TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2015//
TI  - The Political Subject of Self-immolation
JO  - Globalizations
A1  - Michelsen, N.
SP  - 83
EP  - 100
VL  - 12
IS  - 1
N2  - This article examines the political practice of protest by self-burning. Focussing on Mohammed Bouazizi's self-burning in the Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid in 2010, I explore the intellectual background for, and implications of, conceptualising such acts as 'self-sacrifices' or 'self-immolations'. I argue that the use of the concept of sacrifice to define the politics of the act, given the difficulties in determining intentionality, is to focus only on its retrospective interpretation or semiotic capture. The result is that the self-annihilating subject is bypassed altogether, and his or her distinctively suicidal politicality is ignored. I argue that these subjects do not occupy political space due to a myth-making appeal to transcendence, heroic urge to sovereignty or assumed desire for community. Rather, drawing on Walter Benjamin, I argue that in such acts we bear witness to the shattering of sovereign order by a reminder to a politically constitutive excess. © 2014 Taylor & Francis.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 1474-7731
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2014.971540
ID  - ref1
ER  -