Wanda Meister

About Wanda’s Research:

Victim rhetoric has increased on the European politic stage to bolster positions and nullify opposition. Victim rhetoric refers to appeals to the category of the victim by political actors, e.g., in the far right’s self portrayal as victims of Islam and/or the left. Yet, the question remains, and has not been sufficiently answered, as to what, or indeed who, is invoked when the language of victimhood is utilised? This project addresses such questions through a comparative political theology of the ‘victim.’ Firstly, this incorporates a response to these questions with another, rarely asked question namely how Christian theological concerns over suffering, sin, and sacrifice have influenced our seemingly secular understandings of the victim in politics and law.
Secondly, this project turns toward the Islamic intellectual tradition as a necessary interlocutor. One cannot discuss modern European political rhetoric of victimhood without encountering essentialists and politicised portrayals of Islam. Additionally, this project understands Islamic thinkers as important theological interlocutor, particularly considering the distinct understandings of suffering, sacrifice and redemption, as well as the relationship between politics and law in Islam and Christian thought.
Thus, the absence of theology, and Islamic thought particularly, in the current scholarship on victimhood is perceived as a challenge, and an invitation. By tracing the development of the language of victimhood, and entering a deep critical discourse analysis with modern Christian and Islamic theologians through the framework of comparative political theology, this project looks to probe the category of the victim in the European political sphere.