What Pollock and Rothko may have announced and restorative justice may have to deal with: sovereign victim culture

ABSTRACT

A close reading of EU Directive 2012/29/EU of 25 October 2012 (EU Member States to comply by 16 November 2015), ‘establishing minimum standards on the rights, support and protection of victims of crime’, may reveal that a particular image of victimhood seems to be underpinning the text. This image projects victims as atomically separate entities who, clad in individual rights, may choose to ‘make contact’ (or not, as the case may be). An attempt will be made to argue that this image could be situated within a ‘sovereign victim culture’ that flourishes at the heart of what is often called ‘control society’. The origins of this culture, it shall further be argued, could be traced back to the aftermath of the Second World War, when elements of it first emerged in work by artists such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. This culture is shot through with agony and as such threatens to undermine the conditions of possibility for transformative restorative justice.

KEYWORDS:

• Sovereignty
• control society
• victim culture
• post-war culture
• restorative justice
• prophetic art
• consumerism

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Lori Thorlakson and George Pavlich for inviting me to take part in the symposium on ‘Recalibrating Victimhood: Restorative Justice, Victims’ Rights and Social Transformation in the EU and Canada’, Edmonton, University of Alberta, February 2016, and for offering very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Many thanks also to all participants for what can only be described as a very thoughtful and constructive debate. Many thanks also to Ivo Aertsen, Gerry Johnstone, and Theo Gavrielides for their critical but constructive comments on this contribution. All remaining flaws and errors are the author’s entirely.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.