The Violence of Victimhood

From the review by Mark Schaukowitch:

The Violence of Victimhood asks the question: Do victims have a responsibility? Shockingly, Enns argues that victims do have a responsibility to their own victims and to those who could potentially become a victim. However controversial, The Violence of Victimhood is an excellent book that complements ongoing research on ethics and ethical judgment in the fıeld of rhetoric while explicating extremely clearly “high theory” from philosophers of communication in Europe, such as Hannah Arendt, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida. Enns critically assesses discourses of nationstate founding situations, child soldier narratives, rape narratives, and accounts of genocide to argue that judgment is our responsibility when staking claims to the identity of victim for purposes of political empowerment. Certainly tough to digest at points because of some extreme accounts of violence, Enns’s book makes a welcome contribution to thinking past victimhood as being a ground on which we lay claim to community and political action.