Colonial Innocence and Victimhood Nationalism in Global Easts

Victimhood Nationalism: History and Memory in a Global Age, by Jie-Hyun Lim

What lies beneath today’s genocidal conflicts—in Gaza, in Ukraine, and elsewhere—is not only the raw contest for land or power but also a deeper battle over memory itself. In Victimhood Nationalism, historian and memory scholar Jie-Hyun Lim offers a penetrating answer. He argues that these modern tragedies are foreshadowed by “memory wars”: struggles born of unresolved trauma, failed reconciliation, and histories too painful or politicized to share. At the heart of these conflicts, Lim writes, is what he calls victimhood nationalism—a narrative through which nations claim moral superiority and political legitimacy by invoking ancestral suffering. This sense of collective righteousness, he suggests, finds affirmation in today’s global human-rights discourse, which often turns particular histories of pain into universal symbols of virtue. In this way, nationalism has not disappeared in the age of globalization; it has merely changed its face, trading the worship of heroes for the veneration of victims. Lim’s work aims to imagine another path—a global memory regime rooted not in competitive grievance but in mnemonic solidarity, capable of nurturing the fragile hope of historical reconciliation.

Info: Speech by Professor Jie-hyun Lim: "Colonial Innocence and Victimhood Nationalism in Global Easts-on Postcolonial Eastern Europe and East Asia."

Info: Panel Discussion featuring discussants: Hugh Agnew and Mike Mochizuki

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Host or Publisher GW Institute for Korean Studies