Desiring Victimhood: German Self-Formation and the Figure of the Jew
Discussion: Volkhard Knigge, Hannah Tzuberi
Hannah Tzuberi
Desiring Victimhood: German Self-Formation and the Figure of the Jew
How did victimhood become a desirable resource in contemporary negotiations of transhistorical justice and memory politics? Its recognition, associated in post-1989 Germany primarily with the figure of the Jew, became a focal point of democratic, collective self-formation: The “new Germany” established itself as a fully sovereign, stable member of the league of civilized nations through institutionalizing the memory of the Holocaust as its (post-)national foundation and identifying the figure of the Jew as a primary victim. Which are the political and epistemological premises and power effects of an understanding of justice premised on the recognition of victimhood? How do processes of post-genocidal nation-building that are premised on identification with the figure of the victim feed into the ongoing regulation and problematization of those subjects and forms of life that contest the figure of the victim?
Hannah Tzuberi studied jewish studies and islamic studies at Freie Universität Berlin and was a research assistant at the Institute for Jewish Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. Her research interests include contemporary European Jewry, nation-building, collective memory, religion and secularism. She is the co-editor of Jewish Friends: Contemporary Figures of the Jew (2020).