Story-telling as memorialisation: Suffering, resilience and victim identities

Simon Green; Katherine Kondor; Alicia Kidd

doi:10.35295/osls.iisl/0000-0000-0000-1122

Authors

Simon Green University of Hull
Katherine Kondor Loughborough University
Alicia Kidd The Wilberforce Institute for the study of Slavery and Emancipation, University of Hull

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.35295/osls.iisl/0000-0000-0000-1122

Keywords:

Victims, narrative, late modernity, Hungary, Gaza, story-telling

Abstract

Is there a relationship between story-telling and memorialisation in the construction of victim identities? This paper seeks to examine these questions and shed light on the cultural dynamics of victimisation with reference to examples from sociological theories of late modernity and empirical research with people who self-identify as victims. Using examples from recent biographic interviews with an asylum seeker fleeing conflict in Gaza and two Hungarian radical right activists, the argument will be that victim identities are constructed and reconstructed through the development of personal and mediatised narratives about suffering and resilience.

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