The Sufferers

In this week's selection of Life Exposed by Adriana Petryna, she continues to discuss the way people and the government adopted programs and identities that attempted to make the best of a disastrous situation.  While she discusses the way the Ukrainian government in particular adapted certain governmental welfare systems to both gain legitimacy and distance itself from the former Soviet Union,  Petryna devotes much time focusing on the people affected by Chernobyl.
She points out one group in particular, the 'sufferers' who were the people exposed to radiation after Chernobyl.  Post-Chernobyl, the sufferers gained additional identities/labels that people fully accept and immerse themselves in.  This struck me because I can think of very few examples of when people are content and shape their identities around a label inadvertently given to them by their government.  As mentioned, people would adapt to the label, for instance, by exposing themselves to additional radiation to maintain their sufferer title, and therefore, their disability payments.  While much of this embracing of a new identity is part of a larger mental process that one goes through in an attempt to accept their world post-Chernobyl and post-Soviets, I found a description of the 'dosimetric passports' intriguing.  Unlike the intangible ways people would identify themselves as Chernobyl sufferers, these passports were physical representations of this that were used to shape their identity to the nation state.  The passports listed the radiation exposure of the individual and gave them the symbol of the sufferer status.  By having this material representation of a sufferer, people became part of a group entitled to special rights by the government (such as free housing).  So in fact, while people typically shy away from taking on identities given to the by the government, here is an example of the exact opposite.  In a grim (and opposite) way, this also reminded me of how the Nazi's would force Jews to carry around a card or wear a Star of David on their clothing in order to display their identification.  With this identification came a set of rules they had to follow (as opposed to the rights given to the sufferers) that eventually led to the persecution and genocide of the Jewish population throughout Europe.  In this case, I'm sure many of the individuals were resentful for being given a label by the government and instead of being able to utilize the label for their own purposes, it was used against them by the agency that was supposed to protect them.  In this sense, while not self-imposed, they too were sufferers.