ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides a paradigmatic example, which is to trace the emergence of what we have called "a literature of victimhood and other forms of vulnerability" as the expression of this new, more positive attitude to trauma victims detected by Fassin and Rechman and gaining momentum in English speaking countries since the 1990s. It addresses the ethics and aesthetics of vulnerability from the perspectives of gender, race, and class. The book demonstrates that, though Coe's role in the development of the new visibilities of literary victimhood is first linked to the kind of humanist writing which aims at putting the individual subject back at the centre of action, decision-making and existentialist praxis, yet his narrative strategies also posit that the representation of vulnerability has to do with moving, acting, and writing aside.
