New Britain—A nation of victims

Abstract

This article focuses on a debate on victimhood in Great Britain. Recent events in Great Britain indicate that the cult of vulnerability goes beyond the terms of the existing debate. This cult has emerged as a key element in a moralizing project that touches upon every aspect of social life. The events surrounding the death of Princess Diana showed how significant sections of the British population have been touched by the cultivation of public emotion. Less than two months after Diana's death, the British reaction to the guilty verdict against Louise Woodward indicated that there was still plenty of spare emotion in support of yet another heroine-victim. These events also demonstrated that when politicized, the culture of victimhood can become a powerful force. The politicization of grieving in Britain has been intimately linked to the institutionalization of vulnerability. Virtually every shade of political opinion and the entire British establishment has endorsed this project. Today, British society actually encourages those who suffer to discover some meaning in their experience. The media continually portray personal tragedies as moral plays, where a victim's loss is endowed with special significance. Thus whenever a tragedy strikes, a member of the family invariably remarks on television that they hope that their loved ones have not died in vain. Critics of the culture of victimhood often direct their fire at its more mendacious and self-serving manifestations, such as the predictable demand for compensation or the evasion of responsibility for the outcome of individual action. The celebration of the victim identity represents an important statement about the human condition. It regards human action with suspicion. It presupposes that human beings can do very little to influence their destiny. They are the objects rather than the subjects of their destiny. Consequently the human experience is defined by not by what people do but what has happened to them.