The Subject of Wrongs: The Politics of Victimhood in Latin America, Part 1

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

This is the first of a two-part panel about the politics of victimhood in contemporary Latin America. Victims figure prominently in everything from human rights campaigns, popular protests, and anti-crime crusades.  Despite the central importance of victims to political practice, most of the work on political subjectivity in contemporary Latin America focuses on the citizen as subject of rights. The papers in this panel propose an analytical shift. Rather than thinking about citizenship and political subjectivity in terms of rights, we address an equally important but less frequently addressed subject—the subject of wrongs.

Sub Track

• Law, Rights, Citizenship, and Justice

Session Organizers

• Robert Samet, Union College

• Winifred L Tate, Colby College

Chair

• Regina A Bateson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Individual Presentations

• The Victim Slot and Paramilitarism in Colombia - Winifred L Tate, Colby College

• The Victim-Perpetrator ‘Complex’:  The Socialization of Police with Violence in Urban Brazil - Graham A Denyer Willis, University of Cambridge

• Collateral Citizens: Political Responses to Crime Victimization - Reynaldo T Rojo Mendoza, University of Pittsburgh

• The Republic of Victims: Crime and Citizenship in Venezuela - Robert Samet, Union College

• Apocalypse Now! Reparations Later: Peru’s Post-conflict Peasants Manage the Victim Industrial Complex - Caroline A Yezer, College of the Holy Cross

Discussant

• Kay B Warren, Brown University