Contribution short abstract:

Palestine has revealed that there is a notion of "perfect victimhood," modelled around a passive subject. Palestinians are seen as aggressors and even as engaging in victim-perpetrator reversals. This talk engages the notion of perfect victimhood and Palestinian refusal as a decolonial praxis.

Contribution long abstract:

The case of Palestine has revealed that there is a notion of perfect victimhood, modelled around a passive and docile subject. Palestinians have been seen as aggressors and even as engaging in victim-perpetrator reversals, long before October 7, 2023. The notion of perfect victimhood, the one who does not engage in violence, not even in self-defense grows out of a longer genealogy rooted in the Holocaust and Genocide studies.

This talk engages the notion of perfect victimhood and Palestinian refusal in order to return to the core principles of anthropology: to engage a people on their own terms and within their own socio-cultural environment. What can anthropology learn about victimhood, violence and human dignity when taking Palestine seriously?

Relatedly, what does Palestinian refusal to be perfect victims reveal about forms of decolonial practice? How can anthropologists take such practices seriously, in relation to other wars and genocides in past and present? And what are the perils of thinking refusal as an indigenous practice beyond settler-colonial contexts (Simpson 2017). Moreover, how can anthropology be responsible beyond knowledge-production and in fact contribute to the well-being of all groups involved, and especially those, whose human dignity is in question.