Abstract:
My work “victimhood nationalism” aims to illustrate competing memories of victimhood in the postwar Vergangenheitsbewältigung in the global memory space. I try to make a critical inquiry of the global memory formation with a focus on victimhood memories. The historical space in this study is not an individual nation but an intersection of the memory loci of entangled history. Assuming the national history of “victimhood nationalism” implies a tautology resulting from and contributing to the nationalist phenomenology that constructs memories upon the present idea of the nation, I am tracing the global trajectory of victimhood nationalism through the interactions among Poland, Germany, Israel, Japan and Korea. As a memory activist as well as a historian, I aim to sacrifice the victimhood nationalism globally for the mnemonic solidarity. The book consists of 11 chapters: 1. Mnemohistory, 2. Genealogy, 3. Sublimation, 4. Globalization, 5. Nationalization, 6. De-historicization, 7. Over-historicization, 8. Juxtaposition, 9. Denial, 10. Forgiveness, 11. Solidarity.

Bio:
Jie-Hyun Lim holds CIPSH chair of Global Easts and is founding director of the Critical Global Studies Institute at Sogang University, Seoul. He has published widely on nationalism and Marxism in comparison, Polish history, transnational history and global memory. He is principal investigator of the research projects of Mnemonic Solidarity: Colonialism, War and Genocide in the Global Memory Space (2017-2024) and Series Editor of “Entangled Memories in the Global South” at Palgrave/Macmillan and “Global Easts” at the Central European University Press. His recent books include Victimhood Nationalism-Global History and Memory (Columbia Univ. Press, 2024-forthcoming), Opfernationalismus. Erinnerung und Herrschaft in der postkolonialen Welt (Klaus Wagenbach, 2024), Global Easts: Remembering, Imagining, Practicing (Columbia Univ. Press, 2022). Victimhood Nationalism-A Global History (Humanist, 2021, Japanese translation-2022), and Mnemonic Solidarity-Global Interventions (Palgrave, 2021, co-edited with Eve Rosenhaft).