Verbatim quote · from the corpus

“If centrality—sympathy, attention (not to mention attendant material benefits)—is to be granted to certain forms of suffering, misfortune or subjection-by-others, those who actively claim it may logically “deserve” it as much as those upon whom it has been bestowed without conscious effort on their own parts, those whom we do not perceive as “playing the victim card.” And surely justice itself must sometimes be claimed. Surely, even, long-harbored, deliberately nurtured resentment—resentment, the feeling of exclusion from centrality, [8] inevitable corollary of desire—even resentment may be justified in victims we ultimately decide to be legitimate. So, there are other, more crucial measures of authenticity, as we must concede even in the teeth of our own resentments, the rising irritation we feel at the latest importunate claim, or indeed the experience of “guilt” which is perhaps the most inarguable token of a victim’s conquest of centrality. How and when did the asserted victimization come about? Was it really a victimization? If so, could the victim’s own actions have prevented it, and would it have been fair to expect such actions? What other claims to centrality deserve it as much, or more? And so forth. As these ethical struggles continue to play out, as such phrases as “through no fault of their own” or the “deserving poor” fade into the naivety of the cultural past, replaced by ever more expansive language and sophisticated argument, we need our deepest spirits, our best artists amongst them, to help us with the means to judge, to feel, even to act.”

— Eric Gans, Songs of Leonard Cohen: Postmodernity, The Victimary, Irony, A Blaze of Light · Spring 2017 · Anthropoetics