演講簡介：
What drives today's conflicts over East Asia's shared past, including history textbook disputes? As a global historian and memory scholar, I seek to answer this question by articulating Victimhood Nationalism as a transnational memory template at work in East Asia and elsewhere. The postwar East Asian mnemoscape has been haunted by "memory wars": struggles born of unresolved trauma, failed reconciliation, and histories too painful or too politicized to share. At the heart of these conflicts lies victimhood nationalism, a narrative through which nations claim moral superiority and political legitimacy by invoking the suffering of their ancestors. This sense of collective righteousness finds affirmation in today's global human-rights discourse, which often turns particular histories of pain into universal symbols of virtue. The result is a hierarchy of national sufferings. In the age of globalization of memories, nationalism has changed its face, trading the worship of heroes for the veneration of victims. By victimizing victimhood nationalism transnationally, I imagine another path—a global memory regime rooted not in competitive grievance but in mnemonic solidarity, one capable of nurturing transnational historical accountability.
講者簡介
Jie-Hyun Lim is a Distinguished Professor at Sogang University. He is the Series Editor of "Mass Dictatorship" at Palgrave/Macmillan, and "Global Easts" at the Central European University Press. His recent books include Victimhood Nationalism: History and Memory in a Global Age (Columbia Univ. Press, 2025)-Korean, Japanese, and Chinese editions in parallel-, Opfernationalismus. Erinnerung und Herrschaft in der postkolonialen Welt (Klaus Wagenbach, 2024), Global Easts: Remembering, Imagining, Practicing (Columbia Univ. Press, 2022), and National Megalomania and Imagination of the Ancient World in Global Easts is under publication by the Central European University Press. His new book "Mass Dictatorship" will be simultaneously published in Korea, Japan, and the US in 2027.
