This project started with conceptual work and data collection via fieldwork in year 1 and continued on with further data collection via focus groups and interviews in year 2. This project delivered both academic and non-academic publications that each targeted various aspects of victimhood politics in Europe. As part of the project, I participated and also organized a number of events, delivered a new module (Memory Politics) at University of North Carolina and commented on a range of media in English, Czech and Bosnian. This project was first hosted at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where the PI developed a definition and conceptual framework of victimhood that consists of three key characteristics: victimhood’s appeals to ontological security, morality and teleology. This work consisted of presentations for the faculty, participation in workshops and conferences and publication of an article in the Journal for Contemporary European Studies. Teaching was also conducted (Justice and Memory Politics in Easter Europe) for graduate students at UNC. In the empirical part, the PI conducted fieldwork in Czechia, Hungary and Serbia in April 2022 and also took on a fellowship in Prague, Czechia, at the Institute of Contemporary History from April to August 2023. The fieldwork consisted of expert interviews and observations in the countries. The PI also conducted focus groups in Serbia and Czechia with young people and their perceptions of victimhood in their respective countries.
Conceptually, the project advanced out understanding of how victimhood narratives of suffering, oppression, injustice and traumas features in contemporary politics across the political spectrum. This project defines victimhood as the socio-political expression of identities, positions and narratives that may be caused by crimes, injustice and trauma, but may also be inverted, appropriated and fabricated. Given this definition, while often approached as a tool of populist, nationalist and/or authoritarian leaders, using (especially historical narratives of ) victimhood for the purposes of defending democracy and liberalism has equally become commonplace.
This project clarified our understanding of victimhood in a broader sense as a political tool that consists of three key characteristics: victimhood’s appeals to ontological security, morality and teleology. First, it’s appeals to victimhood of one side presuppose vilification of the other side. For example, in foreign policy this consists of presenting one’s national suffering as a matter of highest national importance that securitizes the issue. Second, narratives of victimhood present linear and schematic stories of one side as a sufferer and another as a culprit, thus suggesting moral hierarchies. Third, past historical suffering is teleologically used as a method to showcase future threats as history repeating itself, therefore providing a teleological understanding of victimhood.
As the projects shows on the case of the Czech Republic, defence of liberal values and democracy has increasingly been used by the Czech political elites as a justification for reviving historical narratives of victimhood and leveraging them to legitimise and justify political choices, such as regarding foreign policy. The application of victimhood as a tool for democratic defence provides the main contribution of this project, arguing for a deeper understanding of victimhood as a tool of securitisation.
