Jie-Hyun Lim, "Victimhood Nationalism: History and Memory in a Global Age" (Columbia UP, 2025)

About this episode

Jie-Hyun Lim discusses his book on victimhood nationalism and its implications in global contexts.

Nationalism today depends on the perception of victimhood. The historical memory of past suffering endows nationalist movements with political legitimacy and a sense of moral superiority. Koreans recall Japanese colonial atrocities, while Japan commemorates the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Israel sanctifies the Holocaust and Poland trumpets the Nazi and Soviet occupations. Even Germany and Russia, perpetrators of historical crimes, today cast themselves as victims by pointing to national suffering. In this theoretically sophisticated and empirically rich book, Jie-Hyun Lim offers a new way to understand nationalism and its political instrumentalization of suffering, developing the concept of “victimhood nationalism” and exploring it in a range of global settings. Victimhood Nationalism: History and Memory in a Global Age (Columbia UP, 2025) examines relations among Poland, Germany, Israel, Korea, and Japan, focusing on how memories of colonialism, the Holocaust, and Stalinist terror have converged and intertwined in transnational spaces. With an emphasis on memory formation, Lim scrutinizes how perpetrators in Germany and Japan transformed themselves into victims…

People in this episode

Guest: Jie-Hyun Lim

Topics covered

• victimhood nationalism
• historical memory
• nationalism
• political legitimacy
• transnational relations
• memory formation

Keywords

• nationalism
• victimhood
• historical memory
• political legitimacy
• transnational
• colonialism
• Holocaust
• Japan
• Korea

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Columbia UP

Places: Korea, Japan, Israel, Poland, Germany, Russia

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