Roxani Krystalli’s book, Good Victims: The Political as a Feminist Question, aims to study the possibilities of politics through the status of victims. She does a wonderful job. Colombia is an extremely relevant case for studying this question, as it is often seen as a “country of victims,” as well as an international example for redressing political victimhood. The book is beautifully written and engaging and reserves a prominent place for the words of those whose experiences are studied, with an eye for nuance and complexity.

In Good Victims, Krystalli describes years of engaging with those who identify as victims of the Colombian conflict and with the officials working to support them. She unpacks the complexities of the “victim” label for both the state and the victims, and how it can lead to fragmentation of victims at both the individual and group levels. She convincingly shows that despite common assumptions about victims’ inherent passivity in the literature on victimhood, victims’ work — and, in fact, their lives — are extremely political. Her vision of the “political” is a feminist one, which conceives of political work as a broad range of activities including care work, accompaniment, and organizing. This vision contrasts with more mainstream visions of the political as formal politics or organization, common among state and civil society actors. Needless to say, such contrasting understandings generate tensions, described in many of the chapters of the book.

Whereas much of the literature on victimhood prioritizes victims’ accounts, Krystalli also studies the bureaucracies of victimhood. She shows how the state measures its effectiveness at supporting victims in numbers, using attendance sheets to capture victims’ identities, monitor “victim participation,” and populate databases. It is striking that, in meetings with victim representatives, state officials simply read out these numbers to victim representatives, claiming fulfilment of reparation public policy. As one official asserts in the book: “Qualitative data isn’t really required” (p. 145).

But Krystalli is careful to avoid the pitfalls of presenting the state one-sidedly as interested in reputation management only. While pointing out the limits of this superficial focus on numbers, she also shows the struggle that some of her interlocutors have with balancing their genuine intentions to support victims with the powerlessness of working in a system focused on numbers and with an unimaginably large universe of victims. At the same time, victims do not stay passive. They resist and demand: more meaningful information, the travel allowances they are due, and to be treated equally to state officials who do get their salaries, even if they are late or do not attend a full meeting. In other spaces, staying silent is the way in which victims exercise their agency. These nuances in mapping victim strategies and state responses make this book stand out.

Another contrast described in this book is in terms of what is understood as a “good victim.” For the state, the good victims are those who suffered specific forms of violence, gratefully accept support, and move on and shed the victim label by becoming self-sufficient through neoliberal “productive projects.” For victims, victimhood is what allows them to be political, to organize. In fact, the victim label is often the only way of receiving some state support. This is why those identifying as victims do not wish to be “put into one bag” with the large group of poor people in Colombia. Even though many critical transitional justice scholars critique the somewhat artificial boundaries between conflict and non-conflict violence, anecdotes like these interestingly show the limits of the solidarity among those considered to be vulnerable groups. While state officials critique victims’ inclination to asistencialismo (welfare), victims demand what they rightfully deserve and are promised by that same state. A way out of this conundrum is not easy and not offered in this book. Yet this book’s description of the impact of the victim label in practice provides much-needed insight on the impacts of well-intended policy choices.

As a feminist scholar and “gender person,” Krystalli also dedicates attention to gender. She describes how Colombia’s acclaimed “differential” approach is far from intersectional. Instead, it separates people’s different layers of identity and forces them to prioritize one. In one astonishing quote, a woman explained: “On Monday I am Afro-Colombian. On Tuesday I am a woman. On Wednesday, I am a lesbian” (p. 186). The book also critiques the often-narrow gender policy agenda, focused on women surviving sexual violence, in spite of an increasing awareness - also among the Colombian state - that gendered crimes are broader than this. Krystalli rightly states that such a broader vision, and the existence of the “differential” approach in the first place, are a place to start. However, I would have liked to read more from her, as a “gender person,” about how to move beyond such partial recognitions to enable victims’ various “selves” to be present simultaneously, as argued for in the final chapter.

A final important contribution of this book is its openness about the research process. Krystalli describes how developing a research project is not a linear process, yet consists of struggles, tensions, and doubts. She also describes how personal experiences can affect the research process and the choices that are made. With this, she contributes to emerging discussions of the dilemmas, hurdles, and affective experiences that are part of the research process. These discussions are important, especially for junior researchers. With her eloquent writing, nuanced analysis, and theoretical richness, Krystalli has produced a work that will be of great use not only to students, but also to scholars of transitional justice and victimhood in and beyond Colombia.