Situating a Theory of Moral Liminality

Life histories rarely fit neatly within clean protagonist-antagonist narratives, and thereby defy the Manichean desire to interpret figures in dualistic terms. Some individuals may experience a moral transition that is temporally oriented. Others may reconsider their ethics as new insights emerge and even become victims of the very transgressions they once committed, blurring the line between perpetrator and victim in a state of moral liminality. Anthropologists, geographers, and others have engaged the term “liminality” to address a broad range of phenomena which involve “the experience of finding oneself at a boundary or an in-between position, either spatially or temporally” (Thomassen Reference Thomassen, Horvath, Thomassen and Wydra2015: 40). We distinguish “moral liminality” as a state of being in-between categories of a moral nature. In this context, we draw from Star’s (Reference Star, Huhns and Gasser1988) concept of the “boundary object,” which refers to entities that inhabit multiple social worlds simultaneously and are used by different communities in distinct ways. Similarly, moral liminality operates at the boundaries of ethical categories. These moral boundaries, much like boundary objects, are not fixed but fluid, shaped by the ongoing negotiations and reinterpretations that take place as collective memories, identities, and ideologies evolve (Dromi and Stabler Reference Dromi and Stabler2023; Guhin Reference Guhin2020; Lamont and Molnár Reference Lamont and Molnár2002).

Primo Levi (Reference Levi and Rosenthal1988[1986]) has referred to morally liminal figures as occupying a “grey zone” based on his observations of “privileged Jews” in concentration camps during the Holocaust who both worked in the camps aiding Nazis, yet eventually also perished at their hand. Levi observes that this grey zone is a conceptual realm structured by “ill-defined outlines which both separate and join the two camps of masters and servants, [and] possesses an incredibly complicated internal structure, and contains within itself enough to confuse our need to judge” (quoted in Brown Reference Brown2010: 409). Theorists who have engaged with Levi’s concept of the grey zone, such as Giorgio Agamben (Reference Agamben1999: 17), have argued that it “implies the refusal of the very possibility of judgment.” The grey zone, in effect, suspends clear distinctions between victims and persecutors, or protagonists and antagonists, thereby positioning the figure in a morally ambiguous state.

Levi’s concept of the “grey zone” is useful for analyzing a class of morally ambiguous life histories—those which position individuals on different sides of a single issue. However, the form of moral liminality Levi describes, rooted in the extreme moral complexities and survival dynamics of concentration camps, speaks to the collapse of clear ethical categories under conditions of extreme duress, where individuals are compelled to make choices that blur the line between victim and perpetrator for the sake of their very survival. The moral liminality we theorize addresses a similar type of ambiguity, yet across a broader range of contexts. Morally liminal figures, by our definition, include all people who meet criteria for membership in multiple moral categories understood to be in opposition to one another in a particular social or political context. The life episodes which position them on multiple sides of a moral boundary may unfold under conditions of unusual duress, as in Levi’s case, or, in contrast, in the lives of free citizens of “settled” democracies whose conditions are less structurally oppressive. As a result, moral liminality can encompass diverse forms of perpetration and victimization/resistance that vary in extremity.

This concept is related to but analytically distinct from another form of moral ambiguity that Rothberg (Reference Rothberg2019) refers to as “implication.” Rothberg, like us, is interested in “a realm where … the categories into which we like to sort the innocent and the guilty become troubled” (ibid.: 8). Rothberg argues for an expansion of the victim/perpetrator typology to include a third, distinct role: that of an “implicated subject.” Implicated subjects are morally ambiguous because they engage in harm indirectly: they “contribute to, inhabit, inherit, or benefit from regimes of domination” and are therefore “aligned with power and privilege without being themselves direct agents of harm” (ibid.: 1). Liminal figures, by contrast, blur moral boundaries between the categories of victimhood, perpetration, and even potentially implication by meeting criteria for multiple such roles. Liminal figures thus include, but are not limited to, those implicated subjects who have also experienced more direct forms of victimization or perpetration—a dynamic that Rothberg calls “complex implication.”

This has consequences for how we understand the political consequences of debates over morally ambiguous public figures. Whereas implication evokes questions about culpability—who do we hold responsible for something that we agree is evil?—moral liminality challenges the very moral frameworks that shape our understandings of what it means to be “good” or “evil” in the first place—are there good and evil people in this world, or does everyone live in the “grey zone” between moral poles? When, if at all, is judgment warranted, and when is redemption from past transgressions a possibility?

As philosophers like Ricoeur have argued, all people are prone to engage in both admirable and detestable action,Footnote ¹ and to be victimized by the actions that they have inflicted upon others. Their moral liminality, however, may or may not be recognized by themselves or others, contemporaneously or retrospectively. Furthermore, people may be liminal figures in relation to moral categories that are more or less politically salient in their social contexts. Thus, not all cases of moral liminality have the same social or political implications. Our focus for the remainder of this paper is on those liminal figures understood to represent the values of a broader community, and whose moral standing is reinterpreted over time as episodes of their lives become objects of public and historical contestation. We examine how the biographies of such figures are framed and put to use. More specifically, we show how they are structured to, on one hand, uphold binary moral frameworks that underlie dominant narratives of national history, and, on the other, inform revisions of such narratives, demonstrating the fluidity and instability of morality both conceptually and temporally. In the next section, we clarify how an analysis of public debates around liminal figures’ biographies can deepen our understanding of how national memories, identities, and conceptions of justice are negotiated in the aftermath of imperial rule.

The Role of Biography in Decolonial Historiography

We focus on liminal figures who, at various points in their lives, have found themselves crossing salient moral boundaries through acts of anti-imperial resistance and complicity within oppressive imperial systems. The distinction between agents of imperial resistance and collaboration serves as one prominent example of a deeply politicized and context-specific moral boundary, though moral liminality can emerge around other key issues, such as racial, economic, or gendered oppression, that become focal points of political and ethical debate in specific historical moments.

Postcolonial scholars have critiqued binary ways of thinking, arguing that these simplistic divisions—such as colonizer/colonized, resistance/collaboration—are products of colonial structures of power. Fanon, in The Wretched of the Earth (Reference Fanon1961), highlights how colonial violence creates rigid oppositions that frame decolonial struggles, while Said (Reference Said1978) critiques the binaries inherent in colonial knowledge production that uphold power hierarchies. Decolonization, they suggest, involves dismantling these binaries and understanding moral and political life as more fluid, where individuals can embody conflicting roles across time. The concept of moral liminality, in this sense, engages with the breaking down of these rigid boundaries, allowing for a more nuanced understanding of how individuals navigate politically charged moral landscapes.

At the same time, it is important to recognize that debates over these binaries are far from settled. Polarizing narratives have historically been powerful tools for mobilizing people into decolonial struggles and legitimizing those struggles to international audiences. Fanon’s discussion of the Manichean worldview imposed by colonialism speaks to this, as does Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s (Reference Spivak, Nelson and Grossberg1988) interrogation of subaltern agency. In contexts where neoimperial threats persist, such narratives are often seen as necessary to sustain solidarity and focus efforts against systemic oppression. For instance, figures who occupy morally liminal spaces may be celebrated or condemned depending on whether they are perceived as advancing or undermining these broader political goals. These debates over iconic liminal figures are often part and parcel of larger conversations about what it means to decolonize. Does decolonization require a strict commitment to resistance framed in binary terms, or can it accommodate the contradictions and complexities of lived experience? Scholars like Homi Bhabha (Reference Bhabha1994) have argued for the importance of hybridity and the “third space” as zones where these contradictions can be negotiated. By examining these tensions, moral liminality not only challenges colonial frameworks but also engages with the evolving struggles within decolonial movements themselves, highlighting the fluid and contested nature of the decolonial project.

Our central goal is to understand how the biographies of such morally liminal figures are reconstructed to either defend or reject national narratives that position national or ethnic communities in moral opposition to one another. Biography is a unique form of narrative that, by definition, involves the linking of episodes pertaining to a single person’s life. It is intimately connected to another genre—history—which, instead, integrates the trajectories of many individuals into a single chronological narrative. According to feminist historian Lois Banner (Reference Banner2009: 580), “At its best, biography, like history, is based on archival research, interweaves historical categories and methodologies, reflects current political and theoretical concerns, and raises complex issues of truth and proof.” Cultural sociologists also emphasize this nexus between history and biography, showing that “all histories and social structures are compositions and layerings of multiple biographical paths and social networks, which interact in time without completely controlling each other” (Padgett Reference Padgett2018: 407). Building on these traditions, we focus on moments when biographical facts come to light that contradict popular histories, catalyzing periods of collective reckoning over the nation’s relationship to violent events of the past.

Scholars have shown that in some such cases, people revise historical narratives to better account for historical figures’ moral inconsistencies (Alexander Reference Alexander2002; Alexander and Dromi Reference Alexander, Dromi, Eyerman, Alexander and Breese2011; Simko Reference Simko2012; Wagner-Pacifici Reference Wagner-Pacifici1986). In other words, they pragmatically adopt moral frameworks that best resonate with, or articulate, the knowledge that they have accumulated to that point in time (Calhoun Reference Calhoun1991). We can see this, for example, in cases where collective memories of violent events reflect the conventions of “tragedy”—a genre that, according to Simko, “thematizes ambiguity” (2012: 879). Tragic readings of history tend to recognize protagonists’ faults and antagonists’ virtues or constraints, thus allowing the public to relate on some level to both. By emphasizing systemic (over individual) causes of suffering, such narratives better account for what Hannah Arendt (Reference Arendt1963) has called the “banality of evil,” or widespread complicity in violence in bureaucratized societies. This makes them powerful tools for fostering progressive solidarities and informing responses to injustices in other places and times. Alexander, for instance, argues that a shift in how the Holocaust was narrated in the late twentieth century—from a localized history of a “war crime” committed by Nazis against Jews to a more general history of human suffering—enabled the event to serve as a “universalized symbol whose very existence has created historically unprecedented opportunities for ethnic, racial, and religious justice, for mutual recognition, and for global conflicts to become regulated in a more civil way” (2002: 6).

However, dualistic narratives, which instead pit innocent victims against their irredeemable perpetrators, often prevail despite such challenges to their empirical validity (Alexander and Dromi Reference Alexander, Dromi, Eyerman, Alexander and Breese2011; Rothberg Reference Rothberg2019; Simko Reference Simko2012). Their recalcitrance suggests that participants in debates over liminal figures may choose to suppress or modify the biographical records of morally ambiguous individuals to preserve the binary moral frameworks of their preferred historiographies. Such manipulations of biographical records constitute important mechanisms through which past narratives of historical events influence how those same events are remembered in the present, a process that Olick refers to as “prosaic path-dependence” (Reference Olick1999). Their implications can be profound. For one, they obscure the historical record. Such narratives also create impasses to resolution between polarized political communities. According to Simko, “interpretations that conceive events strictly in binary terms have a tendency to inhibit compromise, foster insularity, and prolong violence” (Simko Reference Simko2012: 897–98).

Building on this literature, we explore how liminal figures’ biographies are framed to uphold or undermine moral boundaries between the “national resistors” and “imperial collaborators” in histories of imperialism. Our analysis reveals three points of divergence in these competing biographical narratives: the construction of figures’ agency, motivations, and social impact. Agency refers to beliefs in the power of the individual to determine and realize their own actions independent of external influence. Motivation is understood to be the underlying impetus for the individual pursuing the actions for which they are being held accountable. Lastly, we examine understandings of the lasting mark the individual had in their roles and for what they are ultimately remembered as an assessment of their impact. All three aspects of biographical structure can be manipulated in service of liminal figures’ redemption or condemnation.

Sites of Contestation: Memorials and Museums

To understand how people reconstruct the biographies of morally liminal figures and put them to political use, we look to debates over whether to maintain or decommission public memorials to such individuals, and how to exhibit their life histories in museums. Memorials and museums are two types of sites where debates over memorialization and historical revisionism unfold. By partitioning time into a series of punctuated dates, and associating objects and spaces with such events, both have the power to shape how members of political communities remember their collective experiences—their histories. However, these forms of public commemoration differ in ways that can fundamentally shape the nature of memory debates. Scholars of memory and materiality have long argued that “museums and heritage sites (their objects, spaces, etc.) afford a range of practices that can be enacted in relation to them while at the same time they restrict others or render them more unlikely” (Bareither Reference Bareither2021: 579). Of particular importance, in our case, is the degree to which they enable the expression of complex biographical narratives and their revision over time.

Memorials are typically more limited in their narrative potential than museums since they tend to rely more on imagery than written or spoken words to communicate messages. Though some contemporary memorials capture the moral ambiguities of historical figures or events by, for example, juxtaposing horizontal sculptural forms alongside more vertical or heroic structures (e.g., Wagner-Pacifici and Schwartz Reference Wagner-Pacifici and Schwartz1991), many traditional monuments and memorials instead embody dualistic histories of nation-building, imperialism, and resistance, honoring the “heroes” of political regimes for having resisted, defeated, and suffered at the hands of those regimes’ “enemies” (Larsen Reference Larsen2012; Osborne Reference Osborne1998; Whelan Reference Whelan2002). Moreover, monuments are typically constructed of materials that are difficult to manipulate. Thus, instead of revising existing monuments to account for figures’ moral complexities, people typically face the more divisive question of whether to remove them or leave them intact (Forest and Johnson Reference Forest and Johnson2002; Kattago Reference Kattago2009; Larsen Reference Larsen2012; Light and Young Reference Light and Young2011). Additionally, memorials are often encountered in everyday urban landscapes or sites of commemoration, making their audiences more incidental and varied, whereas museums typically attract visitors with a deliberate interest in engaging with historical narratives, fostering a more interpretive and reflective mode of encounter.

Museums can also display, through various modalities, more complex narratives. Furthermore, they have a greater capacity to evolve, as curators modify exhibits in response to public discourse (Levitt Reference Levitt2015). Noy explains that in the late twentieth century, many museums embraced a “narrative turn,” “transforming from a knowledge, collection-based institution (of the like of libraries and archives), to an experiential, audience-centered institution, whose central mode of mediation is narration” (Reference Noy2021: 287–88). Attempts to revise liminal figures’ biographical narratives in museum exhibits may therefore enable more compromise and resolution than decisions regarding whether to decommission national monuments or keep them intact.

David Livingstone and Jonas Noreika

Like many places around the world, Lithuania and Scotland are two countries whose pasts have in recent years undergone considerable revision as a result of grassroots movements to uncover histories that had been intentionally marginalized or silenced. What makes these countries unique and worth comparing is the ways in which revisionist histories are being projected onto the nation through efforts to reconcile the biographies of two morally liminal figures. The moral boundaries that define these debates were present before recent public scrutiny of these figures’ biographies. National narratives had long been shaped by binary distinctions between heroes and traitors, victims and perpetrators—distinctions that were not necessarily stable but were actively reinforced in ways that upheld dominant historical frameworks. The publication of new research and media investigations brought previously marginalized or overlooked aspects of Livingstone’s and Noreika’s biographies into public consciousness at moments when these moral boundaries were particularly salient due to ongoing “culture wars.” These disclosures did not simply introduce new historical facts; they catalyzed broader struggles over national identity, historical accountability, and the limits of moral redemption. Despite notable differences between the cases, our comparison also reveals striking parallels between the mechanisms through which such historical revision is accomplished.

The comparison of these cases also contributes to our understanding of how histories of empire and domination are (re)constructed and contested, highlighting how historical biography informs decolonial thought. Lithuania and Scotland are two countries not conventionally studied to elucidate the vestiges of colonial hegemony. This perspective, however, has slowly been shifting in recent years, as calls for decolonization at the national level have begun to challenge traditional perspectives on the empire and state hegemony from within.Footnote ² The cases illustrate how countries whose leaders were not primary architects of imperialism or genocide can still be deeply implicated in the memory politics surrounding these histories. As Ioana Sendroiu argues, even polities whose members were not central actors in historical crises often experience retrospective uncertainty over their roles, leading to cycles of historical revision and second-guessing of national identity (Reference Sendroiu2022; also see McBride Reference McBride2021).

The comparison of the debates surrounding David Livingstone’s Glasgow monument and Jonas Noreika’s memorial plaque in Vilnius illuminates the complexities of national identity and historical memory in the aftermath of imperial and colonial entanglements. Both cases highlight how investments in imperial projects—whether through economic ties, as in Livingstone’s early connection to the West Indian cotton trade, or through bureaucratic complicity in wartime atrocities, as in Noreika’s actions during the Holocaust—can leave lasting legacies that demand reckoning. These figures embody morally liminal life histories that challenge neat binaries of heroism and complicity, creating spaces for contested narratives about national heritage and morality.

The public controversies surrounding these figures illustrate different approaches to negotiating contested legacies. In Glasgow, no physical changes have been made to the monument, but the debate has redefined its symbolic meaning, prompting broader discussions about how a figure’s early life choices complicate narratives of redemption and moral clarity. Unlike the largely symbolic contestation over the monument, the David Livingstone Birthplace Museum undertook a proactive re-examination of his legacy, reopening in 2021 with a revised exhibition that directly addresses his entanglement in the transatlantic slave economy. Rather than presenting an uncritical celebration, the museum incorporates multiple perspectives, foregrounding both Livingstone’s complicity in the cotton trade and his later abolitionist efforts. By expanding the narrative to include those impacted by slavery and colonialism, the museum models an approach to reckoning with moral liminality—one that embraces complexity rather than reducing contested figures to static moral categories.

In Vilnius, by contrast, the controversy over Jonas Noreika’s wartime actions escalated into a physical and highly visible battle over commemoration. His memorial plaque was shattered, reinstalled, removed, and ultimately replaced with a revised version, reflecting ongoing struggles over how his legacy should be framed. These divergent outcomes highlight how different forms of public commemoration—monuments, museums, and memorial plaques—shape the trajectory of historical debates in distinct ways. While museums allow for interpretive revision and a multiplicity of narratives, static monuments and plaques often provoke more polarized and material confrontations. Furthermore, juxtaposing the symbolic and material outcomes of these debates underscores the influence of contemporary political anxieties—such as the fear of escalating Russian aggression in Lithuania—on how societies respond to the moral liminality of their “national heroes.” Ultimately, these cases reveal not only the limits of binary frameworks in understanding historical figures but also the broader stakes of reckoning with colonial entanglements in shaping national identity and historical memory.

David Livingstone’s Glasgow Monument

The year 2022 saw the publication of “Glasgow, Slavery and Atlantic Commerce: An Audit of Historic Connections and Modern Legacies,” a report by historian Stephen Mullen which, as its title suggests, examined the city of Glasgow’s enduring relationship to the institution of slavery. The study examined Glasgow elites who profited from transatlantic slavery, shaping the city’s wealth and legacy. Cited in the report were statues, streets, buildings, gifts, and other institutions which bore the names and legacies of such individuals. In the preface the author noted that he made efforts to “contextualise individuals by the standards of their era,” that the information provided in the report was intended “for others to decide on the modern implications,” that “conclusions based on historical evidence should not be interpreted as a didactic pronouncement how individuals are or should be memorialised or commemorated in civic space,” and that he was “not entitled to provide a view on how to deal with these legacies in any future public consultation” (Mullen Reference Mullen2022).

Although the Glasgow report had been commissioned in 2019—before the 2020 Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests—its release in 2022 coincided with a period of heightened global awareness and activism surrounding historical injustices, particularly those related to slavery and colonialism (Glasgow City Council 2019; Museums Association 2022). This timing contributed to the report becoming entangled in broader culture war debates, with critics on the political right framing it as part of a wider “woke” agenda driven by BLM, despite the report itself making no such connection (Telegraph 2022). The LBC article, for example, notes that the report was published after the BLM protests that led to the toppling of Edward Colston’s statue in Bristol, raising fears—particularly among conservative commentators and critics of the report—that Livingstone’s statue in Scotland could face a similar fate (LBC 2022). While these concerns were not universally shared across Scotland, they illustrate how historical reckoning efforts were interpreted through the lens of contemporary political anxieties.

The invocation of Colston’s statue was particularly significant in this discourse, serving as a symbolic reference point for critics who argue that reassessing historical figures inevitably leads to their erasure from public space. However, this framing overlooked the fact that the Glasgow report did not advocate for the removal of Livingstone’s statue but rather sought to contextualize his legacy within Scotland’s colonial history. The backlash to the report reflected how conservative critics mobilized fears of historical erasure to resist broader discussions of historical accountability, even in cases where direct policy changes—such as monument removal—were not being proposed.

Despite its attempts at neutrality, critics saw the report as a threat to Glasgow’s historical legacy. In particular, the report’s mention of David Livingstone and his monument in Glasgow’s Cathedral Square drew considerable attention, with several reports suggesting that its naming in the report would signal its eventual public demise. In the weeks following the publication of the report British newspapers were dotted with headlines such as, “It is a nonsense to put David Livingstone in the line of fire over slavery links” (Letters 2022), and “Statue of explorer David Livingstone may be removed because he worked from age 10 in a mill that ‘likely’ used West Indian cotton—despite him being an abolitionist credited with helping end the slave trade” (Quinn Reference Quinn2022).

Livingstone had, and continues to have, a complicated legacy. As noted in the report, for more than a decade he worked in a cotton mill which sourced its material from West Indian plantations. After extensive travels throughout Africa as a missionary where he witnessed the horrors of slavery and its destructive effects on communities first-hand, Livingstone returned to Britain where he became a staunch critic of slavery, calling it the “greatest meanness ever perpetrated” and condemned those who continued to profit from slave labor as a lot who were the “meanest set upon on earth” (Mullen Reference Mullen2022: 100). Despite these assertions, he continued to defend cotton masters as “paternalistic and benevolent.” How Livingstone is remembered with regard to his attitude towards the institution of slavery is ambiguous, with some critical of him for his early exploits in the cotton industry, while others, as noted in the headlines above, hail him as an abolitionist hero of his generation.

Jonas Noreika and His Memorial Plaque in Vilnius

Seven years earlier, in the summer of 2015, a similarly polarizing debate began to unfold in Vilnius, Lithuania, regarding the memorialization of a revered anti-Soviet resistance fighter: Jonas Noreika, also known by his military nickname “General Storm.” In 1997, Noreika had been awarded the prestigious Order of the Cross of Vytis, the highest national honor in Lithuania, and commemorated with a memorial plaque on the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences Library for dedicating his life to the fight for Lithuania’s freedom. Though critics had long accused Noreika of Holocaust collaboration (Balčiūnas Reference Balčiūnas2012; Dargis Reference Dargis1993; Olschwang Reference Olschwang1984), these aspects of his biography did not come under major public scrutiny in Lithuania until 2015, when two journalists published articles in major national newspapers (Gritėnas Reference Gritėnas2015; Valatka Reference Valatka2015). They reported that a group of high-profile intellectuals and cultural elites intended to submit a letter to the mayor of Vilnius asking for Noreika’s memorial plaque to be removed. By this point, a U.S. resident from South Africa named Grant Gochin, whose own relatives had perished in Lithuania during the Holocaust, had already sent another letter to the municipality requesting its removal. In response, the mayor asked the state’s official historical research center, called the Genocide and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania (GRRCL; from here onward, “the Center”), to “objectively and thoroughly” investigate Gochin’s claims, after which the Center released its own evaluation of Noreika’s wartime activities (GRRCL 2015).

The debate was reanimated roughly three years later, when Salon published an article by the U.S.-based granddaughter of Jonas Noreika—Silvia Foti—titled, “My grandfather wasn’t a Nazi-fighting war hero—he was a brutal collaborator” (July 2018). Foti disclosed in the article that her grandfather had published anti-Semitic texts, facilitated the institution of a ghetto, lived in a home confiscated from a Jewish family, and been accused of ordering the mass execution of Jews. Her article stirred major debate both in Lithuania and abroad about not only how Noreika should be remembered, but also who has the right and responsibility to shape the construction of his memory (Davoliūtė Reference Davoliūtė2018).

Foti partnered with Gochin, who filed a civil lawsuit against the Center in 2018, contesting its conclusion that Noreika’s actions during the Nazi occupation “could not be judged unequivocally.” Gochin claimed that since 2015, the Center had “distorted history” and “violated the principles of transparent administration and objectivity.” The controversy reached a climax in April of 2019 when the plaque was shattered in broad daylight by Stanislovas Tomas, a candidate for the European Parliament, and then glued back together and reinstalled, only to be removed by Vilnius’ mayor Remigijus Šimašius and later replaced without the city’s approval with a new and revised plaque. The makers of the new plaque added “prisoner of Stutthof concentration camp” to the list of Noreika’s accolades.

Many of the facts regarding Noreika’s biography were relatively undisputed in the discussions unfolding from 2015–2021 in the Lithuanian and international press. It was generally accepted that Noreika worked as an army captain and lawyer at the start of World War II, and when the Soviets invaded Lithuania in June of 1940, he became involved in the anti-Soviet resistance. In 1941, when Germany launched Operation Barbarossa and invaded the USSR, he participated in the June Uprising, an effort to remove the Soviets from Lithuania and form a Provision Lithuanian Government. This government was soon replaced by the German administrative unit Ostland, though many ethnic Lithuanians continued to staff the local governments and police units under the new regime. At this time, Noreika first held leadership positions in the Telšiai branch of the Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF) and the Plungė commandant’s headquarters (July 1941), and then served as governor of Šiauliai County (August–September of 1941). In this role as governor, he signed orders authorizing the formation of a ghetto in the town of Žagarė (22 August 1941) and confiscation of Jews’ property (10 September 1941). Thousands of people were executed either during or after being forced into Žagarė ghetto. In February of 1943, however, Noreika was detained in the Stutthof concentration camp for refusing to mobilize residents of Lithuanian into the “Waffen-SS” legion under Nazi orders. He was released in 1944, when the Soviets reoccupied Lithuania, and he then moved to Vilnius, where he worked at the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences and helped lead the anti-Soviet resistance. For this, he was tortured and executed by the KGB in 1947. Noreika was also accused of verbally ordering the mass execution of an estimated eighteen hundred Jews in mid-July of 1941, which took place outside the city of Plungė. The validity of the eye-witness account upon which this allegation was based, however, has been heavily disputed.Footnote ³

Media Analyses

In this section we analyze recent media engagement around the 2022 publication of the Glasgow slavery report in which Livingstone’s statue is named and debates which took place across Lithuania about Noreika’s memorial plaque between 2015 and 2021. We reviewed newspaper articles regarding Livingstone’s and Noreika’s legacies as well as highly publicized reports released by research centers pertaining to their biographies. For the Glasgow case, we conducted a longitudinal media analysis, systematically reviewing all media articles mentioning Livingstone and his statue in the six months following the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests and 2022 publication of Glasgow, Slavery and Atlantic Commerce. This included approximately 117 articles from national and local newspapers, online news platforms, and opinion editorials that discussed the protests and report’s findings, and their implications for Glasgow’s public monuments. In the Lithuanian case, we gathered 103 articles published between 2015 and 2021 in the Lithuanian and international press, documentation of the legal battle initiated by Grant Gochin against the Center; Silvia Foti’s (Reference Foti2021) memoir titled A Nazi’s Granddaughter; ethnographic observations of the plaque at various times in 2018 and 2019; observations of a protest organized after the original plaque’s removal (2019); and dozens of formal and informal interviews with residents of Vilnius pertaining to the debate (2018–2019). In this paper, however, we primarily focus our analysis on how contributors to digital media outlets have responded to efforts to bring to light both figures’ moral liminality, since online newspapers were the primary site where these public discussions unfolded.

The data were coded in nVivo. Each author first analyzed a selection of sources using open codes, which revealed a number of parallel arguments leveraged in support or critique of Livingstone and Noreika. After comparing, combining, and distilling these open codes, we found that in both debates the most popular arguments were framed in similar ways. We then continued analyzing the data using a shared set of closed codes until we had achieved saturation. This interpretivist form of media content analysis enabled us to trace public discourse surrounding both controversies, capturing both explicit arguments and generic framing strategies employed by journalists and commentators. The comparison across two cases also generated insights into both the generalizability of findings and potential causes for divergence in debates over liminal figures.

This section is structured around three frames through which commentators either defended or critiqued Livingstone and Noreika: their agency, motivation, and impact. Note that for the Noreika case, all quotes are translated from Lithuanian by the first author, unless otherwise specified.

Motivating Narratives

Media critics additionally focused on the perceived impulses behind Livingstone’s and Noreika’s actions in order to adjudicate their moral worth. In Livingstone’s case, some argued that his involvement in the slave trade and colonization was rooted in his desire to save or protect individuals on the continent, not benefit from their labor. In one example, an article suggested that Livingstone helped to end the trade of Africans by other Africans, suggesting that Livingstone, when it comes to the institution of slavery, was motivated by his desire to help liberate the continent’s stolen souls. “He also campaigned against the Eastern slave trade, which saw millions of Africans stolen by Swahili-Arab traders,” wrote Susan Dalgety (Reference Dalgety2022). Similarly, Livingstone’s motivations for exploring the continent were understood to be rooted in the benevolent desire for Christian salvation, taking precedence over the impact of such efforts—the enabling of colonization. As such, Livingstone’s motivations for engaging on the continent, despite what we understand about slavery and imperialism today, should be the mark of his honor.

Noreika’s defenders, likewise, cast him as a man of integrity, who sought to protect occupied Lithuanian citizens (Jewish and otherwise) from a more devastating fate. Girnius (Reference Girnius2015), for example, argued that “it is indisputable that there was collaboration” between Lithuanians and German occupiers, “but not everyone who collaborated could be called a collaborator tout court.” According to Girnius, it is important to distinguish those driven by instrumental or ideological motives from “collaborateurs d’état,” or “state collaborators,” who instead collaborated “in order to save the state and the nation as much as possible from the intentions of the occupiers. These collaborators, often administrators with authority, believed that they would manage the country more gently and rationally than the [other, more willing] collaborators, reduce German repression and exploitation of the country, and create better living conditions for the country’s citizens.” He drew on examples from the Belgian and Dutch cases to demonstrate the distinction and implied that Noreika fit into this latter category.

To support the claim that Noreika had no intention of helping Nazis murder thousands of Jews, people also anchored his decisions in a pattern of patriotic, anti-authoritarian, or altruistic behaviors. Some emphasized his religiosity (e.g., Zolubas Reference Zolubas2015), and many invoked his anti-Soviet activities (e.g., Burokas Reference Burokas2015). To demonstrate that Noreika’s altruistic tendencies extended to Jews, they emphasized that Noreika’s young daughter occasionally passed out baked goods made by her mother to Jews passing by on the street; that he was close friends with some people who had actively saved Jews; that in the Soviet case against Noreika, no co-defendants testified that Noreika was antisemitic (a claim by V. Ašmenskas, who had been co-tried with Noreika); and that Noreika had been involved in saving some Jews (ibid.; Zolubas Reference Zolubas2015). Often citing the Center’s assessment (GRRCL 2015), Noreika’s defenders also foregrounded evidence that Noreika had publicly criticized the Nazi regime,Footnote ⁴ denied accusations of Nazi collaboration, and, most importantly, refused to carry out Nazi orders related to mobilizing Lithuanians into the “Waffen-SS” legion, for which he was dismissed from his position, arrested, and eventually detained in the Stutthof concentration camp. These defenses were often articulated as rebuttals to claims that antisemitism had, instead, motivated Noreika’s incriminating activities.Footnote ⁵ Critics retorted that Noreika’s later resistance to the Nazi regime was irrelevant to discussions regarding his attitudes toward Lithuanian Jews, as this decision had been motivated by a desire to secure Lithuanian independence, not bring an end to the genocide.

In both Lithuania and Scotland, critics also defended Livingstone and Noreika from real or perceived accusations of having been motivated by immoral impulses by, instead, depicting the oppressive systems in which they were implicated as either so broadly encompassing, and thus elusive, or novel, and thus unfamiliar, that the figures could not have been reasonably expected to recognize the harmful implications of their actions. Critics of the Glasgow report minimized the importance of examining Livingstone’s ties to slavery by arguing that because so many people—virtually everyone, by some accounts—were involved in the institution on some level, it was pointless to attempt to identify individuals with specific connections. While some reports claimed that the majority of Scots were ambivalent toward slavery (Dalgety Reference Dalgety2022), one outlet argued that “the entire population of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee and elsewhere was equally involved in this process” (Borland Reference Borland2022). While this point may seem like a progressive critique of the institution of slavery as an encompassing system in which all Scots were complicit and thus accountable, in this case it led to the opposite conclusion: that no one should be considered responsible. “It was historically an all-enveloping historical experience. By the process of selection, this project gives the very strong impression that only an elite few were ‘guilty,’” they argued (ibid.). By this logic, Livingstone’s participation in slave trade was unavoidable, given the industry’s omnipresence, as opposed to a personal decision motivated by moral values. The logic that slavery is both everywhere (“all are complicit”) and nowhere (“because he did not own slaves he was not involved in slavery”) gives the institution a spectral quality making it historically evasive, existing in negative space and, therefore, irreconcilable.

Yet, some critics in Lithuania highlighted the Holocaust’s novelty to absolve Noreika of blame for intentionally inflicting harm. They denied that Noreika knew what awaited ghetto inmates, thus arguing that the abuses and executions to follow were irrelevant to Noreika’s decision to authorize the formation of the ghetto. The Center’s director T. B. Burauskaitė, for example, argued that “it was neither obvious nor known to people then that the ghetto was the first stage leading to the pit” (paraphrased by Jackevičius Reference Jackevičius2018). Noreika signed the order after the mass executions had already begun, but Burauskaitė believed that he may not have been aware of the Holocaust’s full scope, as “communication was poor at the time, so information spread sluggishly” (paraphrased by Plakutytė Reference Plakutytė2019). Others ardently rebuked these claims. U.S.-based historian Sužiedelis was cited in the Lithuanian media saying that many diaries and other primary sources revealed that “all of Lithuania was already talking about the murders in July–August” (ibid. 2019). Girnius (Reference Girnius2019) agreed, acknowledging that by August of 1941, “It was no secret what fate awaited the Jews forced into the Žagarė ghetto.”

The Impact of Impact

Several media outlets we evaluated contended that it was the ultimate impact of the men’s actions that should define their legacy. Some treated their social impact as a zero-sum calculus, debating whether, over the course of their lives, Livingstone and Noreika had inflicted more harm or benefit on others.

For Livingstone, one source noted that the fact that he was included in the report despite him being widely regarded as an abolitionist made the report “guilty of a basic academic error by judging the past in terms of the present, ‘an aberration that runs through the entire document’” (Borland Reference Borland2022). The leader of a campaign group devoted to preserving Glasgow’s historical monuments and shielding them from progressive critique claimed that such studies contribute to the re-narrativization of history: “This is a prime example of how history is being distorted through disproportionate emphasis on anything even remotely related to slavery. Criticising David Livingstone—one of history’s great anti-slavers—for once working in a cotton mill is truly perverse,” he argued. According to this logic, despite Livingstone’s earlier-in-life benefits accrued through his connections to the slave trade, the ultimate impact of his life given his abolitionist work was positive, and thus he shall be remembered.

Critical arguments also attempted to re-narrate history through the selective valorization of Livingstone’s life, emphasizing cherry-picked heroic moments and portraying them in ways that seek to foster a sense of moral redemption while sidelining his more troublesome entanglements. Newspaper articles defending Livingstone’s legacy published in the aftermath of the report hailed him as a “slavery abolitionist,” “rags to riches hero,” “moral giant,” and “anti-slavery missionary” (Dalgety Reference Dalgety2022; Quinn Reference Quinn2022). These accounts lionized Livingstone’s efforts to end the practice of chattel slavery and framed him as morally righteous: “Freedom and human dignity are not universal norms but contingent and fragile, and it was these values that Dr. Livingstone drew upon in his noble mission to end slavery,” one paper argued (Stokes Reference Stokes2022). Several primary sources Livingstone authored condemning the practice of chattel slavery were cited as evidence of his commitment to abolition. Monuments praising his anti-slavery efforts were invoked in an effort to triangulate his moral worth, such as the plaque on his grave in Westminster Abbey which refers to his efforts “to abolish the desolating slave trade of Central Africa” (Letters 2022). That there are monuments which remain intact in Africa—particularly one in Malawi where Livingstone purportedly first encountered the realities of the slave trade and brokered a treaty between local communities to end the practice—was cited as evidence that even Africans believe he remains a force of moral good. “There is no talk of destroying Livingstone’s legacy in Malawi. Indeed, the country’s biggest city, Blantyre, is named after the missionary’s birthplace, and he is spoken of as one of Africa’s first freedom fighters,” one article stated, implying that if Africans still memorialize his legacy then he must be innocent of the accusations in the report (Dalgety Reference Dalgety2022). While these characterizations of Livingstone may all contain relevant truths, the selective valorization of his biographical record reduces him to a flattened, one-dimensional figure based on a single perceived final impact—abolition—a view that robs him of the complexity and nuance necessary to fully understand the true nature of a complicated, morally ambiguous historical icon. Imputing the good intentions and positive impact of morally liminal figures while minimizing the more complicated aspects of their past generates sanitized versions of history.

In Noreika’s case, it was generally agreed that his acts of resistance to both occupying regimes were laudable, and that the orders he signed had also resulted in thousands of Jews being isolated and dispossessed. Critics often argued, either explicitly or implicitly, that to evaluate whether Noreika’s service to the nation had outweighed his transgressions, it was critical to determine his culpability for murder. For example, Girnius (Reference Girnius2019) demonstrated this way of assessing Noreika’s morality when he asked: “Can a person recover from past mistakes?” According to Girnius, the answer is usually yes, but some actions are so harmful to others that they render the perpetrator irredeemable. He continued, “If you kill a person once, you are a murderer. Period. Falling into disfavor with the Nazis does not in itself make a person anti-fascist, nor does it atone for previous, serious misdeeds.” Noreika’s defenders frequently reiterated the Center’s (GRRCL 2015; 2017) conclusion that Noreika was not directly responsible for any executions, and that, though he had played a role in Jews’ isolation and dispossession, “the merit of Jonas Noreikas is obvious: active organizational anti-Soviet/anti-occupation activities for the restoration of the independent state of Lithuania, for which he lost his life” (Burokas Reference Burokas2015).

Vinokuras (Reference Vinokuras2018), a vocal critic of Noreika, conceded that the evidence of his direct participation in Jews’ executions was inconclusive. “So what is the problem?” he asked. “The problem is that for the Lithuanian Center for the Study of Genocide and Resistance, as an institution, it seems that it is only important to answer a single question: did J. Noreika kill or not.” According to Noreika’s critics, this way of assessing Noreika’s culpability minimized the scale of the Holocaust by ignoring the horrors of being displaced, dispossessed, and forced to live in a ghetto. In his complaint against the Center, Gochin (Reference Gochin2018) asked, “Isn’t the isolation of people a crime against humanity?” In response, the Center presented several examples of local Lithuanian administrators who authorized the establishment of ghettos and, in the process, delayed the detainment of Jews, thus “buying them time” (GRRCL 2018). The Center also cited a testimony by Isaac Kowalski, who recalled that at a time when Jews living in Vilnius were being forced into “jobs” from which they never returned, “the Jews had no other choice but to wish to be brought to the ghetto.” Members of the International Committee on War Crimes in Lithuania by the Nazi and Soviet Occupying Regimes issued a statement in which they retorted: “The claim, based on the memoirs of one person, contrary to the majority opinion, that ‘the Jews of Vilnius themselves wanted to live together in the ghetto’ is astonishing, because it refutes the realities of life in the ghettos described in countless diaries and historical studies: death from hunger and disease, constant bullying, overcrowding of the ghettos and, finally, death in Paneriai” (Platukyte Reference Plakutytė2019).

Moreover, ghettoization led to the executions of thousands of people. L. Lifšicas, a former prisoner of the ghetto authorized by Noreika, accused him of killing 5,100 Jews based on his analysis of materials archived in the Šiauliai “Aušra” museum (Valatka Reference Valatka2015). As Sergejus Kanovičius put it for a local Šauliai newspaper, “I would think that there is no need for me to explain to your readers where the Jews who were driven to the ghettos disappeared to, what happened to their property. The herding of the Jews into the ghetto is an integral and inseparable part of the crime known as the Holocaust” (Žadeikytė Reference Žadeikytė2015). An article by Vasil (Reference Vasil2015, originally in English) reinforced this point, arguing that denying this fact “is sort of like arguing Eichmann wasn’t guilty of Holocaust crimes because all he did was office work. Or that Hitler didn’t actually murder any Jews by his own hand. Or, a recent claim from an unexpected quarter, that Hitler was really an OK fellow but was somehow persuaded by the Mufti of Jerusalem to murder all the Jews of Europe instead of sending them to Madagascar or somewhere. Such arguments haven’t really worked in the West since about 1945.”

Pursuing Moral Equivalence

The cases of Livingstone and Noreika demonstrate the ways in which biographies of historical figures may be co-opted by politically motivated social actors both in response to, and in the (re)production of, their preferred metanarratives of national history. By minimizing the figures’ agency, imputing altruistic motivations, and inflating their net-positive impact, defenders of Livingstone and Noreika heralded the men as national heroes and, in so doing, upheld ethnonationalist narratives that maintained binary distinctions between heroes of the nation and imperialists, typically foreigners, to whom they fell victim and/or resisted. Yet these cases also illustrate both a public desire for a more complex, nuanced narrative of complicated historical figures, and the political stakes of pursuing such revisionist histories for the present moment.

Critics of the Glasgow slavery report argued that the inclusion of Livingstone’s statue as an example of Glasgow’s ties to slavery was exemplary of misguided presentist readings of history and reflected a tendency by the Left to interpret events of the past in ways that would bolster a liberal political agenda. The Black Lives Matter movement which had global reverberations in 2020 following the police murder of George Floyd became understood as the epicenter of this woke agenda and was thus frequently invoked during such critiques of historical progressivism in the discourse about the fate of Livingstone’s statue (see Quinn Reference Quinn2022; Borland Reference Borland2022). Despite the report lacking ties to Black Lives Matter and there being no indication that the statue would be torn down, evoking the memory of this event, by association, planted the fear that Livingstone’s statue could have met the same demise as Colston’s. Such speculative associations heightened the sense of anxiety amongst critics that a racialized activist movement was plotting to co-opt the nation’s history. Whereas the Left and those associated with progressive movements such as Black Lives Matter and FallismFootnote ⁶ largely viewed these figures as morally bankrupt and irredeemable, critics generally understood these individuals to be valorous actors whose memory should be celebrated as integral to the nation’s history—thus together invoking a mythical hero-villain binary.

Yet such radical perspectives were tempered by more nuanced public conversations about Livingstone’s legacy with an aim not toward moral objectivity, but transparency and fullness. In 2021, after a four-year renovation, the David Livingstone Birthplace Museum reopened in his hometown of Blantyre, Scotland. Common depictions of Livingstone—including that of the museum prior to 2017—celebrated him as a missionary, adventurer, and staunch abolitionist, yet the renovated museum attempted to portray a more balanced image of Livingstone and contextualized his efforts within a larger landscape of the social and political fabric by telling the stories of those around him. While the museum’s reopening received significantly less media coverage and public reaction than the slavery report, it is important to consider, if only briefly, this event in Livingstone’s memorialization for the very reason of understanding this difference in public response. When reopened in 2021, the museum was reimagined to allow visitors to see Livingstone in more historical context by including a more diverse range of perspectives on his life and telling more of the stories about, and from the perspective of, people close to him. The displays deal more directly with some of the more complex and contested aspects of Livingstone’s biography, from his involvement in the slave-based cotton industry to his missionary work and precolonial exploits in Africa. Yet the museum has been clear that the inclusion of such difficult topics is not intended to be a denunciation of Livingstone: “We’re not trying to destroy him or his legacy,” asserted Petina Gappah, a Zimbabwean scholar who helped the museum revise Livingstone’s story, notably from both European and African perspectives (Campsie Reference Campsie2021).

Several newspaper reports framed the reopening of the museum as a particular decolonial intervention into the representation of Livingstone, with one The Scotsman headline reading “Scots explorer David Livingstone ‘decolonised’ to reflect Africans who helped build his legacy” (ibid.) while another outlet stated, “Livingstone’s reputation too has been re-examined during the time of the Black Lives Matter movement amid fresh focus on the persisting damage done by British imperialism” (Mackenzie Reference Mackenzie2021). Another significant focus of the reporting was Livingstone’s years of service as a missionary across African countries, a role which many historians argue paved the way for various colonial interventions on the continent, most notably King Leopold’s conquering of the Congo for Belgium (What’s on Lanarkshire 2021). They also examined the way the museum reinterpreted Livingstone’s involvement in the slave trade, citing banners which read, “He accepted help from slave traders. Why is he known as an abolitionist and freedom fighter?” (ibid.). Despite mention of the museum grappling with more difficult aspects of his past, public response to the museum’s reinterpretations has been minimal, and generally positive.

Indeed, the reporting on the museum was far more balanced than that on the statue, perhaps because the representation of Livingstone in the museum is perceived to be more balanced than perceptions of a Fallist approach to the fate of the statue. One article captured the moral ambiguity inherent in his legacy: “To some people David and his legacy are a best-forgotten hangover from Scotland’s colonial past, whereas for others he is a cherished part of their cultural identity.” The point here is that public outcry about Livingstone’s legacy is perhaps less about his biography itself and more about how perceptions of it are wielded for specific political aims. When portrayed in both glory and grief, Livingstone’s legacy was received by the public along the spectrum of all political persuasions with generosity and curiosity, suggesting a model for histories of the present to come.

In Lithuania, too, Noreika’s reappraisal was embraced by some as a necessary catalyst for what Valatka (Reference Valatka2015) referred to as “a critical evaluation of our entire historical memory.” “The case of General Storm, among others, reminds us how unwise it is to hastily and pretentiously create legends of heroes,” Valatka wrote. Noreika’s story, according to Valatka, “is our story. A true, unadulterated story. His story is another harrowing tale of being at the gates of hell, and maybe even beyond them. When the victim became the executioner in an instant, and the executioner became the victim. Where there is neither white nor black. Just a hellish porridge.” He recognized, in other words, that Noreika’s moral liminality presented an opportunity to reevaluate a dualistic national memory of the Second World War. Others echoed his call for a more nuanced, “grey” reading of history. Lithuanian émigré, poet, and professor emeritus of Slavic Languages and Literature at Yale University Tomas Venclova (Reference Venclova2021), for example, described such a critical view of history as a form of “true patriotism,” which, he says “is not the excessive worship of one’s nation, state, and its real and alleged heroes, but a calm look at the facts, a recognition of errors and mistakes, which only strengthens the position of the nation and the state in the international community.” Zingeris (Reference Zingeris2015) agreed. He asked whether we can consider Noreika a “patriot,” knowing what we do about his wartime activities. “Maybe,” he said, “but how is patriotism understood, if such a determined person did not resolutely oppose the unprecedented destruction of his fellow citizens? […] While educating a modern citizen of Lithuania, we must also clearly see the historical flaws and shortcomings of ethnocentric nationalism.”

Others condemned this general approach to history for undermining Lithuania’s sovereignty and security, particularly in light of looming Russian aggression. Some critics claimed that accusations against Noreika had been circulated by, if not initiated in, Russia under Putin’s information war (e.g., Bogdanas Reference Bogdanas2015). They reminded their readers that since Stalin’s time Soviets have attempted to tarnish the reputations of Lithuania’s resistance fighters, because “the resistance destroys the Soviet lie that Lithuania voluntarily joined the Soviet Union and joined the family of fraternal Soviet nations,” and they have frequently done so by labeling these resistance fighters “Nazis,” “fascists,” or “bourgeois nationalists” (Girnius Reference Girnius2015). International critics of Noreika, including his own U.S.-based granddaughter, were said to impose “pressure ‘from outside’” and, thus, infringe upon Lithuanians’ right to investigate and narrate their own history (Bernardinai 2019). Philosopher and political commentator Vytautas Sinica (Reference Sinica2015) further underscored what he saw as the political implications of embracing ambiguity in the way advocated by Valatka and others, writing:

It is clear that to many stakeholders in this debate, Noreika’s memory had become “a symbol, where different views converge not only on history, but also on the nation’s identity, its memory heritage, its existential challenges, and today’s political reality” (Bernardinai 2019). The same could be said of Livingstone’s legacy. As national symbols, these memorialized liminal figures presented opportunities for societies to critically reevaluate traditional distinctions between “heroes” and “villains” of the nation, and to collectively develop more nuanced, decolonial historiographies. However, many stakeholders, instead, reconstructed the biographies to defend their prior readings of history. Our observations suggest that contextual factors—like national security threats—and the material ways in which memorials reflect revised biographical narratives—like the removal or maintenance of monuments, where stakeholders are constrained to a dichotomous set of options, versus modification of a museum’s exhibit, where a compromise can be struck—impact the extent to which debates over morally liminal figures fuel polarization or, instead, reconciliation across political divides.