The article is in Serbian. ”Idealna žrtva i nadmetanje za dobijanje statusa žrtve u pričama preživjelih rata u Bosni i Hercegovini”. Temida, 18(2), 2015: 7-30.
Abstract in English
Previous research on victimhood often has presented a one-sided picture of the “victim” and “perpetrator”. Researchers have emphasized the importance of narratives and they have focused on narratives about victimhood, but a researcher has not analyzed post-war interviews as a competition for victimhood.
This article tries to fill this gap using stories told by survivors of the Bosnian war during the 1990s. I focus on describing the informants portrayal of “victimhood” as well as analysing those discursive patterns which contributed in constructing the category “victim” and ”perpetrator”.
My research question is: How do the interviewees describe victimhood after the war? When, after the war, different actors claim this “victim” status, it sparks a competition for victimhood. All informants are eager to present themselves as victims while at the same time for the other categories victim status is downplayed. In this reproduction of competition for the victim role, all demarcations that were played out so successfully during the war live on.