Book Review: Victims and Values: A History and a Theory of Suffering
| Published date | 01 September 1994 |
| Date | 01 September 1994 |
| DOI | 10.1177/026975809400300305 |
| Author | Stanley Conhen |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
International
Review
ofVictimology,
1994,
Vol.
3,
pp.
263-267
0269-7580/94$10
©
1994
A B
Academic
Publishers-Printed
in
Great Britain
BOOK
REVIEWS
VICTIMS AND VALUES: A HISTORY AND A THEORY OF SUFFERING.
Joseph A. Amato. Greenwood Press: London. 1991. xxvi and 236 pp. Hardback
£53.95; Paperback £14.95.
It would be difficult to imagine a "contribution" to modem physics, chemistry
or
biology coming from anyone outside these disciplines. Luckily, however, sub-
jects like victimology, criminology and sociology remain open enough to allow
all sorts
of
interesting contributions to come from scholars right outside their
disciplinary boundaries.
Joseph Amato is a historian, who has previously written a book, Guilt and
Gratitude, a historical study
of
the origins
of
contemporary conscience. Victims
and Values
is
a continuation
of
this line
of
inquiry. His goal is -no less -to
trace the genesis
of
the particularly modem form
of
conscience that knows itself
in relation to the suffering
of
distant others. In his useful "Introduction" and
opening chapter, he sets out some ways
of
unravelling the complex and contra-
dictory ways in which the facts
of
suffering, pain and victimization confuse and
divide modem cultures. Amato takes as his guiding "paradox" the same subject
that is more polemically confronted by Robert Hughes's current best-seller, The
Culture
of
Complaint.
We
live in an era that proclaims happiness as a universal
goal-
but also preoccupies itself, "even invites despair over," certain forms
of
suffering. These selected experiences are recognized, ideologized and politicized,
made valid, fashionable and official -while other forms
of
suffering, pain,
sacrifice and victimization are ignored and discredited.
Students
of
victimology -who have themselves contributed to this public
discourse-
will be interested in reflecting on these wider political implications
of
victim advocacy and representation. Amato is surely right to draw our attention
to the difficulties in finding meta-criteria to arbitrate between various claims
about the nature, causality and demands
of
human suffering. I fail to see, however,
what is so "paradoxical" or "ironical" about what he calls the "major axis"
of
his
study: that such battles about the value
of
suffering intensify precisely at the
historical moment when so many people discard the notion that suffering
is
an
"inevitable part
of
human experience." This is surely less
of
a paradox than
another contradiction
of
modem sensibility he notes: the same impulse that would
have us deny and repress all awareness
of
pain and suffering, simultaneously asks
us to be open, sensitive and compassionate to the entire flood
of
images
of
suffering to which we are exposed.
Unfortunately, the substance
of
Amato's study does not live up to the grand
and interesting questions he poses. There is too much
of
a theological (Catholic)
zeal to remind
us
that suffering
is
indeed inevitable and to persuade us that the
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