This panel examines how language mediates the relationship between violence, memory, and justice. Drawing from the forthcoming edited volume Victims, Survivors, and the Implications of Terminology, the session explores how the words we use—“victim,” “survivor,” “innocent,” “militant,” and “retraumatized”—shape public memory and institutional responses to atrocity. Across case studies from Argentina and Brazil to global frameworks of transitional justice, the presenters interrogate the political and ethical consequences of naming. Iván Wrobel analyzes how Argentine memory politics navigate competing narratives of innocence and militancy through the Parque de la Memoria, exposing tensions between liberal human rights discourses and politicized remembrance. Maria Coelho de Sousa Soares examines Brazil’s contested uses of “victim” and “retraumatization” to reveal how terminological shifts during and after the Bolsonaro era redefine recognition and accountability. Editors Kerri J. Malloy and Carse Ramos situate these analyses within the broader argument of the volume: that language itself constructs moral hierarchies, mediates access to justice, and determines who is heard, silenced, or erased in post-violence societies. Together, the panel offers a comparative, interdisciplinary dialogue on the power of naming in shaping the politics of recognition and the ethics of remembrance.
Kerri J. Malloy (San Jose State University) Naming Harm: Language, Power, and the Ethics of Representation
This presentation introduces the intellectual and ethical foundations of Victims, Survivors, and the Implications of Terminology. Tracing the genesis of the volume from shared concerns among scholars of genocide, transitional justice, and memory studies regarding the unexamined power of language in shaping moral authority and recognition. He argues that the terms “victim” and “survivor” do more than describe, they structure relationships between individuals, institutions, and history. Drawing on cross-regional scholarship from Holocaust memory to Indigenous resurgence, the talk situates the volume within contemporary debates about decolonizing knowledge and justice practices. Highlighting how contributors expose the stakes of terminology across divergent contexts, revealing how naming can both reproduce structural violence and open space for healing, solidarity, and resistance. Ultimately, calling for a more reflexive, justice-oriented engagement with language that foregrounds dignity and self-determination rather than categorical fixity.
Iván Wrobel (Universidad de Buenos Aires) Defeated Militants or Innocent Victims? Framing the Victims of Argentina’s Last Dictatorship: The Case of the Parque de la Memoria
This chapter examines how competing narratives of victimhood—emphasizing either political militancy or innocence—continue to shape Argentina’s memory politics in the post-dictatorship era. It traces the evolution of these narratives from the dictatorship’s final years, when human rights organizations adopted an “innocence” framework to appeal to broader public and international support, to more recent efforts to reclaim and foreground the victims’ political activism. Focusing on the Parque de la Memoria as a case study, the chapter analyzes two initiatives: Images with History, which often privileges personal and familial representations over militant ones, and the Education Program, whose materials vary in how directly they engage with armed militancy. These divergent approaches reflect enduring tensions between liberal human rights discourses and politicized forms of remembrance. Ultimately, the chapter argues that the coexistence of these frameworks reveals the ongoing negotiation over how Argentina’s victims of state terror are remembered and represented.
Maria Coelho de Sousa Soares (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) Revictimization and Retraumatization: Rethinking Victimhood in Brazil’s Transitional Justice
Using Brazil as a case study, this chapter investigates how the concepts of "revictimization" and "retraumatization" clarify the challenges of transitional justice in contexts where state violence remains contested. It analyzes how truth and memory organizations, reparations commissions, and the National Truth Commission (CNV) have differently invoked the term "victim," often without consensus or clarity. During Bolsonaro’s administration, memory policies were dismantled, and a new discourse emerged that redefined former political dissidents as "terrorists," recasting the military as unjustly maligned and producing a new, revisionist victimhood. In response, some families and survivors have turned to the term "retraumatization" to foreground the psychological harms of enduring authoritarian narratives without adopting the disempowering connotations of “victim.” By tracing these terminological shifts, the chapter reveals how debates over language shape collective memory, justice claims, and the political boundaries of recognition in post-dictatorship Brazil.
Carse Ramos (Rhode Island College) Beyond Victimhood: Reframing Recognition and Responsibility
Building on the interdisciplinary findings of the edited volume, the collection’s major contributions to genocide, legal, and memory studies, emphasizing how terminological analysis advances both theory and practice will be discussed. Synthesizing insights from chapters spanning Europe, the Americas, and postcolonial contexts, to identify three central contributions: (1) demonstrating that victimhood is a dynamic social and legal construct rather than a fixed identity; (2) exposing how institutional and political actors deploy language to delimit justice and moral accountability; and (3) offering a comparative framework for analyzing how societies remember and repair. Outlining areas for further research, including the need for cross-disciplinary methodologies that integrate psychological, linguistic, and sociolegal perspectives on harm and recovery. The presentation argues that rethinking victimhood through language is essential not only for understanding the past but for imagining more inclusive and transformative forms of justice.
20260729T173020260729T1900America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires4.3. Victims, Survivors, and the Implications of Terminology: Language, Power, and Justice in Post-Atrocity ContextSV104MSA Buenos Aires 2026buenosairesconference@memorystudiesassociation.org
