Thinking with others is one of the greatest treats of academic life. I am immensely grateful that this Critical Dialogue has provided the opportunity for me to think with Lilie Chouliaraki about our mutual preoccupation with the politics of victimhood. Chouliaraki’s reading of my book in this Critical Dialogue is generous and insightful, and I, like her, see the kinship between her work on Wronged and my own reflections in Good Victims. Chouliaraki has also given us the gift of some excellent questions to carry this conversation forward.

First, Chouliaraki asks about the instrumentalization of victimhood by powerful actors, especially on the far right. This is a concern I share. In the face of such an instrumentalization, scholars need to resist the temptation of being pulled into a sorting exercise in which we try (in vain, and at a potentially high ethical cost) to distinguish who is “a real victim.” Instead, we must ask what political work different claims to victimhood are doing and what power actors are mobilizing in the process of making these claims. And, more urgently, we—scholars and broader publics alike—need to find a way of narrating injustices that draw attention to the ongoingness of harms, the actors who perpetrate them, and the effects on the lives of those suffering. That narration requires more words and questions than the signifier of “victim” can singularly carry.

Second, Chouliaraki asks “what kinds of political response can support the recognition not just of narrative coherence and moral certainty, but also of silence, resistance and the right not to perform.” For an array of reasons, including fear of retaliation, stigma, lack of faith in institutions, and more, some of those suffering will not come forward and identify as “victims,” especially in public settings. This reality means we need to think not only about how to speak out, but also how to listen—how to become better recipients and stewards of others’ stories of suffering, especially when those stories do not always conform to our expectations.

Which brings me to Chouliaraki’s final question: “how can we, as scholars and practitioners […] imagine and cultivate a more ethically generous account of what it means to live through violence and speak out on harm?” One of the directions in which I am carrying this question forward is by attempting to practice curiosity about loss beyond the narrow frame of violence. What have people lost? What are we grieving? What hurts in our lives? How do these losses and griefs shape our sense of self, our relationships, and our politics? Cultivating an attentiveness to loss and the lives people build and imagine in the wake of it can be one avenue for deepening a practice of ethical generosity in the face of suffering in all its forms. It is my hope that such a practice can enrich scholarship on politics and, more importantly, give us fresh ways of imagining living in the world with each other. My deep thanks once again to Lilie Chouliaraki for her outstanding book, for excellent questions, and for this fascinating conversation.