'knowing victims'

Just some quotes from a book i thot looked good. Fwiw:

“In neoliberal victim theory, the rather uncompassionate conception of victimization as self-made – the idea that winners win and losers lose because they have simply chosen to do so – fairly obviously evacuates sociological explanation of social suffering, directly subverting progressive political efforts to make victimization through poverty, inequality, discrimination and violence visible as collective and socio-economically embedded in an array of intersecting engines of social hierarchy and difference.”
― Rebecca Stringer, Knowing Victims: Feminism, Agency and Victim Politics in Neoliberal Times

“Neoliberal victim theory does not in fact ‘move beyond’ or ‘let go’ of the category victim. Instead it redefines victimhood and reorganizes the perception of who can and cannot be seen as a real and legitimate victim.”
― Rebecca Stringer, Knowing Victims: Feminism, Agency and Victim Politics in Neoliberal Times

“Neoliberal victim theory is characterized first and foremost by a victim-blaming conception of victimization as subjective and psychological rather than social and political. According to this conception, victimization does not so much happen ‘to’ someone as arise from the self – through the having of a ‘victim personality’, through the making of bad choices, through inadequate practice of personal vigilance and risk management, through the failure to practise the rigorous discipline of positive thinking. This way of knowing victimization transforms social vulnerability into personal responsibility, erasing the social foundations of suffering in order to mask rising inequality, and making it seem logical to regard victims of poverty, inequality, discrimination and violence as the authors of their own suffering.”
― Rebecca Stringer, Knowing Victims: Feminism, Agency and Victim Politics in Neoliberal Times

“In derogating the notion of ‘victim’, neoliberalism promotes a conception of victimization as subjective rather than social, a state of mind rather than a worldly situation. As a result, victims of poverty, inequality, discrimination and violence are discursively constructed as the authors of their own suffering, or as genuine victims of incomprehensible crime.”
― Rebecca Stringer, Knowing Victims: Feminism, Agency and Victim Politics in Neoliberal Times

“Central to neoliberalism as a form of governance is the establishment of a personal responsibility system, by which the sphere of state responsibility contracts in the same measure as personal responsibility expands, privatizing social risk. … This philosophy marks a significant shift in the liberal discourse of citizenship, supplanting the historical emphasis on rights with new emphasis on citizens’ responsibilities.”
― Rebecca Stringer, Knowing Victims: Feminism, Agency and Victim Politics in Neoliberal Times
“Bartky’s theory is concerned with the consciousness or knowledge women can develop about sexist injustice. She draws what may appear to be an esoteric distinction between benighted victims, who do not recognize that they or others are being victimized, and knowing victims, who recognize the workings of injustice in their own lives and in the world. Yet this distinction is compelling as it situates experiences of victimization as sources of knowledge about power and ethics, rather than as mere individual episodes that are best downplayed or forgotten, yielding nothing of value for political and ethical reflection.”
― Rebecca Stringer, Knowing Victims: Feminism, Agency and Victim Politics in Neoliberal Times

“Probing Wolf’s construction of rape crisis feminism as victim feminism also shows that Wolf ignores an important aspect of victim identity that rape crisis feminists acknowledge centrally. Namely, the much-examined tendency of victims of rape to engage in self-blame and ‘experience only self-directed anger’ (Alcoff and Gray, 1993, p. 284). Wolf espouses a version of survivorship called power feminism, without carrying through rape crisis feminism’s cautions about forms of agency that centrally involve self-blame. A core argument of Wolf is that victims are peculiarly at risk of failing to assume personal responsibility – this is what is so disabling about victim identity. Rape crisis feminists put the problem very differently: victims often assume excessive responsibility, for their own actions and for the actions of others. In fact, for rape crisis feminists, ‘victim identity’ primarily consists of this self-blaming consciousness. … Rather than seek the ‘rewards’ of victim recognition, the self-blaming victim situates themselves as the agent of their own victimization.”
― Rebecca Stringer, Knowing Victims: Feminism, Agency and Victim Politics in Neoliberal Times