The Sacrifice of the suicide-bomber

Apex of the martyr’s logic

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The present article comes to present the analysis made by the Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe about the phenomenon of the suicide bomber. Mbembe asks if there is any difference between the suicide-bomber and a war helicopter or a tank, and the answer of the thinker is yes, because the suicide bomber accomplishes in the same act homicide and suicide. According to Mbembe, the suicide-bomber is a representation of the martyr’s logic, which contrary of the survivor’s logic, is characterized by relating the will to die with the will to take its enemy down with itself, in a way to eliminate the possibility of life for all that are present in a certain ambient. Both logics are present in Palestine, which is, for the philosopher, the example of the most well succeed of the advance of necropower: the kind of horror from slavery, but extended to the rest of the contemporary world. The suicide bomber makes a gun out of its body, in which it transforms itself into a malleable object and signifies its life through suicide, which is spectacularized just like a religious sacrifice, bringing eternal life to the being. To present this, we will, in a first moment describe the colonial condition, which enabled necropolitics to come into existence. After, we will talk about the colonial occupation of Palestine so we can deal with the central question of the suicide-bomber. Done that, we will analyze how the new technologies of war, mainly the drones, bring a new rationality of war, based on the technical reproducibility, which dilutes the logic of the sacrifice. We will relate the thought of Mbembe with the theories of thinkers such as Peter Pál Pelbart and Grégoire Chamayou, so we can clarify the current necropolitic situation.