In a moment when competing victim claims overwhelm public discourse, leading many to shun victim talk, <i>Wronged</i> gets so much right. By disentangling systemic precarity from privileged grievance, Chouliaraki recuperates the language of victimization for the most vulnerable. Wronged is a rich and sophisticated study that makes a major contribution to overcoming our current political impasse.

- Alyson Cole, author of <i>The Cult of True Victimhood: From the War on Welfare to the War on Terror</i>,

How have powerful and privileged men managed to pass themselves off as the victims of their own victims? This important book offers a new and convincing answer. It is essential reading for feminist scholarship, cultural and media studies, and the study of intersectionality.

- Eva Illouz, author of <i>Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism</i>,

Where has the holy sorrow of silent saints gone? Lilie Chouliaraki has an answer. It’s vanished into the market of competitive suffering, one that, like all markets, advantages the usual suspects. She urgently and eloquently calls us, in the name of a just and beautiful polity, to attend to suffering undistorted by power.

- John Durham Peters, author of <i>The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media</i>,

Se alle

<i>Wronged </i>is an instant classic for anyone seeking to make sense of the pervasive politics of victimhood in the era of digital platforms and profound polarization. In writing that is both strikingly original and deeply moving, Chouliaraki performs the magic trick of rendering visible what was previously unseen: even if suffering is universal, the politics of pain is deeply embedded within power relations and privileges the voices of the powerful over those of the powerless.

- Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, author of <i>Emotions, Media, and Politics</i>,

[Chouliaraki] does an excellent job establishing the real-world importance of her ideas.

- Lily Meyer, The Atlantic

A nuanced analysis of how victimhood is politicised in contemporary society...a powerful and urgent warning to readers about the culture of victimhood in contemporary times.

LSE Review of Books

<i>Wronged</i> demonstrates with aplomb the current market logic of victimhood narratives and helps to illuminate the problems of present political discourse beyond rote lamentations of ‘polarization.’

Marx and Philosophy Review of Books

Though sophisticated and theoretically complex, Chouliaraki’s narrative is laid out in clear and accessible prose and is grounded throughout by a broad range of contemporary case studies, making <i>Wronged</i> a valuable teaching resource (for students of feminist theory, politics, media and cultural studies, and critical discourse analysis) as well as a pathbreaking theoretical text.

European Journal of Cultural Studies

Why is being a victim such a potent identity today? Who claims to be a victim, and why? How have such claims changed in the past century? Who benefits and who loses from the struggles over victimhood in public culture?In this timely and incisive book, Lilie Chouliaraki shows how claiming victimhood is about claiming power: who deserves to be protected as a victim and who should be punished as a perpetrator. She argues that even though victimhood has long been used to excuse violence and hierarchy, social media platforms and far-right populism have turned victimhood into a weapon of the privileged. Drawing on recent examples such as the overturning of Roe v. Wade, movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, and the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as historical ones from the major wars of the twentieth century and the Civil Rights Movement, Wronged reveals why claims of victimization are so effective at reinforcing instead of alleviating inequalities of class, gender, and race. Unless we come to recognize the suffering of the vulnerable for what it is—a matter not of victimhood but of injustice—Chouliaraki powerfully warns, the culture of victimhood will continue to perpetuate old exclusions and enable further injuries.
Les mer
In this timely and incisive book, Lilie Chouliaraki shows why claims of victimization are so effective at reinforcing instead of alleviating inequality.
Preface and Acknowledgments1. Why Victimhood?2. Who Used to Be a Victim?3. Who Is a Victim Today?4. How Can Victimhood Be Reclaimed?NotesBibliographyIndex

Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9780231193290
Publisert
2024-05-21
Utgiver
Vendor
Columbia University Press
Høyde
229 mm
Bredde
152 mm
Aldersnivå
P, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
264

Forfatter

Biographical note

Lilie Chouliaraki is professor of media and communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science.