Jie-Hyun Lim | Victimhood Nationalism: Global History and Memory

The term “victimhood nationalism” is designed to illustrate competing memories of victimhood in the postwar Vergangenheitsbewältigung in the global memory space. Jie-Hyun Lim tries to investigate global memory culture, focusing on victimhood memories critically. Once put into the dichotomy of victimizers and victims in national terms, the victimhood becomes hereditary and thus consolidates the national solidarity beyond generations. Victimhood nationalism is intrinsically transnational since victims are unthinkable without victimizers. The transnationality of victimhood nationalism demands a histoire croisée to comprehend the entangled pasts of the victimized and victimizers. The vicious circle of victimhood nationalism has been a rock to any historical reconciliation effort globally. Focusing on the nationalist phenomenology that constructs memories upon the present idea of the nation, his book traces the global trajectory of victimhood nationalism through the interactions among Poland, Germany, Israel, Japan, and Korea. It aims to sacrifice the victimhood nationalism globally for history reconciliation and mnemonic solidarity. 
 

About the Speaker

Jie-Hyun Lim is Distinguished Professor and founder of the Critical Global Studies Institute at Sogang University, Seoul. He has served as Principal Investigator of the research project Mnemonic Solidarity: Colonialism, War and Genocide in the Global Memory Space (2017–2024) and Series Editor of “Mass Dictatorship in the 20th Century” and “Entangled Memories in the Global South” at Palgrave/Macmillan, and “Global Easts” at the Central European University Press. His recent books include Victimhood Nationalism: History and Memory in a Global Age (Columbia Univ. Press, 2025), Opfernationalismus. Erinnerung und Herrschaft in der postkolonialen Welt (Berlin: Klaus Wagenbach, 2024), Global Easts: Remembering, Imagining, Practicing (Columbia Univ. Press, 2022), and Mnemonic Solidarity-Global Interventions, co-edited with Eve Rosenhaft (Palgrave, 2021). As a memory activist, he has co-curated exhibitions of “Unwelcome Neighbors,” “Naming Forced Laborers,” and others. 
 

About the Series

All This Rising: The Humanities in the Next Ten Years features ideas and methods that will mark new paths for the humanities in the next decade. Visitors consider the motives and conventions of their work in progress, how it converses with its discipline, and what it portends for the humanities.

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