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posted by Jamie Skye Bianco @ 3:25 PM
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Rhetorics of Catastrophe
Welcome to the RESEARCH BLOG spot for Prof. Bianco's English 391W. Your weekly comments should be posted under your name, and only you can add to your own text. You will post your research paragraph and two sources under your name by clicking "Comments" and pasting your composed paragraph and sources. But first, read others' Comments because once someone has selected a research source, you may not use it.
Tuesday, January 15
Sunday, February 26
the body of a suicide bomber
Achille Mbembe says: “the body [of a suicide bomber] is transformed into a weapon, not in a metaphorical sense but in the truly ballistic sense” (36). These past years, we have seeing an increase of suicide bombers – including the people who immolated themselves in the airplanes that crashed into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. I have not read any scholarly article or study on this topic, even though I have researched suicide for a theater piece I made three years ago. Mbembe made me think about the bodily/material aspect of suicide bombers in a way I have not thought about before – even though it seems extremely obvious. I have always thought about them in terms of psychology, asking questions about “what is in their minds” to make such a decision. Maybe my thinking comes out of the portrayal of media that usually categorizes suicide bombers as religious fanatics. I would like to research the concept of body in suicide bombing.
Resources
Reuter, Christoph. My life is a weapon: a modern history of suicide bombing. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004.
Victor, Barbara. Army of roses: inside the world of Palestinian women suicide bombers. Constable and Robinson, 2003.
posted by Anonymous @ 11:18 PM
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