Redefining a situation on one’s own terms can convert victimhood into agency.

Evidence

In his misery, Sartre decided on a ritual gesture that, he imagined, would make their violence a part of himself and turn it against them. He stole change from his mother’s purse and used it to buy pastries for his tormenters. … But for Sartre it was a magical act. It was a transformation: his bullies had taken his possessions from him, so now he would give them something. Through his Genet-like theft and gift, he redefined the situation on his own terms and made a sort of artwork out of it. After that, as he told Beauvoir in later conversation, he was ‘no longer someone who could be persecuted’. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 696

Categorization

• XREF: Shows Sartre’s own life instantiating the same label-inversion dynamic he read into Genet — a self-evidencing biographical echo. — connects to: Adopting a derogatory label as one’s own identity can transform oppression. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 694; Recategorizing someone as a victim shifts them toward moral-patient perceptions while suppressing perceived agency. — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting: Divergent…, 29; Victimhood transformed from a stigmatized condition into a strategic status that legitimates political claims. — Nurit Shnabel and Johannes Ullrich, Identity Needs in Intergroup Relations:…, 27

Broader Connections

• Adopting a derogatory label as one’s own identity can transform oppression. #expands (0.82) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 694