Navigating victimhood: Women’s life writing and activist memory in Turkey

Owing to its gendered connotations of powerlessness, passivity and lack of agency, victimhood is an uncomfortable category for many veteran women activists from the left-wing revolutionary movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Based on an empirical study of the autobiographies of women activists in Turkey, this article is framed by the activist turn in memory studies, which has shifted scholarly attention away from victimhood, trauma and suffering towards social movements and memories of struggles. It considers a form of ‘activist victimhood’ as an identity under construction. The article shows how veteran female activists in Turkey navigate this category and transform it for strategic purposes. Memories of imprisonment and state-inflicted violence have legitimised women’s speaking out and have opened up a space for the circulation of women’s life stories. The article describes how activist women through autobiographies navigate the gendered positions historically attributed to them, adapting as well as challenging them.