Citation

Andriolo K. Am. Anthropol. 2006; 108(1): 100-113.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2006, American Anthropological Association, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1525/aa.2006.108.1.100

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The inspiration I take from J. M. Coetzee's book Elizabeth Costello (2003) is his advocacy of imagining as an alternative to rational thought. Imagining, as I understand him, is mindwork that engages the body as an experiential and metaphorical site. I apply this notion of imagining to suicides conducted in the service of political protest: The fatal hunger strike of ten prisoners in Northern Ireland in 1981 and Jan Palach's self-immolation in Prague in 1969. Three questions direct the exploration of their trajectories: What feeds the hope for the effectiveness of protest suicides? How do they use the body as a performance site? Do such suicides call for an ethics of attentiveness? © 2006 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved.

Language: en

Keywords

Ethics; Northern Ireland; Performativity; Protest suicide