justice frameworks could move beyond narratives of victimhood to also recognize resilience, survival, agency, and even joy. Her final reflection in one of the readings also left me with a sense of hope – that gender justice work is not just about confronting violence but also about imagining and creating possibilities for new worlds and new solidarities.
Questions:
In a hyper-polarized, post-truth world, as it becomes increasingly difficult to bear witness, how do we negotiate the grey areas of victimhood and ensure justice for all those who suffer from trauma – on all sides of a conflict or crisis?
Can transitional justice mechanisms truly acknowledge suffering on all sides, or is there a way to move beyond the binary categories of “victim” and “perpetrator” to a more holistic approach to justice?
In the work I’ve done with gender-based violence organizations, I’ve become comfortable with pushing back against narratives of passive victimhood, of homogenous experiences of victimhood, of the tension between promoting empowerment without preaching resilience. Golubovic argues that victims occupy “a paradoxical position of power and powerlessness” (1181), and though I understood that power in terms of empowerment, countering narratives of helplessness, and rejecting the notion of a “perfect victim”, it turns out I was much less comfortable with navigating the implications of victimhood affording power. So, it seems I did not escape the “easy morality” (1193) that Golubovic identifies in peace and memory work. And I appreciated the arguments Golubovic offered, because I think my concern was perfectly articulated in the piece- I often feel like recognition of victim’s experiences was so hard won to begin with, that giving an inch will mean caving into absolution for harm (1194). The shift to disentangling innocence and victimhood as a way to put Judith Butler’s politics of grievability into practice was a helpful and welcome reframe to make this less threatening, and did help me address what is arguably a bit of a “scarcity mindset” when it comes to the victimhood economy.
It makes sense to me that conflating victimhood with innocence is problematic. And it makes sense to me that disentangling victimhood from innocence is complicated. Golubovic’s piece presents moral victimhood as a scarce resource that can only be held by one side (at least, in a world where innocence and victimhood are conflated) (1176), and when the right to victimhood is a scarce resource, recognition becomes a scarce resource too, so easy moralities become silencing (1193). I read a bit of Primo Levi’s work when I was in undergrad, and I remember he talked a lot about what he called the grey zone, which he used in reference to the ways that survivors of concentration camps in the Holocaust in many cases occupied an ethically grey area if they had occupied positions where they were both victims and perpetrators. This would be, for example, if they were detained in a concentration camp, but held a position that afforded them comparative power relative to other people detained in the concentration camp. His whole point there, as far as I understood it, was that the whole space of the concentration camp was a grey area where people were controlled actors (borrowing the language from this class), and so recognition of the atrocities they faced could not be contingent on innocence, nor could it be contingent on the judgement of people who did not understand the depth of the grey zone and judged actions from the outside. I was thinking about this a lot in reference to this week’s readings in terms of the ways that innocence is incredibly complicated, and we totally miss out on a ton of complexity from “controlled actors” if we condition victimhood on innocence.
Reading Krystalli’s piece caused me to reflect on the performance of victimhood, and the ways that essentialism and mechanisms that force particular forms of performance (9) might enhance the ways in which recognition becomes a scarce resource. Furthermore, this removes the space for authentic and meaningful recognition of experiences that are incredibly messy, and not easily confined by a victim/perpetrator binary. If we want to be able to address “complex victims” (Golubovic, but also Erin) as well as complex perpetrators and everything in between as whole people, don’t we need to move beyond these binaries?
My problem isn’t recognizing the ways that innocence can’t decide who is and isn’t a victim, my problem is navigating the discomfort I feel in recognizing that the status of victim and in some ways come with power. But I don’t even know where to begin with that. Maybe it’s something to do with worry about invalidating victims’ experiences?
How can recognition work for controlled actors?
Why is it so hard for me to acknowledge that victimhood might imply power?
Across all three readings, I felt that one central question emerged: Who gets to be recognized as a victim, and on what terms and under which institution? Whether in Sarajevo or Colombia, the authors argue that victimhood is not just about suffering but about narrative control, political legitimacy, and institutional recognition. The works of Golubović and Krystalli expose how victimhood is both constructed and contested, shaped by power structures that dictate whose pain matters and whose stories are left unheard.
Golubović highlights the silencing of Serb women in post-war Sarajevo, who find themselves erased from dominant war narratives. As she notes, “Serb suffering in Sarajevo is mostly absent from both the public sphere and from academic research”, leaving these women in a precarious position where speaking about their trauma risks being interpreted as revisionism rather than recognition. This silence is not just a personal choice but a forced political erasure, which has a very gender aspect to it. Women are too often silenced to not paint their male counterparts as perpetrators.
Krystalli’ offers a striking contrast by exploring how Colombian victims must actively claim and perform their suffering to be recognized. As she argues, “to be a good victim, one must be recognizable”, meaning that victimhood is often racialized, gendered, and bureaucratically categorized. Another trope that fuels the “perfect” victim and how that should look like. The state’s transitional justice process privileges those who fit a predefined mold of suffering, often rural, Indigenous, and Afro-Colombian women while sidelining others who do not conform to this expectation. This mirrors Golubović’s discussion of “hierarchies of suffering”, where some pain is more visible, more legible, and thus more worthy of recognition than others.
The research ethics chapter complicates this dynamic further by questioning how academics, journalists, and humanitarian organizations contribute to the commodification of victimhood. Krystalli acknowledges this tension when she notes: “Everyone wants to talk to a victim”, exposing how victims are often forced to retell their trauma for the benefit of outsiders seeking testimonies rather than justice. Her conversation with Carlos is particularly revealing: “If you really want to understand the category of ‘victim,’ don’t study the victims. Study the people producing them.” This shift in perspective challenges the extractive nature of trauma research, pushing us to ask: Who benefits from these stories being told? And what does recognition truly offer beyond symbolic acknowledgment?
The themes of silence, institutional power, and forced narratives of suffering in these readings resonate deeply with current global crises. Consider the contrasting portrayals of Ukrainian versus Syrian refugees in Western media—one group is welcomed as victims of aggression, while the other is often framed as a security threat. Similarly, the hierarchies of victimhood in the Israeli-Palestinian genocide dictate who is mourned in international discourse and who remains invisible. Krystalli’s discussion of bureaucratic victimhood also recalls the experience of undocumented migrants, who often cannot claim victim status because they do not fit into the state’s predefined legal frameworks.
One of the most compelling insights from these readings is that silence itself can be a form of agency. Golubović shows how Serb women’s refusal to speak is an act of survival, an implicit resistance against a system that refuses to acknowledge their suffering. Krystalli echoes this when she writes about how some Colombians refuse to register as victims, fearing that doing so will define them solely by their trauma. This forces us to ask: Is silence a way to resist the structures that police who can be seen as a victim, or does it ultimately contribute to erasure?
What are the consequences of requiring victims to “perform” their suffering to be recognized? Can silence ever be an effective form of resistance, or does it inevitably lead to invisibility?
This week’s readings delve into the false dichotomies and victim and perpetrator narratives, highlighting the institutional frameworks that shape what it means to be a “good victim” and the politics that inform victimhood. I was particularly drawn to the points raised around what it means to be a good victim, and the institutional supports designed to favor certain victims over others.
Gulobović’s article on the moral economies of victimhood in Sarajevo delves into the various hierarchies of victimhood and victimhood as a resource. She explores how moral constructions of victimhood fail to acknowledge complexity, ambiguity, and co-existence and discusses how concessions from those not seen as “pure” victims are often seen as threat or negation (Golubović, 1183). Krystalli adds to the idea in a slightly different language, saying, “the suffering of ‘good victims’ is more likely to be believable and grievable”, and that ‘trouble-making victims’ may struggle to receive attention, access resources, and form relationships that are essential for navigating the bureaucracy of victimhood (Krystalli, 9).
While Golubovic cites the siege of Sarajevo and the Rwandan genocide as cases to demonstrate conflicts where certain victimhood narratives have received more social agreeance and bureaucratic attention, I can’t help but draw parallels to the ideals of the “perfect” victim in sexual assault cases. Victim-blaming, for example, is used as a tactic to tarnish the character of a survivor, therefore impacting the resources, including financial and legal recourse, they might be able to access in seeking justice. I also think of the student encampments for Palestine and the “trouble-making” narratives invoked by academic institutions to shut them down. One aspect of victimhood that the readings don’t mention at length is the role of race in shaping the perfect victim. In thinking about race, I think of what it means to be seen as a “worthy” migrant or asylum seeker.
I know there are much more worthy crises to discuss, but these ideals of the perfect victim have also seeped into discourse about celebrity feuds, including the ongoing trial between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni. The reason I bring this up is because of the way the public perception of both Lively and Baldoni has evolved as new details come to the surface. Because Justin Baldoni is known for his work advocating for women, many of his fans were quick to defend him, disbelieving that he could be both a public-facing feminist and capable of sexual harassment. And because Blake Lively is rumored to be difficult to work with and seemingly unlikable for other reasons, people called into question whether her allegations were falsified. Other takes have critiqued these understandings, saying that feminist advocates can be abusers and that unlikeable people can still be victims of abuse. In her chapter on ethics and methods, Krystalli says “There are neither pure heroes nor perfect villains in this book” (Krystalli, 97), and this case offers a pop culture take on it.
Kystalli ends the third chapter by saying that they think more about joy – as a method in and throughout the research process. What does incorporating joy as a research method look like?
Judith Butler’s concept of grievability (2009) stayed with me throughout the three readings. In Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?, Butler questions, “Whose lives are considered valuable, whose lives are mourned, and whose lives are considered ungrievable?” (Butler, 2010, p. 108). Grieving, in this context, shapes public and collective mourning, influencing the victim-perpetrator dichotomy in post-war Sarajevo. This has led to an asymmetrical perception of who is, and who should be, considered a victim.
Before engaging with the works of Butler and Goluvoci, I had not really thought about the hierarchy of recognition in post-war contexts, specifically, who is deemed as grievable. Their work also made me more aware of the rigid binarism through which we categorize victims: innocent or guilty, pure or impure, good or bad, leaving little room for complexity or gray areas. Thus, I see the validity in Goluvoci’s argument that victims should be recognized as complex and multifaceted, as “refusing to recognize narratives of complex victims only drives them underground and renders the internal violence of the siege ungrievable.” At the same time, I acknowledge the challenges of recognizing certain ‘perpetrators’ as victims.
Kystalli’s quote, “In many different kinds of transitions from violence, being a ‘good,’ ‘photogenic,’ or ‘desirable’ victim matters for access to spaces, institutions, and resources,” made me think about how this dynamic operates within journalism. Consider the Missing White Woman Syndrome, a term coined by journalist Gwen Ifill to describe the disproportionate media attention, and resource allocation in cases involving missing white women, such as Gabby Petito. Gabrielle Petito was a 22-year-old white influencer from Florida who embarked on a van road trip alongside her male fiancé and never “returned” home. Her “disappearance” uncovered the repetitive troubled media coverage of feminicide cases brought to light in color-coded manners downgrading them as simply kidnappings, honor killings, or ‘homicides,’ In Gabby’s case, her whiteness, youth, and perceived “innocence,” along with her growing online presence, contributed to the public’s emotional investment, extensive media coverage, and heightened interest in solving her case. She fits into the archetype of the ideal victim. In contrast, missing trans individuals and BIPOC are often erased from headlines and dehumanized in media portrayals, as their bodies are criminalized and deemed disposable.
The underrepresentation of missing Black women reminds me of Krystalli’s claim that there are hierarchies within transitional justice that shape political identities through the concept of the ‘good victim’ impacting justice-seeking processes and resource allocation. In the case of Colombia, “imaginations of victimhood … have a location (rural), a skin tone (dark), and a gender (female).” In this case, by positioning the Colombian periphery as victims, researchers continue to downplay the “urban dimensions of the conflict,” further marginalizing them.
Reflecting on Krystalli’s The Politics of Silence, I began to think more about the role of silence, particularly when it is not coming from the victims themselves. For example, Krystalli’s conversations with her interlocutors, some of whom wanted their real names to remain in the research, made me think further about what this omission meant for them. This raises important questions: What are the implications of enforced anonymity? What does it mean when victims claim “We cannot be silenced anymore,” yet find their names replaced with pseudonyms?
After completing this week’s readings, I am interested in thinking through how Golubovic and Krystalli’s writings reveal how labour extends to emotional, bureaucratic, and narrative dimensions of victimhood. As Golubovic and Krystalli describe, victims engage in forms of labour—whether in navigating state bureaucracies or maintaining silence. This labour is not only gendered but also racialized and politicized.
As Krystalli writes, victim status is not passively granted; it must be actively performed and maintained. Victims must engage in testimonies and paperwork—forms of unpaid labour required to be seen as “good victims.” Krystalli explains that there is a “labour associated not only with receiving official recognition as a victim, but with continuing to advocate on behalf of and care for those who identify as such” (15). This also resonates with Golubovic’s writing on how Serb women engage in silence as labour. In both situations, victims negotiate the terms of their labour to fit into state-sanctioned categories of suffering.
One of the things that I am still thinking through is how not all victims are required to do the same amount of labour. Some are instantly recognized, while others must fight for legitimacy. This is evident whenever we think about conventional systems of justice in the West. Then I ask, who is required to labour for recognition and who is simply given it?
As an aside, while I was reading Golubovic’s writing, I could not help but draw parallels to how we think about Holocaust exceptionalism and Jewish suffering. Holocaust exceptionalism functions as a moral hierarchy of suffering, positioning Jewish suffering as uniquely incomparable. In both cases, there’s a politics of recognition at play. The demand for “a clean separation between victims and their perpetrators” (1175) means that “any blurring of this line, any suggestion of fault or complicity, may taint the victim as inauthentic and thus undeserving of compassion” (1175). I don’t have a question here, just maybe something for the class to think/talk through.
The readings explore how narratives of victimhood are constructed, challenging dominant frameworks that create rigid moral hierarchies, where some forms of suffering are recognized while others are ignored or erased.
Golubovic’s study of Serb women in Sarajevo highlights the politicization of victimhood and how suffering can be selectively recognized or erased. The rigid victim-perpetrator binary, which casts Bosniaks as victims and Serbs as aggressors, leaves no space for Serb women to articulate their suffering. This exclusion, which Golubovic frames as the moral economy of victimhood, underscores that victimhood is not merely a personal experience but a political resource that can be granted or withheld. The idea that victimhood functions as a scarce resource (only available to one side) is thought-provoking. It raises questions about how societies rebuild after violence when some voices are systematically silenced, how reconciliation is achieved if certain experiences remain unacknowledged.
In “Living Ethics and Methods as Questions,” Krystalli highlights the ethics of researching victimhood. Her discussion serves as a reminder of how easy it is to fall into the trap of portraying victims as either objects of pity or as static symbols of suffering, rather than acknowledging their agency and the complexities of their experiences. Krystalli calls for a more self-reflexive approach, urging researchers to recognize how their own biases, assumptions, and positions shape the way they see and represent victims. This underscores the importance of avoiding oversimplification in peacebuilding work and ensuring that researchers go beyond merely collecting stories for a narrative, instead engaging in a process that genuinely respects the voices of those affected.
Krystalli’s another work, “The Political as a Feminist Question,” critiques how transitional justice processes create hierarchies of victimhood, elevating some victims over others based on ideological or political considerations. The idea that some victims are seen as more deserving than others struck me as a reminder of the moral economies of suffering—the way certain types of suffering are legitimized while others are overlooked. This highlights that victimhood is not just about pain but also about recognition, power, and politics. It recalls how transitional justice systems often categorize, rank, and selectively recognize victims to fit broader political agendas.
Question:
In post-conflict societies, can these hierarchies be dismantled or are they inevitable? How can transitional justice address these contradictory realities of war?
This week, the readings were really impactful for me in reflecting on my own role as a person in academia and research, and the power that I have to shape collective memories. While I do not work in public policy or transitional justice areas, Krystalli’s insightful reflections on her approaches to her work provided a fresh perspective for me, even for my work in public health. Her reflections on how her own portrayals of victims and victimhood could oversimplify the realities of experiences of violence and injustice were particularly compelling. She explains how she had to keep in mind that portrayals of victimhood are often sanitized to fit the idea that victims are inherently ‘good’ and represent a monolithic group of people or experiences. Researchers like Krystalli have the power to shape these narratives through the sorts of perspectives that they seek and choose to portray. Golubovic’s paper provides an example of how researchers can expose and challenge the “hierarchies of victimhood” (Krystalli, p. 96) that have tended to take place in contexts of violence by showing how complex victimhood really can be. For me, this is a really powerful reflection, as I am thinking now about how my own choices of whose voices and what stories to centre in my work has reinforced certain ways of understanding an experience or event, while silencing others.
Additionally, Krystalli’s reflections on her choices about where and how to focus her work illustrated even further the power that researchers have in shaping narratives about conflict, violence and injustice. Her choice to focus on urban centres, rather than rural regions of Colombia, came after careful deliberation about how leaving urban settings and people out of the conversation about the conflict could encourage these people to remove themselves from the conflict and occlude the the responsibilities that these people have/take to reconciliation efforts. Further, her choice to focus on interlocutors involved in the Mesa so as to avoid requiring people to share their experiences only for the benefit of herself and her research was so compelling as well. Her choice not to seek accounts from individuals who did not identify as victims to respect their decision to remain silent as a form of agency really complemented this. I have had several discussions with peers about how research can feel exploitative at times, as no matter how well-intentioned the researchers are, the benefits of the research often do not reach those who participate. Krystalli’s careful deliberation of how to conduct her project so as to address these sorts of dilemmas feels really useful for me for how I might consider conducting my own work in the future. Specifically, her creativity and resourcefulness in finding unconventional yet justified methods of conducting her work are inspiring me to think more creatively about how to conduct ethical research in the future. More than that, her work also is inspiring me to think more deeply about my own power as an academic in shaping narratives of past and present experiences of injustice. Those of us who have this power are key players in the politics of victimhood, and we should use this power very carefully and intentionally.
Q: How do we, as graduate students, have a role in shaping collective memory and the politics of victimhood?
While I was already aware of the Bosnian genocide committed by Serb forces, I had never considered the experiences of innocent civilians, specifically Serb women in Sarajevo, who did not participate in the violence but still endured immense suffering during the siege. The author does not attempt to equate Serb suffering with that of Bosniaks or to minimize the atrocities committed by the Bosnian Serb army. Rather, Golubović challenges the strict dichotomy between “victims” and “perpetrators,” exploring how individuals, like Serb civilians who remained in Sarajevo, occupy complex spaces within these categories. These women, though ethnically aligned with the perpetrators, were themselves subjected to violence, displacement, and loss. Golubović argues that acknowledging such nuanced experiences does not undermine the severity of the genocide; instead, it complicates our understanding of how post-war societies process trauma and assign blame. The article highlights how certain narratives are silenced because they do not fit neatly into dominant discourses of victimhood, emphasizing the importance of recognizing the varied and intersecting experiences of those affected by conflict (Golubović, 2019). Krystalli’s work further deepens this conversation by examining how societies categorize and respond to different types of victims. She argues that not all victims are treated equally—some are seen as “good victims,” those who fit societal expectations of innocence, passivity, and deservingness of sympathy. Others are labeled “complicated victims,” whose experiences or behaviors deviate from these norms, making it harder for them to gain recognition or support (Krystalli, 2024).This framework is especially visible when examining media portrayals of global conflicts. In Western media, “good victims” often come from white, European backgrounds, such as Ukrainian refugees, who receive widespread sympathy, media attention, and political support. In contrast, victims from Middle Eastern or Muslim backgrounds, such as Palestinians, are frequently portrayed as “complicated” and are met with skepticism, indifference, or even blame. This disparity reflects Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism, which describes how Arab and Muslim communities are stereotyped as barbaric, violent, and unworthy of compassion (Said, 1978). For example, during the war in Ukraine, there was extensive media coverage, celebrity advocacy, and political action against Russia. In contrast, the ongoing conflict in Palestine receives far less attention. Only a handful of celebrities have spoken out, and many align with Israel, the oppressor in this context. This selective empathy highlights how victimhood is politicized and racialized, determining who is deemed worthy of support and whose suffering is rendered invisible (Krystalli, 2024).
This week, the readings were really impactful for me in reflecting on my own role as a person in academia and research, and the power that I have to shape collective memories. While I do not work in public policy or transitional justice areas, Krystalli’s insightful reflections on her approaches to her work provided a fresh perspective for me, even for my work in public health. Her reflections on how her own portrayals of victims and victimhood could oversimplify the realities of experiences of violence and injustice were particularly compelling. She explains how she had to keep in mind that portrayals of victimhood are often sanitized to fit the idea that victims are inherently ‘good’ and represent a monolithic group of people or experiences. Researchers like Krystalli have the power to shape these narratives through the sorts of perspectives that they seek and choose to portray. Golubovic’s paper provides an example of how researchers can expose and challenge the “hierarchies of victimhood” (Krystalli, p. 96) that have tended to take place in contexts of violence by showing how complex victimhood really can be. For me, this is a really powerful reflection, as I am thinking now about how my own choices of whose voices and what stories to centre in my work have reinforced certain ways of understanding an experience, while silencing others.
Additionally, Krystalli’s reflections on her choices about where and how to focus her work illustrated even further the power that researchers have in shaping narratives about conflict, violence and injustice. Her choice to focus on urban centres, rather than rural regions of Colombia, came after careful deliberation about how leaving urban settings and people out of the conversation about the conflict could encourage these people to remove themselves from the conflict, and miss the responsibilities that they have/take to reconciliation efforts. Further, her choice to focus on interlocutors involved in the Mesa so as to avoid requiring people to share their experiences only for the benefit of herself and her research was so compelling as well. Her choice not to seek accounts from individuals who did not identify as victims to respect their decision to remain silent as a form of agency really complemented this. I have had several discussions with peers about how research can feel exploitative at times, as no matter how well-intentioned the researchers are, the benefits of the research often do not reach those who participate. Krystalli’s careful deliberation of how to conduct her project so as to minimize these sorts of dilemmas feels really useful for me for how I might consider conducting my own work in the future. Her creativity and resourcefulness in finding unconventional yet justified methods of conducting her work are inspiring me to think more creatively about how to conduct ethical research in the future. More than that, her work also is inspiring me to think more deeply about my own power as an academic in shaping narratives of past and present experiences of injustice. Those of us who have this power are key players in the politics of victimhood, and we should use this power very carefully and intentionally.
Q: How do we, as graduate students, have a role in shaping collective memories and the politics of victimhood?
I try so hard not to bring up topics or conversations we had during PPGA Women, Peace, and Security, but this week’s readings heavily reminded me of some of those conversations. Who is considered a victim? What are the implications of victimhood after mass violence, particularly one related to ethnic conflicts?
Last term we discussed how the dichotomy of victim and perpetrator that Golubović talks about is unfit to really capture the very complex relationships before, during, and after an armed conflict. We saw examples of women fighters in Sri Lanka, and I mentioned at some point how nuns in Mexico, in order to not only keep their religious order running but to survive and continue their mission, have to constantly negotiate and engage with members of drug cartels. And, we also talked about the very complex social dynamics women captured and children born in captivity by the LRA in Northern Uganda experience when they came back to their villages and families; to many of these families, the mere fact that the women were kidnapped and that their children were most likely the children of a member of the LRA meant they were no longer victims, but rather the perpetrators.
I am also reminder of the several testimonies of German women following the WWII and the sexual violence they experienced after both the Allied powers arrived in Berlin. For many of the soldiers, the women were also part of the regime, and while there is no doubt that there were collaborators, where exactly do we put those German women, who really might not have known about the Holocaust or did not contribute to the armed efforts? Are they perpetrators or are they victims? As Krystalli explains, there are “good victims”, who are most likely to be remembered by history and whose stories and lived experiences also set a benchmark of what is deemed as “acceptable” to have suffered. Anything less and you are no longer a victim, anything more and you might just be doing it for attention. Anything outside of that spectrum and you no longer fit within the standards of victimhood.
These type of conversations often leave me with the same questions as when I started the readings, and sometimes there are so many complicated and difficult dynamics that not only is it hard to make sense of it, but also it leaves me wondering why are we trying to make sense of something so complex when we, as human beings, might be the most complex beings to ever exist. I also do not know if I’m making any sense so please do ignore if that is the case.
Questions:
Is there a lexicon that could potentially be used instead of “perpetrator” and “victim”?
How do we navigate this dichotomy and the complexities that it brings up within families/loved ones?
To start, these readings were both frustrating and insightful; I am certain they will remain on my mind for some time.
I found that the politics of victimhood explored by Krystalli and Golubović revealed the complexities and contradictions of how suffering is recognized, rationalized, or disregarded. Krystalli’s discussion of how victimhood is constructed by bureaucracies, NGOs, and transitional justice apparatuses highlights that victim status is not only about experiencing harm but about being acknowledged as a “good” victim. Golubović’s research on Serb women in Sarajevo demonstrates how the moral economy of victimhood contributes to some experiences of suffering becoming invisible, especially when they challenge strict dichotomies of “perpetrator” and “victim.”
Golubovic’s quote that stuck out most to me just so happens to capture this idea: “Acknowledging the suffering of one’s enemies does not mean justifying their political cause, absolving them of guilt for the violence they also inflicted, or declaring the suffering of both sides to be equal. It means recognizing their lives as grievable.” This, although challenging to sympathize with, is an essential topic in discussions about justice and reconciliation, questioning rigid narratives that determine whose pain deserves recognition. It made me think about who then gets to be seen as a victim. And who (or what) determines whether a group and their suffering are worthy of grief (or of being grievable)?
The difficulty of these questions is incredibly apparent in the context of Palestine. Palestinians have been denied recognition as “good” victims for decades; instead, their suffering is often framed as an unfortunate but necessary response to a singular event. It is used to justify ongoing militarization, genocide, displacement and occupation of families. Unlike other groups who fit into the mould of the innocent or passive victim, Palestinians are seen as “messy” victims, often blamed for their oppression due to narratives that conflate their identity with resistance or terrorism. Their grief, displacement, and deaths are frequently rendered ungrievable by those who have the power to create change and provide aid in the dominant geopolitical discourse.
This disparity becomes even more evident when comparing the global response to the war in Ukraine and the war in Gaza. While Ukrainians have broadly been accepted as victims and refugees, with their suffering acknowledged and widely condemned, Palestinians continue to be denied the same recognition in places of power. Ukrainians are seen as fighting a just war, one that aligns with Western interests and narratives of self-determination for security purposes. In contrast, Palestinians are often dismissed because of power dynamics, preconceived notions, and the “messiness” of their struggle. “It’s a complicated issue.” This inconsistency highlights how the politics of victimhood dictate whose suffering is legitimized and whose is dismissed as an unfortunate byproduct of a complex conflict.
This brings me to my question(s):
* Does the idea of a “perfect victim” exist in the public imagination? If so, what criteria must a group meet to be deemed worthy of empathy?
* What do we lose when our mould for victimhood can’t accommodate complexity and collective humanity?
I define victims as civilians who are exposed to violence and war, and who are often the most directly affected by the consequences of war. This is because they are the most innocent group in a conflict. But after reading this week’s assigned materials, I have gained a deeper insight into the definition of a victim, and from an objective point of view, a victim does not need to be defined by anyone, because it exists naturally. In reality, however, the identity of victims is complex, as victims are not just a specific group established from one perspective, but require different perspectives to look at the complex relationships that result from the interactions between the various groups. As Krystalli (2024) suggests, in the history of the Colombian conflict, there is no clear line between perpetrators and victims. For example, some of the members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) joined the war involuntarily. In this case, although they are also part of the armed forces in the war, they are also “victims.” This special relationship between perpetrator and victim adds to the complexity of their identity.
In addition, I was impressed by a concept introduced by Krystalli (2024), namely Photogenic Victims. This demonstrates that there is a difference between victims, whether or not they can be defined as a victim is not shaped by their experiences, but by the government and the media. I personally do not support this practice, which demonstrates a strong social injustice. Even this is completely incompatible with the framework of global transitional justice, as the experiences of those groups defined as non-victims (as in the case of FARC) are not only unremembered, but they are socially excluded.
Meanwhile, Serbian women suffered from the controversy over the definition of victimization after the war, where their form of victimization was not determined by their experiences, but by the state and politics (Golubović, 2019). Serbian women from the group of perpetrators were marginalized in political relations to the extent that they were unable to display their personal ethnic perceptions in public areas, despite the fact that they had absolutely nothing to do with the war. This reminds me of the way silence as testimony in last week’s reading demonstrated them as victims while protecting them from social injustice.
How can it be ensured that every victim is treated equity in the framework of a justice transition?
Last semester, we had a guest speaker who asked us to ask ourselves, “how do I perpetuate micro-violences in my own body and to those around me?” I’ve thought about that question often since. Often, I think that I have unlearned a form of violence that had been taught to me, raging against that violence should I see it perpetuated against others only to find myself perpetuating that violence against myself on a micro-level. Somehow, the rules are different when it’s me.
…but they’re not, because we ultimately treat others the way we treat ourselves. Especially those close to us. I learned to hate my soft belly from my mother, whose mother enforced that same hatred in her.
This week, I found myself asking the same question, in the context of victimhood. As Dr. Baines asks, who are the victims? Who decides?
I think, when we experience violence, we must first decide for ourselves if we are a victim and what that means. Then, if we choose to share that experience with others, we must shape our narrative, “‘self-stag[ing]’ as victims in order to be legible as subjects of assistance or protection,” (Krystalli, 16) and in certain cases, as subjects with access to “compensation for harms suffered” (Krystalli, 21)
For myself, when I have experienced sexualized or gender-based violence, I have wondered if the harms I have suffered are enough to warrant assistance, protection or compensation. Sometimes, I have wondered if I have enough ‘moral currency’ (Krystalli, 20; Golubovic, 1181) even to receive compassion. (Am I innocent enough to be a victim? (Golubovic, 1175)) When I choose to share my experiences, I often wonder if I am really a victim or just performing victimhood? (And what is the difference when victimhood is a political construction?) These lines of questioning tend to be focused on how others may perceive a violence to have inflicted harm, not how I experienced the harm.
The experience of harm is more difficult to generalize to a victim group because it is such an intimate, individual experience. Like pain, there is no objective measurement for the experience of harm – perceptions of harm and pain vary wildly from person to person.
This line of inquiry may be a dead end when it comes to making policy because of the extremely variable nature of the experience of harm, but I think that ignoring the personal ways in which I have experienced harm are a micro-violence I perpetuate against myself. And in doing so, I must, inadvertently, perpetuate violences on others – reinforcing hierarchies of victimhood and reaffirming narratives of “pure” victims.
How do self-narratives of victimhood come up against social constructions of victimhood?
How do we perpetuate violences against ourselves and others with definitions of victimhood?
Once again I feel like I am coming to this blog post with like, the world’s most obvious and least sophisticated conclusions but man, jumping to conclusions really does a doozy on our ability to find truths. I also thought this week really highlighted what our language reveals about us, whether we like it or not. Obviously both Golubović and Krystalli both talk a lot about terminologies of victimhood and of perception. As Elena noted in her reflection, I try very hard to not constantly bring up conversations from last term, but these readings reminded me a lot of Elena’s very poignant red-thread question last term: where is war?
All these answers to this question were littered throughout the Golubović piece, from the woman who noted that she “thought a war was something that happened between two armies, on a battlefield. I didn’t know that it could be … like this” to Golubović’s reference to Nguyen, who asserted that “war grows on intimate soil, nurtured by friends and neighbours, fought by sons, daughters, wives and fathers.” Reading this, I wondered if Nguyen’s exclusion of “mothers” was deliberate or intentional and whether it meant anything; whether it was a deliberate choice or whether it was an unnoticed implication of an imagining of victimhood or whether I was reading too much into this. Then I thought about how well this answers Elena’s question. In the Ross reading last week, there is a contextual paragraph noting that South Africa has higher levels of rape of women than anywhere else in the world “not at war.” I remember thinking that that sounds like a war to me. I wondered about who gets to decide when systemic violence becomes conflict and when conflict becomes war, and what kinds of victims are imagined in that.
Luckily there is Krystalli to answer these questions, or at least make note that they exist. I will admit that I am a Krystalli fan and spent most of the time I had set aside for this reading, reading Krystalli’s Substack. I like Krystalli because Krystalli often challenges us to think in the most nuanced way possible, both to find truth in conflict and to make room for joy. I enjoyed reading about her pedagogical approach, encouraging students to do more than flaw-finding and the students asking how to do that. As students, we slip into critique so easily, but being The Most Critical does not reveal or construct The Most True Truths. In Eve Tuck (of whom I am also a fan)’s piece, she says that “it is a powerful idea to think of us all as litigators, putting the world on trial,” then asks if our litigation actually works and if it’s worth it. The costs of such litigation are often immense; Tuck focuses on what happens when we think of ourselves as damage, but the litigation she is referring to also plays into Golubović’s highlighted perils of “competition over victimhood”. After all, in a courtroom, you can’t be both victim and perpetrator. I do think it is important to find flaws and to put the world on trial, but also that it comes at great cost, and that we should take care to know these costs, to feel them and to make informed and nuanced decisions about what we do with them.
On her Substack (sorry, but we knew it was coming when I mentioned it, right?), Krystalli writes that her mother “was raised in a recurrent script of catastrophe, in a generational tradition of needing to repeat your histories of loss, lest somebody erase or deny them–or, worst of all, lest you yourself choose to forget them.” Krystalli is referring to her mother’s weekly calendars, which make note of things like “baby – flu” and leave no room for narrative or things like “baby – birthday.” I would wonder if this fits into Golubović’s explanation that stories forgotten are not just silenced and let go of, but “pushed into the private realm,” and into the weekly calendars shelved carefully on the bookshelf to be found by your daughter years later. My mother is very much like this, too.
Anyway, for some related optimism (and also from Krystalli’s substack):
“If we begin with the deaths, we always somehow end with the loves, with what is chévere and rico, with what brings delight. This is not a pre-decided order of things, nor a hierarchy that prescribes hope. It is simply the way conversations flow, unafraid to move from loss to light and back—and sideways, too, into the things we do not quite know how to speak of, even in our mother tongues. My budding Italian “mi piace” is replaced with “me encanta,” the phrase Colombians use to express what delights them, what they enjoy, what they love. I love that the phrase ‘me encanta’ has ‘song’ at the heart of it, and, if traced all the way to Latin, it contains the casting of a spell. In other words, magic.”
(The Substack in question: https://roxanikrystalli.substack.com/)
1. How do the ways the “world claims you” (or us, Krystalli) shape the way you imagine victimhoods?
2. When do you think of joy as a political experience?
This week’s readings led me to critically think about the nature of victimhood and how transitional justice mechanisms define and categorize victims and perpetrators. Golubović’s article helped me find the words to articulate the complexity and “greyness” that surround the idea of victimhood – that is, how some suffering is publicly acknowledged while some remain invisible, particularly when it is tied to the identity of the ‘perpetrator’.
Krystalli’s article also challenged dominant narratives that hierarchize victimhood in ways that erase those who do not fit a state-sanctioned definition of “victim.” This led me to reflect on my own politics and how I often resist acknowledging suffering on the side of the perpetrator, fearing it may delegitimize the trauma of the disproportionately harmed. I frequently feel this dilemma while engaging with news from Israel’s genocide in Palestine or closer home in Kashmir, where suffering is viewed through rigid binaries of black and white.
Another theme that cut across the readings was the expectation of the “perfect” or “good” victim. This reminded me of how certain crimes – where victims are white, upper-caste, or wealthy – gain more media attention and legal action than others. The politics of victimhood are not only shaped by war or transitional justice mechanisms but also by broader perceptions of whose suffering is worth recognising and acting upon.
A key insight from both authors was that transitional justice often assumes that speaking about trauma is inherently healing yet silence itself can be a form of agency and resistance. I thought it important to reflect upon some other ideas of silence I came across in other readings. As we saw in last week’s readings, some survivors, mostly women, remain silent to protect themselves from further harm. The Serb women in post-war Sarajevo found that their suffering is unwelcome. Their silence is not merely the absence of testimony but a response to a moral economy that does not accommodate the complexity of their experiences. Among refugee girls from Somalia who are forced to undergo female genital mutilation, the idea of the ‘muted voice’ becomes a sign of resilience in the face of patriarchal norms.
Krystalli’s discussion on joy as both a method and a political experience deeply resonated with me. She suggests that survival and resistance are not only about suffering but also about the pursuit of joy in the aftermath of trauma. This made me reconsider how justice frameworks could move beyond narratives of victimhood to also recognize resilience, survival, agency, and even joy. Her final reflection in one of the readings also left me with a sense of hope – that gender justice work is not just about confronting violence but also about imagining and creating possibilities for new worlds and new solidarities.
Questions:
In a hyper-polarized, post-truth world, as it becomes increasingly difficult to bear witness, how do we negotiate the grey areas of victimhood and ensure justice for all those who suffer from trauma – on all sides of a conflict or crisis?
Can transitional justice mechanisms truly acknowledge suffering on all sides, or is there a way to move beyond the binary categories of “victim” and “perpetrator” to a more holistic approach to justice?
In the work I’ve done with gender-based violence organizations, I’ve become comfortable with pushing back against narratives of passive victimhood, of homogenous experiences of victimhood, of the tension between promoting empowerment without preaching resilience. Golubovic argues that victims occupy “a paradoxical position of power and powerlessness” (1181), and though I understood that power in terms of empowerment, countering narratives of helplessness, and rejecting the notion of a “perfect victim”, it turns out I was much less comfortable with navigating the implications of victimhood affording power. So, it seems I did not escape the “easy morality” (1193) that Golubovic identifies in peace and memory work. And I appreciated the arguments Golubovic offered, because I think my concern was perfectly articulated in the piece- I often feel like recognition of victim’s experiences was so hard won to begin with, that giving an inch will mean caving into absolution for harm (1194). The shift to disentangling innocence and victimhood as a way to put Judith Butler’s politics of grievability into practice was a helpful and welcome reframe to make this less threatening, and did help me address what is arguably a bit of a “scarcity mindset” when it comes to the victimhood economy.
It makes sense to me that conflating victimhood with innocence is problematic. And it makes sense to me that disentangling victimhood from innocence is complicated. Golubovic’s piece presents moral victimhood as a scarce resource that can only be held by one side (at least, in a world where innocence and victimhood are conflated) (1176), and when the right to victimhood is a scarce resource, recognition becomes a scarce resource too, so easy moralities become silencing (1193). I read a bit of Primo Levi’s work when I was in undergrad, and I remember he talked a lot about what he called the grey zone, which he used in reference to the ways that survivors of concentration camps in the Holocaust in many cases occupied an ethically grey area if they had occupied positions where they were both victims and perpetrators. This would be, for example, if they were detained in a concentration camp, but held a position that afforded them comparative power relative to other people detained in the concentration camp. His whole point there, as far as I understood it, was that the whole space of the concentration camp was a grey area where people were controlled actors (borrowing the language from this class), and so recognition of the atrocities they faced could not be contingent on innocence, nor could it be contingent on the judgement of people who did not understand the depth of the grey zone and judged actions from the outside. I was thinking about this a lot in reference to this week’s readings in terms of the ways that innocence is incredibly complicated, and we totally miss out on a ton of complexity from “controlled actors” if we condition victimhood on innocence.
Reading Krystalli’s piece caused me to reflect on the performance of victimhood, and the ways that essentialism and mechanisms that force particular forms of performance (9) might enhance the ways in which recognition becomes a scarce resource. Furthermore, this removes the space for authentic and meaningful recognition of experiences that are incredibly messy, and not easily confined by a victim/perpetrator binary. If we want to be able to address “complex victims” (Golubovic, but also Erin) as well as complex perpetrators and everything in between as whole people, don’t we need to move beyond these binaries?
My problem isn’t recognizing the ways that innocence can’t decide who is and isn’t a victim, my problem is navigating the discomfort I feel in recognizing that the status of victim and in some ways come with power. But I don’t even know where to begin with that. Maybe it’s something to do with worry about invalidating victims’ experiences?
How can recognition work for controlled actors?
Why is it so hard for me to acknowledge that victimhood might imply power?