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4Bombs, Bodies, Actshe Banalization of Suicide

ENGIN F. ISIN AND MELISSA L. FINN

We try retrospectively to impose some kind o meaning on it, to findsome kind o interpretation. But there is none. And it is the radicality othe spectacle, which alone is original and irreducible.

Jean Baudrillard1

wo and a hal decades ago, it would have been anciul to imagine; men andwomen ramming into targets and blowing themselves and all else aroundthem into bits with bombs strapped to their bodies or vehicles. It would havebeen even more difficult to imagine that such acts would become everyday

occurrences in places as geographically separated and culturally diverse asAlgiers, Baghdad, Beirut, Buenos Aires, Cairo, Colombo, Grozny, Islamabad,Istanbul, Jerusalem, Kabul, Karachi, London, Madrid, Moscow, New York,and St. Petersburg. Ten, the radicality o these acts o suicide violence wastheir original and irreducible character, as Baudrillard saw, which gave lieand death new meanings.2 Now, the acts are no longer unexpected, unpre-dictable, or original, but rather routinized, ritualized, and mimetic practices.I Albert Camus thought suicide was the only serious philosophical problem,what would he have thought o banalized suicide violence?3

Te literature on suicide violence appears clustered around two diametri-

cally opposed positions. On the one hand suicide violence appears as an abso-lute evil, and on the other as an absolute good. What theoretical resources areavailable to us to interpret suicide violence as acts without condemning themas absolute evil (thus reusing to recognize the grounds on which suicide vio-lence became possible, even justifiable) or as absolute good (thus participat-ing in their senselessness)? It is obvious to us that it is irresponsible to reuseto see the conditions under which suicide bombings are justified and thencondemn them as evil acts. Yet, it becomes complicity to recognize the con-ditions and say the acts, in their succession, are justifiable sel-deense when

the sel-deense itsel enacts the very oppression it laments. While remainingsensitively aware o the grounds that make acts o suicide violence possible,we wish to explore how the once radical act o authenticity and originality

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76 • Engin F. Isin and Melissa L. Finn

has been reduced to an act o imitation, and how it has been transormedinto a routinized, ritualized, and mimetic practice. It is troubling that sui-

cide bombings have become habitus (as Bourdieu understood that conceptas a relatively enduring and socially produced disposition through institutedand repetitive practices in specific fields such as war, media, politics, and art).4 Tat suicide violence has become habitus increasingly renders it both unques-tioned and unquestionable while it is also both imagined and unimaginable.Tis mimetic logic continually produces a compulsion or repetition, which,in turn, creates a neurosis o the body politic and o the citizen through whichthe ear o repetition creates more repetition.5 We suggest that the “War onerror” and suicide violence may have become two aspects o the same cycleo repetition that produces the neurotic citizen and suicide violence as bothits cause and effect.

o an extent, things were easier or Camus than or us: he thought thatsuicide was a conession by those or whom lie either was too much or wasbeyond understanding.6 Camus could not see suicide as revolt. For Camus,living was revolt. While revolt gives lie its value, suicide escapes it. Can we ol-low Camus to reuse suicide violence as revolt? Tings were indeed much eas-ier or Camus. From Émile Durkheim to Camus, Western thought has alwaysindividualized suicide, seeing it as the act o a singular individual.7 In act, asSlavoj Žižek observed, or both Durkheim and Camus “suicide becomes an

existential act, the outcome o a pure decision, irreducible to objective suffer-ing or psychic pathology.”8 While suicide violence always involves the act oan individual, it is much more complicated by the act that by being resolutelydirected toward and involving the other, it produces a new figure—the sol-dier-martyr—as the actor. Tis new figure is simultaneously a warrior againstoppression, injustice, and abjection and a weapon.

While suicide violence has been justified as the weapon o the weak and theonly means available to actors who lack advanced tactical weaponry to resistdomination, oppression, injustice, and abjection, the banalization o such acts

is revealed in the transormation o means into ends and in the transorma-tion rom the act to an everyday practice. Te banal effects o this violencecan be seen not only in its systematization, routinization, rationalization,and ritualization among potential new actors, but also in the modern-daysoldier-martyr who remains (or who seems to remain) calmly detached whencarrying out these acts—acts that seem to target combatant and noncomba-tant populations with the same kind o virulence and indifference and in acterase the difference between the two. Te banalization o suicide is tied to thenormalization o violence and the senseless destruction o lie. Te ultimate

act o sacrifice is no longer only or the brave, but also or people who, byway o heedless or reactionary or disciplined acts, snuff out themselves andothers.

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Bombs, Bodies, Acts • 77

We use the term “banalization” here as an adjective to describe the effectsand affects o suicide violence; the terms “banalization” or “banality” are

employed not to trivialize the grounds o the act, the suffering o those whoare caught in the act (which includes both victims and the perpetrators), orthe act itsel (or, worse, to reiy suicide violence along Orientalist lines). Tesocial and political conditions that produce suicide violence are real to thosewho experience its effects on the ground. We draw our inspiration rom Han-nah Arendt’s brave use o the term.9 Arendt treated banality as the completelack o imagination o an actor who ollowed evil orders. Te actor is a cog inthe war machine built by the Nazis. What we wish to discuss in this chapteris not “banality o evil” but “banalization o acts.” We use “banalization” to

reer to the increasing predictability, cliché, and prosaicism o suicide violencein the world. While we wish to recognize the grounds on which acts o suicide violence against lie may become justifiable (domination, oppression, injus-tice, and abjection), we also insist that their transormation rom acts intoongoing practices that produces habitus erodes their legitimacy.10

Te long-running debate over violence and politics in social and politicalthought involved illustrious scholars.11 Franz Fanon, Jean-Paul Sartre, CarlSchmitt, Georges Sorel, and Max Weber, despite their differences, tended torecognize violence as both justifiable and legitimate oundation o a body

politic.12

By contrast, Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, and Jacques Derridawere much more ambivalent about the equivalence between justification andlegitimization o violence.13 Arendt expressed this crucial distinction well.She insisted that while those who have been subjected to abject conditionsand injustice may well be justified in using violence against their oppressors,

violence itsel could not be considered a legitimate oundation o a body poli-tic. She was aware that “under certain circumstances violence—acting with-out argument or speech and without counting the consequences—is the onlyway to set the scales o justice right again.”14 Moreover, while Arendt insisted

on seeing violence as antipolitical she rejected interpreting acts o violence asemotional or rational.15 Yet, or Arendt, violence against injustice, however justifiable, when it is rationalized becomes irrational.16 It has been recognizedthat much o modern-day suicide violence is not generated by irrational oremotional yearnings that are intrinsic to the cultures or religions rom whichthey spring. But that does not mean that suicide violence is inherently ratio-nal either. Rather, suicide violence that becomes rationalized and banalizedbecomes irrational. Te banalization o suicide is the repetition that revealsrationalizations, especially with regard to noncombatant lie. While we do not

aim to engage with this literature on violence, we draw upon it to concludethat in understanding suicide violence as political acts, there must be a neces -sary differentiation between justification and legitimacy.

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Understanding Acts of Suicide Violence

Much has already been said about suicide violence—we eel perhaps too much.

Nonetheless, there have been useul (and necessary) classifications, histories,documents, ethnographies, and accounts o both acts and actors.17 But dowe understand suicide violence? Arendt makes a useul distinction betweenknowledge and understanding. She says knowledge makes words into weap-ons. Knowledge becomes less interested in understanding than in having cor-rect inormation and classification.18 Knowledge aims to develop unequivocalresults, judges with certainty, and aims to intervene with effectiveness. Bycontrast, understanding “is an unending activity by which, in constant changeand variation, we come to terms with and reconcile ourselves to reality, that

is, try to be at home in the world.”19

We aim to understand suicide violence asacts that become practices and then habitus.20

We appreciate the ambiguous, open-ended, and nonessential nature o actand being to avoid reproducing dominant representations o acts o suicide

violence.21 Te undamental difficulty about discussing suicide violence is thatwe are attempting to make sense o its senselessness. o recognize its sense-lessness is not to condemn the grounds (domination, oppression, injustice,and abjection) on which violent acts can become possible and justifiable. Anyinterpretation o the meaning o acts o suicide violence risks closing off alter-native understandings o the actor and the act; the choice o silence becomesimplicated in problems o ethics, airness, and integrity.22 Te starting point,then, is to recognize, as Esslin eloquently puts it, the “illusoriness and absur-dity o ready-made solutions and preabricated meanings.”23

With regard to the aporia o understanding phenomena such as suicide vio-lence, we can now mention several caveats. While we recognize the insightuland ethical approach taken by Mikhail Bakhtin and others on representation,we also recognize that even the subtitle o this chapter, “banalization o sui-cide,” already begins to represent suicide violence as banalized, thus mov -ing us away rom the pure Bakhtinian ethics. Representation is unavoidable.

Bakhtin moreover argues that aestheticizing, historicizing, and abstractingacts orce a split between the substance o the act, the individual experienceo it, and the event as it unolds.24 In anticipation o concerns that may beraised with regard to historicizing, abstracting, and ethics, we would suggestthe ollowing.

First, there is an important difference between representing an act as anobject o knowledge and understanding it. It is indeed clear that suicide vio-lence should not be immediately categorized, reified, and represented becausein doing so we try to contain it and seal off what the act (and the actor) can

and cannot be (according to our own arbitrary specifications). Te experi-ence o those who are caught in the act is incalculably more proound thanany observer’s understanding or witnessing o it. Second, in order to under-

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stand the act o suicide violence, we must recognize its historical and politicalgrounds. Suicide violence must be contextualized within the system o power

relations and domination, oppression, injustice, and abjection that compelactors to enact acts o death. Tird, regarding the problem o abstraction, whileit may seem that we abstract suicide violence by saying that it is banalized, weare not reerring to the acts o suicide violence, but rather to the way in whichthe succession and series o acts are transormed into everyday practices. It is

the succession and repetition that banalize the act, thereby transforming it from

an act into a practice, routine, and eventually habitus. Fourth, regarding theproblem o capturing an event as it is unolding and possibly diminishing theinterplay that occurs between an actor’s processes o development and sel-understanding, and his or her capacity to change, we would say that Bakhtin’s

analysis conronts a challenge when suicide violence is analyzed because, isuccessul, the actor actually commits to death and dies.25 Te act o suicide

violence is like no other act. It is not like the act o commanding becausewhen people command, they are still alive and are evolving and changing.26 With suicide violence, however, there is the problem o the suicide at whichpoint the actor ceases to be, ceases to be in flux, and ceases to exist as a body.We are dealing with an act that not only effaces itsel but also is aimed at theeffacement o the other. Arendt would say that the originality o acts o suicide violence is horrible, not because they are new but because they constitute a

rupture with our understanding; these acts explode the categories o politicalthought and standards o judgment.27

Freedom and Responsibility

We shall emphasize the three elements o the act: actor, reedom, and respon-sibility. Although state occupation creates the conditions or suicide violence(domination, oppression, injustice, and abjection), actors are still radicallyresponsible or rendering acts o suicide violence. Yet, there are problemsrelated to the contingencies o facticity and the problem o the alibi, the ormerreerring to the nature o the constraints on the actor and the latter reerring

to the kinds o excuses used by actors to abdicate responsibility. So the ques-tions o reedom and responsibility o actors get entangled with questions oacticity and alibi.

Te Question of Facticity

Jean-Paul Sartre argues that acts shape the world, which suggests an orienta-tion o means and ends, and a undamental and inextricable linkage to theOther. Sartre always insisted that no contingency or act could be a cause overor determine action; the being orients itsel reely rom a state o existence

to one that has yet to unold. Tere is a cause or all acts, and yet, the act isstill oriented intentionally toward a uture as-not-yet-realized. Te nature othe act is not already determined or constituted, but is rather commanded by

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the lie o the being which is constantly oriented toward its potentiality. Teproject o being-in-the-world always involves choice. Te being is constrained

by contingencies that develop out o the choices it has made; the potentialityo some uture path is made concrete as it unolds. Since beings can refer to no

one as having already constituted the future path, they are radically responsible

for the act and that which springs from the act . In every instance, the subjectmust ashion his criterion or action because, according to Sartre, there is nouniversal code or action or categorical imperative that can render such acts

justifiable. o say that a categorical imperative exists is to all back on a alseprojection (to project onesel in the name o a universal law o conduct). 28

Te implications or acts o suicide violence are as ollows: the soldier-mar-tyr is a ree actor, to the extent that he or she may make choices, and may

establish a particular motive and an end goal or which radically responsibil-ity is established. Te soldier-martyr makes himsel and is constituted withineach moment o enactment (which ultimately ends with death). Te momentthe soldier-martyr enacts himsel, the moment the soldier-martyr has real-ized his goal o sel-annihilation and -immolation as responsive action andpolitical message, he is no longer able to stand accountable and responsibleor his acts. Tis invariably creates a problem or the being who is responsibleor the deaths o the victims but who can no longer stand to be judged or theact. Tere is, moreover, the problem o how each enactment o suicide violence

increases the attractiveness o the act as a orm o responsive action becauseo the impression and desire it leaves in the mind o another to do the same.Tus, as Emmanuel Lévinas points out, it is o irreducible significance thatour responsibility or the death o the Other invariably puts an ethic uponus (and we are equally responsible or the host o other actors who see ouroriginal acts as precedent and inspiration to act similarly).29 In other words,soldier-martyrs, like all actors, are implicated in the consequences o theiracts and the way those consequences affect others.

Now, it is “radical” rather than “absolute” responsibility that is enjoinedupon acting beings. Te actor’s responsibility is not absolute because all beings

are constrained by various orms o acticity such as place, past , environment ,relational Other , and death that cannot be changed by ree will. Accordingto Sartre, beings insert “action into the network o determinism.”30 Te place consists o that which is maniested to the being (the location o birth, the placeo relations); where someone is born constrains choice and opens up otheropportunities. Tus, the soldier-martyr may ace limited choices by beingborn in a violent society, but his birthplace does not cause the actor to decideto sel-annihilate.31 Tere are many people in similar conditions who do notchoose this path in lie. Te past o the actor includes any previous choices

made that cannot be undone, but the past does not determine the uture, nordoes it direct the actor irrevocably toward a uture decision to sel-annihilate.As or the environment , the field o action is always conducted through a con-

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figuration o objects (certain immovable or movable objects, buildings, sets oinrastructure, natural settings, etc.) that are placed and unplaced and that are

wholly indifferent and undecided by the actor. Te actor is, however, ree andresponsible in a situation despite the “unpredictability and the adversity o theenvironment.”32 Te relational Other is a contingent act that is existent anddiscovered in every choice in lie. Beings are ree (despite the givenness o theOther who has not come into the world through them) to apprehend the Otheras subject or object, as real or abstracted. While the actor cannot necessarilydecide what the Other will do or do to him, he is radically responsible or hisaction as it becomes implicated in the lie o the Other. Te last kind o acticitydescribed by Sartre is death. Te being, despite the inevitability and finitude odeath, can direct his project toward or in spite o death, and he can realize and

actualize his own reedom-to-die; the being enjoys a totality o “ree choice ofinitude.”33 But death does not necessarily mean finitude to the soldier-martyr.Te soldier-martyr acts toward death, motivated not necessarily by its finality,but by the belie that such acts are worthy o reward in an aferlie. It is possiblethereore that the soldier-martyr may actualize his own “reedom-to-die” asa ree choice while denying the finality o death. Te soldier-martyr rupturesdeath as acticity (as a constraint to his realm o choices).

Tere are contradictions o banality vis-à-vis the question o death in mod-ern suicide violence. On the one hand, the soldier-martyr projects himsel

reely toward a “final possibility” in death and, in so doing, actualizes theauthentic existence, one that is pried away rom the banalization o the ordi-nary and attains “the irreplaceable uniqueness” o itsel.34 On the other hand,the increasingly common and increasingly ordinary character o these actssubstantially undermines their “irreplaceable uniqueness,” the legitimacy andhonor o an authentic lie and projected death. It has become the once ulti-mate act o authenticity degraded down to repetition and mimesis. It is an acto ollowers and no longer o leaders. Te lamb is not unique, and its slaughteris like a thousand others. Moreover, the choice o death robs the lie and situa-tion o its meaning and sacrality, while the problems that the act was meant toaddress remain unresolved. Te choice to escape the ineffable o one’s acticity(the presence and imposition o place, past, environment, relational others,and uture death) through death is weakness, or alternative solutions to thelie were not acted upon. In Sartre’s words,

Suicide is an absurdity which causes my lie to be submerged in theabsurd. . . . Death [nihilation] is not only the project which destroys allprojects and which destroys itsel. . . . It is also the triumph o the pointo view o the Other over the point o view which I am toward mysel. 35

Te concept o radical responsibility is deflated by claims that actors arelimited by ignorance and error. Tis reminds us o Max Weber and alcottParsons, both o whom emphasized that acts are rational despite the ignorance

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and error o the actors that arise rom their inadequate or incorrect knowledgeo the conditions or situations o their acts.36 Moreover, they argue, so long as

acts are rational, they involve responsibility. Such thinking tends to deflate thereedom and responsibility enjoined upon acting beings, including soldier-martyrs. Action can be, however, motivated by a real or perceived injusticethat renders violence by annihilation a desirable response. Arendt writes thatengagement is transormed into enragement not necessarily because o injus-tice, but rather hypocrisy. Here the suicide violence is understandable: thesoldier-martyr desires

[t]o tear the mask o hypocrisy rom the ace o the enemy, to unmaskhim and the devious machinations and manipulations that permit him

to rule . . . to provoke action even at the risk o annihilation so that thetruth may come out.37

It is or this reason that Arendt thinks violence can be justified.38

With regard to reedom, and the relations o the actor with outside col-lectivities, this much is possible: it is possible that some orms o indoctrina-tion, community norms and expectations, and propaganda wield considerablepower and influence in creating conditions that oster or support suicide vio-lence as a response (e.g., encouraging the soldier-martyr to act), or, on the flipside, that stymie debate or suppress legitimate political grievances.39 It is pos-

sible that an individual, group, or people, when aced with premeditated massmurder, terrorization, or torture o the people they identiy with, can becometemporarily unreasonable by projecting their problems on substitute others.On the other hand, again, reedom and responsibility are undermined whenexcuses are made and action is blamed on the influence o collectivities; despitethe acticity o the relations o a collectivity to an actor, the soldier-martyr stillacts reely with tenacity, virulence, and indifference toward combatants andnoncombatants. Violent or hostile reactions are not, moreover, necessarily and

simply caused by oppression; instead, some violence is ueled by the ego, delu-sion, and a “sense o impotence.”40 Acts o suicide violence against human lie

are acts that attempt to overcome an enemy or an object. Writing along similarlines, Bakhtin argued that “[a]n indifferent and hostile reaction is always areaction that impoverishes and decomposes its object: it seeks to pass over theobject in all its manioldness, to ignore it or to overcome it.”41

Te Problem of the Alibi

An act, i it is to be an act, must rupture acticity as a limit on action; an actmust rupture the need to present an alibi. I one understands an actor (or,equally as important, i the actor understands himsel) as operating as a secret

representative or some cause, or religion, or or God, one turns the actor (orhe turns himsel) into an imposter or pretender. In principle, a claim to alibiis a claim to avoid responsibility, a claim to avoid an act o one’s own choosing.

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What we are enacting here is a reusal to think o the being as severed romhis ontological roots in personal participation (the ongoing event o Being)

because who the actor is is inextricably associated with the kinds o acts heenacts. Te choice o the solider-martyr to participate in and carry out an acto suicide violence through death to sel and others is ontologically groundedin the act, its consequences, and the being itsel.

Actors ofen employ euphemisms regarding war and violence as alibis.Euphemisms give the impression that an act was carried out under the aus-pices o a more benign or legitimate purpose than is possible given the natureo such attacks. Euphemisms or war, violence, terrorism, extermination,liquidation, and killing such as “evacuations,” “surgical strikes,” and “mar-tyrdom” operations are important linguistic choices, indications perhaps oeither an evasion o responsibility through the invocation o an alibi, or aneasing o the conscience.42 Te use o “war” as an excuse (an alibi about which)to do violence against innocent people not only is inexcusable43 but also callsthe legitimacy o the act into question.

In this discussion o acticity, reedom, responsibility, and alibi, what weare driving toward is the answerability o the actor: the ability o the actor toanswer or the content o the act and the being who enacts it in a succession omoments in the Being-as-event, to bring the act and the Being into commu-nication.44 Te answerable act is the act that does not claim an alibi to evade

responsibility;45 it is an act that is answerably aware o itsel. 46 Actors whoinvoke an alibi ofen invoke a universal ethic (a categorical imperative); theytake shelter, so to speak, under a universal principle that is said to justiy theact. Bakhtin writes, “Te principle o ormal [Kantian] ethics moreover is notthe principle o an actually perormed act at all, but is rather the principle othe possible generalization o already perormed acts in a theoretical transcrip-tion o them.”47 Sartre concurs in a slightly different way by arguing that theKantian ethical system substitutes doing (action) or being (actor) as the mostimportant aspect o the act.48 Sartre and Bakhtin are emphasizing an ethics o

being: the unolding event o Being and act cannot be predetermined, assumedinto a generality, and thereore theorized upon rom this perspective.

Te answerable act is the ulfillment o a decision to act. Te answerableact is accountable, other oriented, and answerably aware o itsel. Tus the acto suicide violence, in its annihilation o the actor and its claims o justifica-tion vis-à-vis an ideology or movement, is not an answerably aware act. Byits very nature, suicide violence annihilates the actor and its answerability.Te actor cannot stand to account or the act, and the act ceases to be. Teact is not answerable i the actor obeys orders because o indoctrination or

i military discipline is used as an alibi. Te actor—in our case, the soldier-martyr—knows what he is doing; he is responsible or the act. Being unableto answer or it, however, in the Bakhtinian sense (because o death) does not

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mean that the actor is released rom the act and thereore need not accountor the act.

Te Prosaicism of Suicide

Te concept o the act involves an effort to change some aspect o the world,a set o means orientated toward some kind o end, and an implicit serialconnectedness o action such that changes effected by one act will affect asubsequent act, thereby producing a desired goal.49 Arendt wrote in On Vio-

lence that violence is a orm o instrumental means whose ends conditionthe thought and action o people and thereore require guidance and justi-fication.50 Acts o suicide violence aim to question and unsettle domination,oppression, injustice, and abjection. Violence is predicated on a mean-ends

evaluation, and violent actors are always aced with the possibility that theirmeans may overwhelm their ends.51

When means are evaluated in relation to ends or an end goal, it is ofen saidthat the end justified the means. In talk o means and ends, one can look at theways, in current times, that suicide violence has been rendered ashionable. Itensures the continued glorification o the actor as hero and the act as a statemento authentic bravery. As acts o violence, suicide violence employs volunteer-ism, sel-annihilation and -immolation, and killing as means to achieve an endthat places value and importance on the desired end o emancipation. aken

rom this, we want to examine the ways in which “war theaters” have usheredin a new kind o means-ends dichotomy that has transormed the means intothe end in itsel and thus made them routinized and habitual practices.

One can see the banalization o suicide violence unolding through a means-turned-ends shif: the killing, the carnage, becomes an end in itsel; and themethod o delivering a violent message is the end in banalized violence. Actso suicide violence may have originated on justified grounds o domination,oppression, injustice, and abjection. However, when the act o suicide violencebecame an everyday enactment, it appeared that perspectives changed (or per-haps many lost their perspective), that it was no longer horrible to kill human

beings indiscriminately, and in act that was ofen the goal. Te original pur-poses o the goal, a struggle or emancipation or resistance, somehow get lostor clouded by a succession o violent acts that employ bloodshed as a tool onegotiation. We are reminded here o Friedrich Nietzsche’s caution that justbecause a thing comes into being or a purpose does not means that it alwaysserves that purpose.52 When the means become ends in the context o a “wartheater,” that “theater” becomes absurd, robbed o its purpose, its originarygoals, and its political roots; it becomes, as it were, a symbol o senseless liesenselessly taking lie. It is an irremediable exile rom being human, a depra-

vation o one’s relation with the Other.53

A violent act has the capacity to make us aware o a grievance, but there isalways the danger that violence will move unconsciously in ways that over-

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whelm the goals and in directions that reproduce and reinorce the condi-tions o its grievance.54 Te contemporary crisis, writes Bakhtin, is that there

is ofen an abyss between the actual motivation or an act and its end; theend makes indeterminate (it is walled off rom) the actual motivation or theact.55 Tus, the means-turned-end shif signals two things: first, the originalmotivations o emancipation or martyrdom are severed, because o the killingthat becomes the end, rom any orm o liberation that inevitably results. Tisis clearly the case because the end no longer exists when the banalized repeti-tion o means (the act o killing as means) appears to replace the end as thegoal. Second, the original motivations o emancipation and martyrdom arelost in the serially recurrent acts o bodies and bits that not only are prosaicand cliché-like, but also have been robbed o their uniqueness and their honor.

Modern soldier-martyrs believe that they carry an impressive or legitimatemessage, but such antasies are not revealed through their deaths.

In addition to the shif toward calculability, the banalization o suicide isrevealed in the concurrent streams o attacks that are being perpetrated on adaily basis. Suicide violence has become everyday. Suicide violence acts havebecome practices. Such practices are unimaginative, predictable, and inane,though this in no way trivializes their effects or affects. One can experiencefirsthand, or read and hear about, an act o suicide violence in which largenumbers o civilians are maimed or killed. Suicide violence is so routinized

that bombers have been woven into the daily unctioning o people in andoutside o war or occupation; it is part o a global experiential montage. Onthe news, suicide violence no longer shocks the sensibilities o people. Te dayo suicide attacks, o yesterday or today or tomorrow, is “heavy and danger-ous,” and with each passing milestone, we, as a global collective, are wearybecause the “calamity o yesterday” has changed who we are.56 And yet, asEsslin argues, “the more things change, the more they are the same”; the tearso the world are its terrible stability.57 Te repetitive sameness o moving timeis what violence produces in its banalized succession. Te banalization o sui-cide violence is also evidenced in the rising rates o volunteerism or martyr-

dom operations or missions. More and more people are not only becomingbut also choosing to become part o the banalized repetition o day in and dayout annihilating bodies. Tis certainly raises serious questions about the glo-riousness o a mission when it is like a thousand others. Tere is, moreover, adegree o banality, cliché, and superficiality in the soldier-martyr’s ormulaicapproach to entering heaven.58

It is the everydayness o mimetic murders, wanton vigilantism, and ven-geance that is banalizing the acts o suicide violence and their effects. Jus-tice is lost when a single human being, a single soldier-martyr, can arbitrarily

render his verdict on the guilty-as-imagined as judge, jury, and executioner.Te everydayness o suicide violence and their effects are robbing people oa sacred appreciation o the soul and twisting the divine purpose o martyr-

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dom, which has always been to deend amily and home, not strike a peoplebecause they attend a different religious center.

Actor and the Face of the Other

Acts o suicide violence are, unequivocally, acts o violence against the aceor being o another. Te soldier-martyr does not see the ace o the Other.Rather, he sees the Other as a orce or barbarity that must be overcome. 59 Teace, however, “opposes violence with metaphysical resistance” and orces thesubject to accept responsibility;60 the existence o the metaphysical ace o theOther is the existence o a covenant between human beings.61 Te soldier-mar-tyr strikes instead with the calculation that he will no longer be alive to bearhis own suffering or the suffering o his victims. It is a calculation that unsuc-

cessully attempts to physically, psychologically, and metaphysically erase theace o the Other rom sympathy, empathy, consciousness, and memory. Ocourse, the inevitably utile attempt to erase the ace o the Other is meant toease existential angst about killing and deny the sacred connectedness sharedby human beings. Te sacred connectedness o human beings is describedby Esslin as the ability to recognize and admit that we are the Other and theOther is us.62

Acts o suicide violence appear to treat Otherness as fixed and incapableo changing; the Other is portrayed as an inherent or inescapable enemy. It

is thereore not only perectly acceptable to terrorize and murder them, butalso such acts close off who the Other is and how and i he can transorm; itsuggests that people can slip into Otherness but hardly ever slip out o it.63 Using clichés such as “aceless enemy,” moreover, is the eeble attempt o vio-lent actors to render nontransormative the capacity o the Other to be otherthan expected. Agathangelou and Ling mention that the Other is ofen tar-geted as the cause o violence and destruction; the sel ofen constructs itselas “innocent, victimized, moral, and rational,” and the Other as “demonic,murderous, and radically barbaric.” Militarization is thereore regarded as amoral imperative.64

For Lévinas, ethics is the ethics o the Other. An ethics with respect to theace o the Other is perhaps encapsulated in the phrase “human qua Other”(human in the capacity o the Other); it is an imaginary substitution: the abil-ity o the sel to substitute itsel or the other (e.g., to know that we are theOther and the Other is us).65 Here, it is important to point out that there is adifference between substitution and the substitute Other, however connectedthe concepts may be. Substitution is identification, to be in the capacity othe Other; the substitute is the person or whom anger is wrongly directed.Te ethical act not only is the choice o the actor to substitute himsel or the

Other, but also ensures that anger is not directed against substitutes. SigmundFreud spoke about the theme o wrongly directed anger when he said thatsometimes people seek to exact punishment or a crime committed even i it

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does not all on the guilty party.66 Similarly, Arendt argued that rage and vio-

lence become irrational when they are directed against substitutes.67 Tere is

ofen a alse sense o certainty attached to suicide violence such that the actoreels that the targets o his action are in some way guilty, but when innocentpeople are involved, his anger is usually directed at substitutes. Use o the

term “sel-deense” to justiy attacks on substitute targets invariably becomesa tactic to impose limitless aggression, stymie questions about culpability andhistorical inquiry, and render retaliation as i it were always moral.

Te banalization o suicide violence is urther exposed through the judg-

ments that are used to justiy it. Many strict and literalistic orms o religiousexotericism—and many soldier-martyrs are doctrinally exoteric—see order

being maintained when people are coded, classified, and restrained.68 Teperceived crimes o a “lesser Other” are coded and classified such that it is a

crime to be other than the soldier-martyr’s group, to not pick up arms againstthe occupier, and to ail to pray as ofen as is required by God (many widelyaccepted judgments about the Other tend to legitimize repetitive acts o vio-lence against the Other). Te disciplining effects o group surveillance over a

population are a orm o intimidation that determines with arbitrary exclu-sivity who is a criminal body and who is worthy o death or punishment. Inmost cases, criminality is what the Other does that does not accord to the

religious, political, or nationalist expectations o the soldier-martyr’s group.We envisage social, political, and religious orms o surveillance, discipline,and correction between social groups as a kind o “panoptic judgment” (thepanoptic overseeing o one group upon another produces arbitrary and wide-

sweeping judgment, and the recipients o such judgment check their behaviorwhen they eel they are being watched or when they eel they may be punishedor harmed); this is not unlike Foucault’s notions o surveillance and discipline

vis-à-vis the Panopticon. In order to sel-annihilate and destroy innocent lie,

the soldier-martyr must treat the targets o his attack as i they are all guiltyor some perceived crime. Te purpose o panoptic judgment, like the Panop-ticon, is power: “to induce in the [moral, religious, or political Other] a stateo conscious and permanent visibility that assumes the automatic unctioning

o power.”69 In the panoptic view, the Other is abstracted and generalized,which renders this body an “easy target or contempt. Devoid o humanity,the abstract Other is outside o history, incapable o development, destined orservitude, and degraded to a valueless object.”70 Like the imperial colonizers,

modern-day state oppressors and soldier-martyrs who target noncombatants

strive to embolden the perpetrator mentality which justifies the destructivemachinery that robs humans o their humanness, their soul; it renders them

“spiritless matter, raw material.”71

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Acts to Habitus: Te Banalization of Violence

Te banalization o suicide violence is complete when the act is rationalized,

systematized, routinized, and glorified. Tese are the other effects and affectso suicide violence. Te og o war is as dense or the soldier-martyr as it is orany state. Clarity o mind (the ability o the actor and the masses to gaze uponthe effects o violence in their midst) is substantially reduced as time passes. Itis not easy or a collective to step back rom itsel, rom the acts o its people,and rom the conditions on the ground in order to question whether their owncomplacency has allowed or the normalization o violence. Te rationaliza-tion is always there that because the “act” cut right into the heart o a stateoppressor, it was also morally and religiously permissible. Suicide violence is

now habitus or anyone seeking vengeance or restitution; never mind God,religion, morality, ethics, or the sacrality o the human being. Suicide violencenot only has been normalized and banalized, but so also have its effects andaffects. Modern suicide violence becomes systematic, calculative, orderly, andmurderous. In a systematic and calculative sense, soldier-martyrs calculate theincalculable benefits o martyrdom, imagining that the deed will tip the divinescales in their avor; in this calculation, the martyr gets immediate access toheaven and can put in a word or his next o kin as well. Te figure o the sol-dier-martyr reproduces the militarism o the state against which it originated.

Current orms o suicide violence are also routine and commonplace. Witheach instance o suicide violence, the act (and its effects vis-à-vis detonatedbomb, shrapnel, and body bits) becomes part o the routine o one’s day. Ocourse, the act is ueled by narratives o grandeur about the place o the mar-tyr in heaven, which only serve to urther gloriy the act despite its most griev-ous effects vis-à-vis the carnage o human lie. Actors who carry out acts osuicide violence peer over and attempt to control the masses through threatso punishment. Disloyalty is heavily punished. Suicide violence has thereoretaken on its own actor; it is now the site o an apparatus o capture. Te actorand the act are actually struggling or control over its effects and affect. At

what point in this violent mechanism does the actor have to stop thinking,and the machine’s “artificial” intelligence take over? At what point does theact o suicide violence become the means, the ends, and the only remainingactor in the event as it unolds? Te bombers are dead or are dying; the onlything keeping this violent mechanism going is the act itsel. Tus the act is nolonger an act but habitus.

Te banalization and normalization o suicide violence can also be wit-nessed in the way the act is transormed into a gesture, a pantomime o theimagination that no longer indicates creation and a will to act (uniquely), but

rather the endurance and continued support o a status quo (locked in “thesphere o a pure and endless” mediocrity).72 Te notion o gesture or panto-mime suggests that the actor must divorce his humanity, on some level, rom

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his act; the actor must step outside o himsel to do the act. He must stage theaction (the mime) by mimicking previous suicide attacks, all the while posing

and presenting a lionhearted image to the world. Tough ew would doubtthat it takes tenacity and bravery to plunge knowingly into death, the actors’act still contributes to the normalization o a violent status quo and the desen-sitization o the masses to violence. As spectator, victim, and perpetrator, it isintolerable and ineffable to us that human beings all over the world are beingtortured, raped, hacked, macheted, and blown to bits, but we are desensitizedto the ongoing event o violent Being and we tolerate it; violence has reachedits banalized end, we are rarely shocked, and when we are, the effects are tem-porary and, more worryingly, just as routinized.73 Moreover, ew can ignorethe way the pantomime unolds in a social and cultural ritual. When we sug-

gest that suicide violence is ritualized, we not only mean the act itsel (recruit-ment, planning, training, recording, executing, and claiming) but also howthe act is represented and imagined through cultural and social symbols thatnormalize it. In some cases, the suicide bomber becomes the “ living martyr,”the new Achilles o the abject. In seeking a glorious death, the martyred ismemorialized by his people. It is a habitus among the amilies o the martyredsoldiers to name uture children afer their dead son or daughter. Te notiono “replacement children,” children regarded as replacing the soldier-martyrin lie and mimicking in death, is a cultural and social and domestic practice

o banalized suicide violence.Is it any wonder that the “suicide bomber doll,” as some commentators havecalled it, would make its appearance as a cultural symbol? In making and play-ing with this doll, a violent habitus is cultivated. It is a toy or the imaginationemulating reality, and a toy or reality emulating the imagination, or imag-ined desires. However, the “suicide bomber doll” is not something conjuredup in the imaginative boardrooms o America. Children do not play with thedoll to escape their own harsh and abject conditions, but rather to ace suchconditions with defiance. In conditions o abjection, it reveals to young mindshow transorming can bring emancipation and how the child can move rom

uncertainty to certainty about the world. Te doll itsel is a symbol o resis -tance, but what kind o resistance? o teach them that an honorable death is todie to kill the Other? It is a resistance banalized rom its originary purposes.Te unortunate truth o the doll is that it no longer represents a gloriousdeath, but now a banalized one.

Tough his purpose was to disrupt a capitalist icon by fitting a bomb beltto her waist and equipping her with a detonator button, Simon yszko’s agit-prop artwork, Te Suicide Bomber Barbie, reveals how banalized violence hasseeped into the collective imaginaries. Te artist has identified a cultural icon,

a cultural toy, one that is mimicked and adored or her sharp ashion sense,and is saying through his art, “See how Barbie is eyeing and identiying new‘symbols o revolution’”? In his interview with a nine-year-old Palestinian girl,

AU: OK to change,or did I change yourmeaning?

AU: OK to change,or did I change yourmeaning?

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yszko said that the girl once wished to be a doctor, but now that she could nolonger study or sleep at night, she wanted to be a martyr. yszko, inspired by

this conversational exchange, made banalized violence an art in the West. Teyoung girl had “effectively bought the notion o suicide bombing as a liestylechoice—it has become aspirational, an off the shel peer led option.” yszko’sBarbie conronts the absurdity o the original suicide bomber doll by symbol-izing violence that became habitus.74 yszko also seems to have rekindled anearlier controversy about the photograph o a baby bomber ound in Hebron.Te child is shown in this photograph wearing the outfit o a Hamas suicidebomber, with belts holding bullets and bombs, and the red bandanna o thewell-recognized soldier-martyr.75

As humans, the “pang o conscience” is that we may be human, we may be

weak, and we may actually sin.76 It is through our conscience that we becomeaware that we can sin; our conscience guides us, and it encourages us to rejectthe urge to punish and destroy. Nietzsche says that the conscience madehumans responsible and that this is a late but significant ruit. In deense othe soldier-martyr, he actually ruptures the “pang o conscience” on manylevels, but not without grievous effects. Tere is a measure o calm detach-ment, quiet arrogance, cool calculation, and total certainty attached to an acto suicide violence. Te soldier-martyr calculates, but not in deerence to thecalculations o his conscience; his calculation instead benefits individual and

group interests. Te soldier-martyr shuts off the conscience by means o thisoverconfidence, so to speak (some would say by way o his religious certainty):o course, in his mind, the soldier-martyr who strikes innocent lie is assuredthat he is committing a noble sel-sacrifice and that his sacrifice is naturallyto counteract the injustice perpetrated against those he identifies with; hewalks the higher moral ground and is not the cause o a urther injustice; andhe sees lofy illusions o martyrdom as ulfilling a personal narrative to havelived a noble lie and to have died an idealized death.77 Conronting banalized

violence is about tracking down how a succession o violent acts can destroycollective memory, conscience, and recognition o Otherness and destroy thecapacity or answerability.

Conclusion

Arendt ofen argued that what makes men and women political beings is theircapacity to act.78 She ascribed particular importance to the ancient Greek con-ception o act, which meant both governing and beginning.79 o act means toset something in motion, to begin not just something new but also onesel asthat being that acts to begin itsel.80 Te act is that we are beings endowedwith the capacity to act (or, as Sartre would say, “to be is to act”) and that to

act is to realize a rupture in the given; to act always means to enact the unex-pected and unpredictable.81 As Arendt would put it, “[]he human heart is theonly thing in the world that will take upon itsel the burden that the divine gif

AU: OK to changethis sentence asshown, or did Ichange your mean-

ing?

AU: OK to changethis sentence asshown, or did Ichange your mean-

ing?

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tochange

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o action, o being a beginning and thereore being able to make a beginning,has placed upon us.”82 We have elaborated an argument that suicide violence

against domination, oppression, injustice, and abjection, however justifiableas original and radical, loses its character as an act when it becomes routine,or as Arendt would say about violence in general, it becomes most irrationalwhen it becomes rationalized.83 wo very important aspects o the banaliza-tion o suicide violence are the means-turned-ends shif, in which the goal oliberation is subordinated by the goal o bloodshed, and the everyday qualityo the act, in which the daily practice o detonating bombs has become pro-saic and mimetic. Tus, we concluded, suicide violence is no longer an act, abeginning, but habitus. We briefly addressed how indifference, panoptic judg-ments, and totalizing devaluations o the Other have banalized and normal-

ized suicide violence, and how such effects and affects are also realized in theirsystematization, routinization, rationalization, and glorification.

It is an ethical impossibility or actors to evade the responsibility that isafforded to them as acting and choosing beings by arguing that constrainingcontingencies and the pressure rom their groups, or example, gave them noother choice but to sel-annihilate and take a ew dozen people with them.Tis is an ethical impossibility despite the inherent complicity o the ounding

violence o states in creating the conditions or suicide violence to flourish inthe first place. An aporia o reedom vis-à-vis suicide violence is that it is not

created in a vacuum (e.g., the acts o Others ofen create the conditions or violence), and yet, in the end, it is the actor who is stil l radically responsibleor choices he makes.

We ought not to consider soldier-martyrs as “dupes or mechanisms oan impersonal social orce, but actors with responsibility.”84 Yet, when actso suicide violence are transormed into habitus and become embodied inthe body politic, it will be almost impossible to restore its qualities as an act.Tis mimetic logic that becomes embedded as habitus continually producesa compulsion or repetition. Robson spoke o “[t]his compulsion to repeat, torepeat acts o suicide, to replicate a suicidal state such that it becomes a globalsuicidal state.”85 Te repercussions o this create a neurosis o the body politicand o the citizen through which the ear o repetition creates more repeti-tion.86 Te “War on error” and suicide violence become two aspects o thesame cycle o repetition that produces the neurotic citizen.87

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Deborah Cowen, Emily Gilbert, and Greg Nielsen ortheir critical reading and insightul comments on an earlier draf.

Notes 1. Jean Baudril lard, Te Spirit o errorism and Other Essays, trans. Chris urner

(London: Verso, 2003).

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re erence topage 30.

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2. Ibid. 3. Albert Camus, Te Myth o Sisyphus (New York: Penguin, 1975), 11. 4. Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason: On the Teory o Action (Stanord, Cali.:

Stanord University Press, 1994); and Pierre Bourdieu, Te Logic o Practice(Stanord, Cali.: Stanord University Press, 1980).

5. Engin Isin, “Te Neurotic Citizen.” Citizenship Studies 8, no. 3 (2004): 217–35. 6. Camus, Myth o Sisyphus, 13; Bourdieu, Pract ical Reason; and Bourdieu, Te

Logic o Practice. 7. Émile Durkheim, Suicide: A Study in Sociology, ed. George Simpson, trans.

John A. Spaulding and George Simpson (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1951). 8. Slavoj Žižek, On Belie (London: Routledge, 2001), 102.

9. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality o Evil (NewYork: Viking Press, 1963).

10. We use the concept o abjection as used by Julia Kristeva, Powers o Horror: AnEssay on Abjection, European Perspectives (New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 1982).

11. wo more recent and notable examples are David Campbell and Michael Dillon,eds., Te Political Subject o Violence (Manchester, UK: Manchester UniversityPress, 1993); and John Keane, Violence and Democracy, Contemporary Politi-cal Teory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Both discuss theprominent figures and issues in the debate.

12. Frantz Fanon, Te Wretched o the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1963); C.Wright Mills, Te Power Elite (London: Oxord University Press, 1956); Jean-

Paul Sartre, “Preace,” in Fanon, Te Wretched o the Earth; Carl Schmitt, TeConcept o the Political (Chicago: University o Chicago Press, 1932); GeorgesSorel, Reflections on Violence, ed. Jeremy Jennings, Cambridge exts in theHistory o Political Tought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999);and Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociol-ogy, ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxord University Press,1919).

13. Hannah Arendt, “On Violence,” in her Crises o the Republic: Lying in Politics,Civil Disobedience, on Violence, Toughts on Politics and Revolution (NewYork: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1969); Walter Benjamin, “Critique o Vio-lence,” in Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, ed. PeterDemetz (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978); and Jacques Derrida,“Force o Law: Te ‘Mystical Foundation o Authority,’” in his Acts o Religion(New York: Routledge, 2002).

14. Arendt, “On Violence,” 161.15. Ibid., 161.16. Ibid., 163.17. Mia Bloom, Dying to Kill: Te Allure o Suicide error (New York: Columbia

University Press, 2005); Diego Gambetta, Making Sense o Suicide Missions(Oxord: Oxord University Press, 2005); Farhad Khosrokhavar, Suicide Bomb-ers: Allah’s New Martyrs (London: Pluto Press, 2005); A. M. Oliver and Paul F.

Steinberg, Te Road to Martyrs’ Square: A Journey into the World o the Sui-cide Bomber (New York: Oxord University Press, 2005); Ami Pedahzur, Suicideerrorism (Cambridge: Polity, 2005); Christoph Reuter, My Lie Is a Weapon:

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Please note: italics from book and journal titles are missing. Pleaserestore italics from original notes (attached).

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A Modern History o Suicide Violence (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UniversityPress, 2004); and Shaul Shay, Te Shahids: Islam and Suicide Attacks (NewBrunswick, N.J: ransaction Publishers, 2004).

18. Hannah Arendt, “Understanding and Politics,” in her Essays in Understanding,1930–1954: Formation, Exile, and otalitarianism (New York: Schocken Books,2005), 307–27.

19. Arendt, “Understanding and Politics,” 307–8.20. Mikhail M. Bakhtin, oward a Philosophy o the Act (Austin: University o

exas Press, 1993), 2–13. 21. Roxanne Doty, “Aporia: A Critical Exploration o the Agent-Structure Problem-

atique in International Relations Teory,” European Journal o InternationalRelations 3, no. 3 (1997): 365–92.

22. J-P. Sartre, “Being and Doing: Freedom,” in his Being and Nothingness: An

Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956),433–85; see also Massimo Lollini, “Alterity and ranscendence: Notes on Eth-ics, Literature, and estimony,” and “Postscript,” in Who Exactly Is the Other?Western and ranscultural Perspectives, ed. Steven Shankman and MassimoLollini (Eugene: Oregon Humanities Center, 2002).

23. Martin Esslin, Te Teatre o the Absurd (New York: Doubleday, 1969), 64. 24. Bakhtin, oward a Philosophy o the Act. 25. Ibid. 26. Adol Reinach, “Te Apriori Foundations o Civil Law” (1913), reprinted in Ale-

theia 3 (1983): 1–142.27. Arendt, “Understanding and Politics,” 309–10; and Pierre Bourdieu, “Under-

standing,” Teory, Culture & Society 13, no. 2 (1996): 17–37. 28. Sartre, “Being and Doing.” 29. Emmanuel Lévinas, “Freedom and Command,” in his Collected Philosophical

Papers (Pittsburgh, Pa.: Duquesne University Press, 1998), 25. 30. Sartre, “Being and Doing,” 482. 31. Soldier-martyrs do not create themselves; the blank-slate baby does not just

become a bomber, although many mothers now dream that the child in theirwombs will be a martyr and will thereore die a martyr’s death.

32. Sartre, “Being and Doing,” 482–509. We understand empathetically that manypeople live in terribly suffocating conditions, and have their land stolen and

their homes destroyed, but we emphatically reject the claim that this gives themno other option than to engage in routinized suicide violence. 33. Ibid., 533. 34. Ibid., 534. 35. Ibid., 540. 36. . Parsons, “Te Teory o Action,” in his Te Structure o Social Action (New

York: Free Press, 1968), 66; and Max Weber, “Basic Sociological erms,” inEconomy and Society, ed. G. Roth (Berkeley: University o Caliornia Press,1968), 6.

37. Hannah Arendt, On Violence (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1969),65–66.

38. Ibid., 52. 39. Max Weber, “Basis Sociological erms,” 14. 40. Hannah Arendt, On Violence, 54.

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41. Bakhtin, oward a Philosophy o the Act, 64. 42. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, 80, 102–3. 43. Ibid., 93. 44. Bakhtin, oward a Philosophy o the Act, 2–3. 45. Ibid., 41–42. 46. Ibid., 31. 47. Ibid., 27. 48. Sartre, “Being and Doing,” 431. 49. Ibid., 432. 50. Arendt, On Violence, 51. 51. Ibid., 4. 52. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy o Morality (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1994), 12.

53. Esslin, Te Teatre o the Absurd, 4–5; see also Emmanuel Lévinas, Alterity andranscendence (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). 54. Arendt, On Violence, 79–81. 55. Bakhtin, oward a Philosophy o the Act, 55. 56. Ibid., 31. 57. Esslin, Te Teatre o the Absurd, 31. 58. Te ormula or many soldier-martyrs is the ollowing: martyrdom is near

guaranteed when one strikes the infidel with solid aith in the unity o God. Ocourse, who the “infidel” is is the subject o arbitrary specifications; the infidelcan be a non-Muslim, an atheist, a combatant or occupying orce, and even amember o another religious sect.

59. Lévinas, “Freedom and Command,” 19. 60. Pierre Hayat, “Introduction,” in Lévinas, Alterity and ranscendence, xiii. 61. Lévinas, “Freedom and Command,” 33. 62. Esslin, Te Teatre o the Absurd. 63. David McNally, Another World Is Possible: Globalization and Anti-Capitalism

(Winnipeg, Canada: Arbeiter Ring, 2002), 11. 64. Anna M. Agathangelou and Lily Ling, “Power, Borders, Security, Wealth: Les-

sons o Violence and Desire rom September 11,” International Studies Quar-terly 48, no. 3 (2004): 521.

65. Robert Bernasconi, “Forward,” in Emmanuel Lévinas. Existence and Existents,

trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh, Pa.: Duquesne University Press, 2001), xiv. 66. Sigmund Freud, “Toughts on War and Death,” in Civilization and Its Discon-tents, ed. James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press and the Institute o Psycho-Analysis, 1963), 45.

67. Arendt, On Violence, 64. 68. Soldier-martyrs place proound emphasis on the exoteric aspects o religion

including religious doctrine and jurisprudence, though the majority are lackingin the ormal education o these sciences.

69. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: Te Birth o the Prison (New York:Vintage Books, 1995), 201.

70. Maria Mies, “Reproductive echnologies,” in Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva,

Ecoeminism (London: Zed, 1993), 178; see also McNally, Another World IsPossible, 11.

71. Maria Mies, “Reproductive echnologies,” 177.

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72. Giorgio Agamben, Means without Ends: Notes on Politics (Minneapolis: Uni- versity o Minnesota Press, 2000), 56–59.

73. Ibid., 122–25.

74. See Simon yzsko, “Suicide Bomber Barbie,” http://www.theculture.net/barbie/. 75. See Mark Robson, “Te Baby Bomber,” Journal o Visual Culture 31, no. 1 (2004):

63–76. 76. Friedrich Nietzsche, “Second Essay: ‘Guilt,’ ‘Bad Conscience’ and Related Mat-

ters,” in his On the Genealogy o Morals (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1994).

77. Lévinas, Alterity and ranscendence, 29. 78. Arendt, “On Violence,” 179. 79. Hannah Arendt, Te Human Condition (Chicago: University o Chicago Press,

1958), 177; and Arendt, “Understanding and Politics,” 321.

80. Arendt, Human Condition, 177. 81. Sartre, “Being and Doing,” 613; and Arendt, Human Condition, 178. 82. Arendt, “Understanding and Politics,” 322. 83. Arendt, “On Violence,” 163. 84. Judith Butler, Precarious Lie: Te Power o Mourning and Violence (London:

Verso, 2004), 15. 85. Robson, “Te Baby Bomber,” 71. 86. Isin, “Te Neurotic Citizen,” 235. 87. Robson, “Te Baby Bomber,” 74.

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