A surfeit of victims: a time after time

Abstract

This essay argues that the questions born of the conditions that marked the post-war period in Lebanon are folded over and replaced by another set of conditions of which neo-victimhood is most dominant. The time of the post war can be said to be over and now is followed by a time after time in which the figure of the neo-victim rehearses a monologue of victimisation allegedly beholden to the promise of a future liberated from all that is unfinished in the past. The figure of the neo-victim contaminates the historical anger of the unreconciled victim and further shuts down historical accountability as history becomes the horror of a history en abyme. Looking at documentaries, films and ex-combatant memoirs, this essay attempts to give form to this shift from post-war to a time after time. © 2019, © 2019 Council for British Research in the Levant.