KARIN ANDRIOLO

The Twice-Killed: Imagining Protest Suicide

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? [Keywords: protest suicide, ethics, performativity, northern Ireland]

ELIZABETH COSTELLO AND ELIZABETH CHANDOS to see. My article takes its inspiration from Coetzee’s no- We are reading the final chapter of J. M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth tion of “imagining,” which I will delineate from Elizabeth Costello (2003) and accompany the book’s eponymous hero- Costello’s lectures and broodings. Then I will return to ine to “The Gate,” where she anxiously negotiates what Elizabeth Chandos’s letter: the keystone, I take it, to the seems to be her afterlife; the book is finished, we assume. arc of the book. We turn the last page and realize that it is not the last one The act of imagining figures prominently in the three- after all. A postscript presents us with a letter from a woman way task of the writer. Her mind relates to the world and who enters the book at this late point, swept in from a its creatures, intent on understanding their being, while different literary universe. She calls herself Elizabeth, Lady her words relate to the reader the understanding she has Chandos, and she and her text are fictional spin-offs from gained. Both kinds of relating are strewn with hurdles, per- another author’s epistolary character. The Austrian writer haps insurmountable ones. The writer releases her text from Hugo von Hofmannsthal composed a letter in which a cer- the coop with a hesitant flutter of her ceding fingertips and tain Lord Chandos explained to his friend, the philosopher with the anxious question: Will it be read with the meaning and statesman Francis Bacon, why he was relinquishing I desire to express? This transmission from writer to reader, writing.1 Lord Chandos’s correspondence is dated 1603, and however daunting, is Coetzee’s lesser concern, and he treats it was published by Hofmannsthal in 1902. A century later, it throughout with sober irony. Elizabeth Costello lectures it was amended by Coetzee; again, Bacon is the recipient of assuredly, often passionately. But in the discussion that fol- a letter, this time one in which Lord Chandos’s wife diag- lows she is easily tripped, blunders off target, and proves noses the cause of her husband’s retreat from language. an awkward mediator between her text and the listeners’ Why do I suggest that we enter Elizabeth Costello via understanding. Elizabeth Chandos, in turn, writes with a its postscript of four pages, through a narrow passage that nervously word-pinching insistence on being understood requires the unspooling of tangential threads? The periph- and propels her letter forward on the crutches of italics eral, disjointed manner of the postscript is only surface play. and brackets: “It is as if (as if, I say), it is as if” (Coetzee Written by another woman whose initials are E. C.,2 the 2003:229). More portentous than the communication of letter confirms and completes the dominant theme of the meaning is its procurement, the entry of the world into book—the promises and perils of imagining. That it arrives the writer’s mind, and, for that matter, the representation suddenly on the already empty stage ensures its clear and of the world in everyone’s mind. To which carrier should distinct visibility. Our unpreparedness for the mysterious one entrust this crucial transfer: to thought—as in rational intruder lets us read her message straight, unfiltered, like thought, ideas, academic discourse—or to imagining—as in when we catch our reflection in the mirror from an un- literary imagination, empathy, or putting oneself into the expected angle, now unprimed to see only what we wish place of another?

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Vol. 108, Issue 1, pp. 100–113, ISSN 0002-7294, electronic ISSN 1548-1433. C 2006 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, at http://www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm. Andriolo • The Twice-Killed 101

The interplay of these two alternatives constitutes the visions Crusoe and Friday through the eyes of their third, structure of the book, which consists of a series of academic female companion, whom Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe lectures that dispense earnest thought but are delivered and jealously has left out from his account.3) responded to by imagined characters in imagined settings. Other chapters stroke the gains of embodied mind- To many readers and reviewers, this proved, depending on ing less confidently. An African writer pronounces that the their brand of humor, an irritating or amusing stumbling African novel and his own poetry are oral, that their au- block. What is this, many asked, a novel or a book of ideas? thenticity is bound to their being spoken amidst people, as Well, it is not either–or; it is quite insistently both. It offers different from the solitary and silent reading of the West- rational discourse, assertively presented yet continuously ern disembodied novel. Consequently, the African novel destabilized by its literary frame. This destabilization of ra- is twice bereft. Once written, it is lost to its homeland tional thought is the book’s prominent agenda. Destabiliza- where it cannot be heard, and when read by its former tion is a word I choose carefully; it does not imply denun- colonizers, its true voice remains silent. Elizabeth’s sister, a ciation, denial, subversion, or whatever drastic attack on medical missionary in South Africa, denies that rational hu- rationality radical postmodernists conduct. Destabilization manism has ever reached into the core of our being. Only cautions: Do not put your whole trust in rationality; it is suffering touches this core and, therefore, we must em- not going to hold, it is not going to last, because it carries brace it as our only form of self-validation. On the lighter the seed of its own contestation. Stability and sameness are side, Elizabeth wonders what sex with a god must have felt faulty assumptions. Everything shaped by humans dwells, like for mortals, an interspecies encounter that evades bio- like human existence itself, in the shadow of death, and we logical cogitation, yet hilariously deflates the airs of the sub- must factor that in; yet, the tug of destabilization notwith- lime when one envisions bedding a swan or a pigeon. standing, we must hold our balance. The shadow cast by imagining grows longer. Through- What is the definition of imagining that approximates out Elizabeth’s cerebrations, her aged, tired, lumpy body is Coetzee’s use of the word? Whereas rational thought stays pressed on us. Her son watches her seated next to him on a within the mind, imagining does not; it tentacles into the plane, asleep and with her mouth agape, and prefers at that body. When we imagine an object or a scene, our senses get moment to think of himself as having descended from her involved: We see a house, a face, autumn leaves; we hear mind rather than from “the pear-shaped belly-sac” at the sounds; we smell the madeleines of childhood. Edgar Alan end of her gullet (Coetzee 2003:34). Embodied minding, Poe’s words, indeed, can spin a sensation of dread; and a we had been told elsewhere so optimistically, is connec- friend describing how she broke her arm, if we allow our- tive and even can prevent the commission of cruelty. Here selves to imagine it, can give us a feeling of nausea. Imagin- we are made to realize that it can also be distancing and ing grabs mind and body. What is felt in one’s body speaks cruel. Even though, as long as silence keeps it locked away a mightier authenticity than an abstract idea in one’s brain. within the minder, it will not hurt Elizabeth, mothers, or the Imagining is embodied minding. elderly. What is the appraisal of imagining vis-a-vis` rational One stride further into pursuing the potential effects thought, and what is to be gained from its destabilizing en- of embodied minding, and we have reached the limit, the terprise? Several chapters of the book rate imagining above antipode to its humanizing mission. What if the precise rationality. If we would truly imagine the pain of animals and unflinching envisioning of evil indeed conjures up evil, and the suffering of humans, if we were to put ourselves embodies it in the writer and reader, in whose minds those into the place of our victims, victimization would end, or, who were once tortured relive their torture? Are there places at least be reduced. Imagining can penetrate into territories one must not enter? Is there evil one must not imagine that are impassable for abstract thought. To those creatures but lock up in silence? In a much-commented-on chapter, who do not have the capacity to think, we can only relate Elizabeth has prepared a speech on evil, in which she will by way of imagining their lives in their bodies, by feeling raise these questions and advocate the writer’s self-censure. ourselves inside of them. Literary imagining bridges time However, she realizes with little time to spare that the au- and space. Characters from novels or plays gain immor- thor, whose novel she will hold up as the prime example tality through the genius of their creator; they attain con- for envisioning evil with obscene specificity, will be in the temporaneity through being reimagined. Their bodies are audience. With the hyperactive paralysis that grips us in reborn in later writers’ minds and are given a new van- bad dreams, Elizabeth attempts variously, although ineffec- tage point from which to explain themselves. Rosencrantz tively, to soften the offensiveness of her remarks. and Guildenstern have taught us, in their reincarnation The thrust of this chapter is strong but ambivalent. midwifed by Tom Stoppard, that even the most marginal Elizabeth is both convinced of the corruptive potential in characters from the tragedies of famous heroes always act imagining evil and simultaneously unconvincing, even to center stage in their own narratives. Elizabeth Costello is rich herself. The refusal to provide an unequivocal answer is with literary imagining: Costello’s own fame is based on an amplified by a cast in which authors and characters, both early novel in which she channels another writer’s charac- fictional and real, echo off each other perplexingly as in ter, Molly Bloom, who is, in turn, an avatar of Penelope in the Marabar caves. The novel chastised by the fictitious James Joyce’s Ulysses. (In a previous novel, Coetzee reen- Elizabeth Costello really exists: The Very Rich Hours of Count 102 American Anthropologist • Vol. 108, No. 1 • March 2006 von Stauffenberg was published in 1980 by Paul West, who driving farmers off the land (Brooke 2003: A6). Lee Kyung is the author Elizabeth seeks out in the audience and who Hae held up a sign that read: “WTO kills farmers.” Then remains silent and unblinking while she confusingly over- he stabbed himself to death. His suicide embodied the ab- explains herself to him. The evil his novel conjures up is stract word on his placard, kills. A word so often used with the real execution of the men who plotted the failed as- trivial insincerity (as in “my feet are killing me”) is given sassination attempt of Hitler in July of 1944. It is told as back its essential meaning. The word on the placard ceases a first-person narrative by the ghost of the principal con- to be a figure of speech, a metaphor. The lives of farmers spirator. (Later, Paul West [2004] himself did respond with are destroyed. Lee Kyung Hae, the experienced demonstra- gleeful disdain to his being dragged into the book so bod- tor, knows that words do not grip unless one gives them ily by Coetzee’s fictional alter ego Elizabeth Costello, thus hands to do so, unless one embodies them. In the past, tying another knot into the webbing of real and imagined he had conducted many hunger strikes, the last one a year persons.) earlier in Geneva, seat of the WTO. In front of its build- The postscript, once more, stakes out the field that ing, he put up a tent and fasted for a month. Here, too, spans between rational thought and imagining. The he embodied his message, the starving of farmers, although recipient of both Chandos letters—one channeled by by way of a symbolic performance; for a month he loaned Hofmannsthal, the other by Coetzee—is the philosopher out his body to the starving experience. In Cancun, he em- and statesman Francis Bacon. Credited with introducing the bodied the destruction of farmers in its finality. The day concept of “induction,” he is a champion of the Scientific he chose to stage his protest was the day of the dead in Revolution and a precursor to the Enlightenment project. Korea. He is the beacon of rational thought on this triangular is- Protest suicide is dying with a message, for a message, land. Lord Chandos has moved beyond such thought and and of a message. The body becomes the site on which self- the language that speaks it. He has discovered the truth of destructive mimesis denounces the wrongs that humans the body. Once he has opened himself up to creatures and have wrought. Protest suicide is, perhaps, the most radical events in nature, they seem to press themselves into him, fill form of embodied minding. (Equally utter, although con- him. No human language can communicate his empathetic fined to the literary imagination, is the punishment meted understanding of their being, and he prefers to remain silent out in Franz Kafka’s In the Penal Colony [1971b]: A machine rather than to lose the ecstatic experience of this feel of the carves the name of the crime into the back of the culprit, world. Although Hofmannsthal’s spokesman seems a happy deeper and deeper, until the letters have written him to man (at least in the tortured way of the creative writer), death.) Coetzee has Lady Chandos show us the wasteland that Protest suicide attempts to draw the attention of oth- spreads around his immersion. The desire for pure imag- ers to something that, in the suicide’s perception, consti- ining, she claims, has driven her husband too far. When tutes a wrong of moral, political, or economic dimension, he cuts the last tie with thought–language (he has writ- a wrong that affects the lives of many. If a protest suicide ten his own letter to Bacon only three weeks earlier), were to reach its ideal goal, attention would initiate action she will have lost him. They will be unable to com- that, ultimately, would right the wrong. This definition, po- municate with each other, to live as husband and wife. tentially, could cover two kinds of suicide: (1) a version in Rational thought is a human limitation that estranges us which the protest agenda is expressed solely by means of from the natural world, but we need some of it for our so- suicide, and (2) a version in which self-destruction is in- cial existence, for communicating among each other. In the tended to kill others, as is the case in suicide bombing. I end, Coetzee has Lady Chandos call on rational thought consider the difference between taking one’s own life only to destabilize all-out imagining. The dialectical circuit is and taking—or attempting to take—those of others as well closed. a fundamental one. I think that the understanding of both types is served better by analyzing each one within its own set of contingencies. This article is about protest by means PROTEST SUICIDE of suicide, and suicide only. Imagining understood as embodied minding, I propose, di- The above definition of protest suicide contains three rects the performance of protest suicide. This is clearly visi- critical dimensions: (1) An action invokes (2) a reaction ble in a recent and widely reported event that took place in based on (3) the premise that the action, indeed, has the September of 2003, when the World Trade Organization met potential to trigger such a reaction. I explore the three di- in Cancun, Mexico. The South Korean farmer Lee Kyung mensions guided by my reading of Coetzee’s imagining. Hae stabbed himself to death with a Swiss Army knife. He First, I introduce two events of protest suicides and fore- was 56 years old and had conducted farm protests for 30 ground those aspects of their performance and trajectory years, first in Seoul and then in other cities around the that were intended and seen as acts of embodied minding. world. This time he addressed agricultural subsidies that al- Subsequently, I explore the model that ascribes to protest low the United States, for example, to export rice to Asia, suicide a generative potential. Last, I address the reaction to corn to Mexico, and cotton to Africa, at prices far below that protest suicides, not so much as part of their actual trajec- of the local production, which is thus effectively destroyed, tory but as an ethical issue. Andriolo • The Twice-Killed 103

The hunger strike conducted by prisoners in North- the denial of these rights, Maze Prison had become a center ern Ireland in 1981 and Jan Palach’s self-immolation in of resistance, and approximately 400 men had forged their Prague in 1969 profile with particular clarity the workings bodies into tools of refusal. The hunger strike was the final of protest suicides, their cultural-historical embeddedness, effort to achieve recognition of their political status. Promi- and the stunning metaphorical reach the body is able to nent among them was Bobby Sands, charismatic speaker attain. Hunger strike and self-immolation are the principal and organizer of the IRA prisoners. He was the first to stop methods presently employed in the West. (Of the two mean- eating and the first to die 66 days later; he was 27 years old. ings of immolation—sacrifice, in general, and, specifically, Speaking through the door of his cell on the ninth day of destruction by fire—I use the second one.) Each method his fast, he told this to other prisoners: brings different strengths and weaknesses to the pursuit of its strategic objectives, which are the visibility of the event, I’m going to die, make no two ways about it. I know I am the undistorted transmission of the message, and the poten- dying and I want to make it clear what I am dying for. It’s not about a suit of clothes or a food parcel. I’m dying to tial for building momentum. Self-immolation is flamboy- make sure that the struggle continues, that the struggle antly visible, but it disables the performer from protecting lives! [Feldman 1991:243] the integrity of his message and from influencing its dis- semination. Protest suicide implicates the powerful, who What was this struggle that carried Bobby Sands and the can silence its political agenda by imputing that personal others to the edge of dying for it? What was the political despair or mental instability was the principal cause for self- history in which it had emerged and defined itself? How was destruction. The general public, in turn, will endorse only it shouldered in prison space and by imprisoned bodies? too gladly the clinical label that allows it to file away as in- The thorn of domination was stuck into Ireland in the consequential the unsettling event. In contrast, the hunger 12th century, when the pope granted overlordship of the is- striker has a chance to exert a certain control over the com- land to Henry II of England. It has inflamed Irish lives and munication process, which she has set in motion with her politics ever since. At the beginning of the 20th century, fast. Her ally is time during which she can await and ap- Ireland was still governed by England, and Irish patriots praise reactions to her requests, modify her requests if that still stoked the flames of resentment. Then hunger striking seems opportune, and conduct negotiations. Her extended entered the picture.8 Between 1913 and 1922, more than presence hampers the authorities’ ability to pull the politi- 50 hunger strikes against the British administration were cal cause out from under her suicide and sink her sacrifice in conducted by nearly 1,000 prisoners in different jails and psychiatric mire. Hunger striking even allows for an alterna- internment camps. They variously protested prison condi- tive ending. The self-ordained death can be revoked, either tions and requested that, if incarcerated at all, they should in the triumphant mode of the goal achieved or in the sober be treated as prisoners of war. The strikers included men mode of reassessment and termination of the strike. and women; some participated for a few days only, others Yet hunger striking lacks visibility. A body slowly con- up to two and a half months; some were released, some were suming itself, a spectacle locked away inside of the body force-fed, and seven men died. In the midst of all this oc- does not attract continuing notice. The longer into the fast curred the Easter Rising of 1916 in Dublin, an ill-conceived and the closer to the heroic finish line, the less visible and and ill-fated thrust for independence from Britain that engaging the process becomes for an external viewer.4 In ended with the execution of 16 leaders. In 1922, the ac- the end, perhaps only the mother stares into the face of her tivism of the preceding ten years led to the Anglo–Irish comatose son. Although the passage of time augments the treaty that kept under direct British control Northern Ire- actor’s range of options, it drains dramatic tension from land (Ulster)—pumped up three centuries previously with the performance. Individual hunger striking gleans scant Protestant English and Scottish settlers—while the larger publicity, unless the performer—as in the case of Gandhi— part of the island was given dominion status and named the brings to it his own preestablished prominence. Collective “Irish Free State.” (In 1949, it would be released from the hunger striking has a better potential to command atten- Commonwealth and become the Republic of Ireland.) Rad- tion and to stir into action a critical mass of supporters.5 ical Republicans were not satisfied with the partial progress the treaty entailed, and 1923 brought renewed waves of hunger strikes, now directed against the authorities of the HUNGER STRIKES IN NORTHERN IRELAND Irish Free State. Eight thousand prisoners fasted, some up In 1981, a hunger strike began at Maze Prison near Belfast,6 to 41 days, and two of them died. Thereafter, hunger strikes capital of Northern Ireland.7 It lasted for 217 days before quieted down. it was called off. By then, ten men had died. The hunger The death fast of 1981 followed a decade of increas- strikers belonged to radical factions of the Irish Republican ing unrest and violence in Northern Ireland. British with- Army (IRA). For the previous five years, they and all other drawal from Northern Ireland and its unification with the political prisoners had been denied the benefits of special Republic of Ireland was still the agenda of the Sinn Fein´ status that was granted to them earlier and included exemp- party and of its—by then illegal—military arm, the Irish tion from wearing prison clothes and doing prison labor as Republican Army. As the unrest mounted, British troops well as the right to free visits, mail, and time together. Since were called in, and, in the streets of Belfast, members 104 American Anthropologist • Vol. 108, No. 1 • March 2006 of Catholic paramilitary organizations (splinter groups of social body—that is, the body whose external presentation the IRA)9 battled their Protestant counterparts and British (nakedness and outflow) needs to be concealed in accor- troops. In 1971, the British government attempted to quell dance with cultural rules of propriety. The next move had the murderous rage and initiated the massive internment of to be made by the immanent body, the body within the suspected fighters from both the Catholic and the Protes- skin, whose sacrifice could bring about the two goals most tant camp. Within six months, over 2,300 people were desired: one satisfying the needs of the self, the other those interned.10 As a result of protest, they were soon granted of the struggle. They were, in Allen Feldman’s succinct for- political status, which included separation from common mulation: “The act of hunger striking purified and decrimi- criminals, and, among themselves, they were segregated nalized the striker, but the queue of corpses emerging from along religious, ethnic, and political lines. Political status behind prison walls would shake the moral legitimacy of also included the rights stated earlier—namely, exemption the British state” (1991:236). from wearing prison uniforms and from doing prison labor, Conditions of incarceration had shaped the build-up free visits, mail, and time together; the latter was facilitated toward the hunger strike; it was reactive, physical, and by dormitory-style housing. steeled by the violence received. The hunger strike itself— These rights were revoked in 1976, and at Maze Prison decided by the leading prisoners and actually discouraged inmates were transferred to newly built facilities—called by IRA Central—drew inspiration from sources more re- “H-Blocks” because of their shape—with small cells that mote: the hunger strikes of the past decades and the place isolated them from each other. From then on, Republi- of self-sacrifice in the philosophy of Irish social activism. can prisoners had one impelling objective: to regain their Hunger strikes had been on the map throughout the pre- political status and its concomitant rights. The list of de- ceding ten years of unrest, violence, and internment. But mands was only an operational rendition of the real is- the great models had been forged earlier, in the first wave sue at stake, which was to make the jail authority and of hunger strikes conducted between 1913 and 1923. They the British government accept the prisoners’ fundamental hailed suffering as the power of the powerless, a hope that self-understanding: The men and women in the IRA were had enabled the Irish in the second half of the 19th century soldiers in a legitimate war and therefore deserved to be to awaken from one of history’s great nightmares. acknowledged and treated as enemy combatants, rather Between 1845 and 1849, Ireland suffered the Great than as criminals. The prisoners’ insistence on their warrior Potato Famine. Deaths by hunger and epidemics, together identity also sent to all Irish Republicans the message: We with massive emigration, reduced the population from are not separated from you; we and you are still us, fighting eight-and-a-half to six-and-a-half million. The psychologi- the same struggle that transcends the walls of the jail. The cal upheavals caused by these ruptures impelled ideological prison is the microcosm of Ireland. Revolt against the prison adjustments, most prominent among them an intensifica- authority is not just that; it is the struggle against British tion of nationalism and religiosity, and a fervent revival of domination and for a free and unified Ireland. From this Gaelic culture, lore and language, and traditional literature. equation of inside with outside, of microcosm with macro- From the merger of national, religious, and nativistic im- cosm, issued the gravitas that supported the extraordinary mersion developed a pervasive devotional inclination and strength and duration of the prison protest and the solidar- a strong belief in the generative potential of self-sacrifice. ity and fortitude of the men who carried it. The Irish literary renaissance siphoned from mythology and The resistance that was to end with the body’s involu- history heroic characters, whose paradigmatic actions and tion commenced from its surface. Handed the newly man- temper fortified the devotional disposition and the ardor dated uniforms while their civilian garb was removed, some for self-sacrifice. This is the potent blend that fueled the prisoners refused to wear these and covered their nakedness Easter Rising of 1916 and the two massive waves of col- with the only other textile available in their cell, the blan- lective hunger strikes that swept through prisons in the ket on the bed. The Blanket Protest continued for five years 20th century, leaving 21 men dead (Sweeney 1993a:422– and was carried out at Maze prison by 400 Blanketmen.11 423, 1993b:12–13). Two-and-a-half years later, the naked skin under the blanket From this Irish past, the prison resistance drew strength became the site for the second stage of resistance. It was trig- and coherence and fashioned its own culture. For example, gered by demeaning searches of bodily recesses conducted Gaelic had become the lingua franca in which the inmates in the washrooms,12 and by agonizing delays whenever they of the H-Blocks shouted through the doors their conver- requested the use of toilets. Some Blanketmen refused to en- sations, unintelligible to the guards. Originally, only four ter either facility; so they remained unwashed, and excre- of them, including Bobby Sands, had been fluent in Gaelic. ment piled up in their cells. The Dirty Protest only ended Their lessons, too, were shouted through the doors and trav- on the day after Bobby Sands had begun his hunger strike as eled down the corridors. The principal slogan of the 1981 a ritual that, among other meanings, included purification. hunger strike evoked the unity of past and present. It was an The Blanket Protest and the Dirty Protest had readied often-quoted sentence that encapsulated the philosophy of mind and body for the hunger strike. It was the next strate- Terence Mac Swiney, Lord Mayor of Cork, who had joined gic advance and the only one with a chance to succeed. in 1920 the first wave of hunger strikes against the British Both protests had exhausted the defiance potential of the administration and died on the 74th day of his fast; he was, Andriolo • The Twice-Killed 105 until Bobby Sands’s death, the most revered hunger mar- the pain endured is one’s own to bestow, is inalienable, and tyr. The statement read: “It is not those who can inflict the fuels the capacity to endure more. The exposed and shiver- most, but those who can suffer the most who will conquer” ing body was not a sorry victim; rather, it had freed itself (Ellman 1993:60).13 from stigmatizing covers. The body’s excretions piling up Suffering as the agent for attaining justice—and doing inside the cell and oozing out from under the door wafted so specifically by way of risking starvation—has precedents across the H-Blocks the pungent odor of pride in resisting from long before the Christianization of Ireland in the fifth the hands and the will of the oppressor. The body starved century. If one wished to pressure a tardy or unwilling per- of food fed on the manna of moral triumph. son to deliver the goods or services he was obliged to render, Seen as a set of events, the Irish hunger strikes of the one would seize and hold in ransom something or some- 20th century profile the heightened visibility of collective body that belonged to him. This form of redress was only fasts and burst the seams of a simple, quantitative mean- available to those who had the means and the clout to at- ing of “collective.” In the strikes prior to 1981, the partici- tain such a pawn. The powerless, however, could hold them- pants constituted a single body of purpose, in which com- selves in ransom, so to speak, and would conduct a hunger ponent parts performed different roles that, by their very strike next to the debtor’s threshold. Usually, this was not diversity, covered extensive ground. Not all strikers were re- fatal but would soon engender the desired results, because solved to fast until death or victory and some who initially if the creditor died on his fast, the debtor had to pay com- were would change their mind. This low-pressure option pensation to his kin and would fear the vengeful ghost of for engagement generated the awesome quantity of partic- one departed under such circumstances.14 With the spread ipants, and the few who died colored the entire enterprise of Christianity, the hunger strike transformed into the ritual with the scarlet of their martyrdom. One or two among gesture of fasting only from sundown to sunrise (Sweeney them became the exemplary heroes whose face and words 1993a:421–422).15 Indeed, the IRA later claimed that the inspirited the collective body. hunger strike of 1981 consciously drew from this custom; This body of purpose, in which the wrenching power however, the linkage seems retrofitted.16 of martyrdom and the sweeping force of multitude drew The effects of the hunger strike that lasted for 217 days strength from each other, was enclosed by the “skin” of and claimed the lives of ten men cannot be easily gauged. imprisonment. The very place that curtailed their freedom It was an occurrence so utterly emplaced in the dense nar- also sealed them off from the dispersive clamor of normal rative of crisscrossing conflicts that it will have burrowed life as a citizen, a father, a shopkeeper, and it focused their deeply and in many directions. The manifest results, how- efforts on one certified enemy and on one noble cause: re- ever, present with a flatness that does not measure up to sistance against the dominators, the jailers, and Big Brother the complexity of the preceding events. The demanded Britain they served. Even though the hunger strike of 1981 rights were indeed reinstated with a face-saving twist by was strictly limited to a death fast conducted by only a few the British Government—that is, only after the strike had men,17 it replaced the quantitative momentum with the been called off and they had “given in” first. Their deaths somber power of serial deaths. The timing of individual fasts did not fuel the struggle as explosively as they had hoped, intended that coffins would leave the prison in regular inter- because the IRA felt militarily underequipped at that point. vals. In both waves, the visibility of collective embodiment Bobby Sands, however, entered legend. While he lay dy- was magnified by the congruence between the strikers’ de- ing, he was elected MP to the British Parliament. At his mands and the nationalistic stirrings in the population at funeral, some 100,000 people marched peacefully. And in large. unexpected places, one still can encounter his fame. Soon after his death, a street in Tehran was named after him. It runs next to the British Embassy and had been previously SELF-IMMOLATION IN PRAGUE called “Winston Churchill Street.” (Of course, at work was Self-immolation as a form of protest has deep roots in the the formula that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Less East, whose religions have ascribed to fire sacred quality and than two years earlier, the Ayatollah Khomeini had declared transformational power and to heat a generative potential. the Islamic Republic of Iran and restructured relations with In the West, self-immolation did not gain momentum until Western powers.) the Vietnam War trained television cameras onto this East- The imprisoned body is at the mercy of external con- ern scene and confronted European and U.S. viewers with trols, but the protesters at Maze demonstrated the stunning a form of protest that was utterly new to most of them. range of communicative action that it still can perform In public places, Vietnamese monks took the pose of the in the service of its owner. They experienced the gradual Buddha, the lotus seat, and set themselves aflame in protest build-up of what this body can bear—cold discomfort, nu- against their government as well as against being the colo- dity that throughout history has been used to demean the nized, the one defined by others, and the one interrupted in vanquished foe, living in shit in the most literal sense of being himself. Beginning in 1963, Buddhist torches burned the word, and, finally, starving away on a lonely cot, once into Western minds the awareness that this was possible for the weakened protester had been transferred from his cell human beings to do;18 thus began its emulation. At least to the hospital ward. They recognized that the meaning of three U.S. citizens immolated themselves during the war: 106 American Anthropologist • Vol. 108, No. 1 • March 2006 perhaps to denounce their country’s guilt, perhaps to erase lated it into communal action, in which everybody could some of it by their sacrifice, perhaps to simply urge an end perform a gesture that mattered. to the slaughter. In Europe as well, protesters with different For several days, Palach’s body lay in state at the uni- agendas began to embody the torch metaphor, as did the versity, in front of the statue of Jan Hus, a site saturated most effective Western protest suicide of the 20th century: with symbolic potential. Jan Hus had died by fire op- Jan Palach’s self-immolation in Prague in 1969. posing hegemony. He was a religious reformer, who had In the wake of World War II, Czechoslovakia became a defended the authority of scripture over its ecclesiastical communist state tied to the Soviet bloc. Occasional timid interpreters as well as Czech national aspirations over Ger- attempts at liberalization did not register, but in 1968 the man influence. Condemned as a heretic, he was burned on new party leader Alexander Dub ek initiated democratic the stake in 1415. Thus, proximity to the great Czech mar- reforms of unprecedented reach. The Prague Spring hap- tyr for religious, cultural, and political self-determination pened, giddily embraced by the populace,19 and watched spelled, even for the slowest reader of the recent events, in Western countries with naive optimism—which would the liberation meaning of the second Jan’s sacrifice. Con- be echoed 20 years later during the protests in Tianan- currently, thousands of people kept vigil at the spot where men Square. By August, the long spring had ended. The So- he had immolated himself. On the day of the funeral, a half viet Union, aided by other Warsaw Pact members, invaded million people took to the street, and at the moment of its Czechoslovakia, and Dub ek and other leaders were taken beginning, work stopped for five minutes all over the coun- to Moscow. The initial popular opposition dwindled and all try. Palach’s grave turned into a shrine where fresh flow- reforms were repealed. Five months after the Russian tanks ers were placed in abundance. Even after the secret police had rolled into Prague, the protest suicide of the 20-year- had exhumed and cremated his body, the now-empty site old Jan Palach drew renewed attention to the desirability of of memory drew a stream of visitors who kept renewing democratization.20 When he set himself aflame on January the fragile tokens of their presence. A month after Palach’s 16, 1969, on Wenceslas Square in the center of Prague, his death, another burnt offering amplified his appeal; it was protest did not address the Soviet invasion itself but, rather, echoed, a month later, by a third one. the apathy into which the country had sunk so quickly after While the kernel of symbolic resistance was nurtured its newly gained freedom had been squashed. He died three by annual commemorations of these sacrifices, its politi- days later of his massive burns. In hospital, he had said the cal offshoot took a while to bud. Only eight years later did following in the presence of attending nurses and doctors: dissidents declare themselves in the open, among them the writer and future president Vaclav´ Havel. Twenty years after In history there are moments when it is necessary to do the three torches were lit, the Velvet Revolution effected the something. Now is the time for it. After half a year, after end of Soviet rule in Czechoslovakia, a final step in the long a year, it will already be too late. . . . I don’t regret my march that had included perestroika in the Soviet Union, action. Perhaps it will awaken a kernel of strength within the Polish Solidarity movement, and the fall of the Berlin the nation. [Slach 1999: B13] Wall. The trajectory from Jan Palach’s self-immolation to the Velvet Revolution spans a protest suicide’s ideal reach. Governmental watchfulness ensured that these words were This is not to say that the suicide “caused” the gathering not carried outside the hospital. (Only after the collapse participation of Czechs in the political changes that were of the communist regime, 20 years later, were they made ultimately accomplished. Rather, it constituted the domi- public.) But the spirit of these words had already found the nant symbol aligned with a possibility working toward ac- champions who took the first decisive step on the long road tualization. It guarded the momentum of becoming. Yet, its that would lead from the burnt offering to the awakening own momentum—that of a swift flair-up lengthened into of the nation’s kernel of strength. an eternal flame—required masterly guardianship. Jan Palach had just begun the study of philosophy at Most critical was the small group of activists who were Charles University in Prague, but he had not participated in holding on to Palach’s self-immolation and kept it from political activism. Immediately after his self-immolation, a slipping into yesterday’s news. They claimed kinship with group of students presented the government with a list of the spirit of his sacrifice and translated it into concrete vague political demands, which they had voiced already ear- demands—actions that were doable now—addressed to a lier. When Palach died, the students replaced this list with specific group. The fact that they, as well as Palach him- specific requests pertaining to his funeral. Thus, a burial self, were students boosted the popular support. Unless a fated by reason of state to be hushed into quick oblivion in- particular constellation, not relevant here, plays up the pro- stead turned into a stream of events that swept up Palach’s longed idleness and rhetorical loftiness of their tintype, stu- sacrifice from the pavement of Wenceslas Square, where it dents are primarily seen as the nation’s children, bright, had suddenly and briefly interrupted the quotidian drone educated, and with the innocence of the protected, of those of a busy city center, and enshrined it in the consciousness not yet tried and corrupted by life. Carried out equally ef- of the nation. For the thousands of people who had been fectively was the second critical step: to render the protest shaken profoundly but did not quite know by what, the scene accessible to the multitude and endow it with per- funeral spelled out the meaning of the shudder and trans- sisting opportunities for their active involvement. This was Andriolo • The Twice-Killed 107 accomplished by the orchestration of events connected to In partial answer to this question—partial meaning the funeral, by the strongly symbolic build-up to it, and both incomplete and selective—I am focusing on a sin- by the only gradual but never complete loosening of its gle idea within the range of motivating ones, from which memorialization. each protest suicide assembles its unique constellation. My Self-immolation cannot do it alone; others are needed choice is determined by the transcultural and transhis- to take up the torch. Although the trajectory of Jan Palach’s torical conspicuousness of this idea, which, furthermore, death can be read as a manual for engineering success, that is foregrounded in both cultural practices and individual of another man, a citizen of Poland, attests, by way of ut- mental constructs. Protest suicides are encouraged by an ter failure, to the precariousness of the sacrifice. His case is exchange model—not exclusive to them—that human life the more poignant because he, likewise, addressed the in- may be given so as to attain benefits that, perhaps, cannot vasion of Czechoslovakia by troops from the Soviet Union be gotten any other way. The word sacrifice, so often used in and other Warsaw Pact members (including Poland). He ac- reference to protest suicides, correctly points to the premise tually did so four months prior to Palach, but his sacrifice shared by such suicides and the ritual or mythical sacrifices charred unnoticed into oblivion. On September 8, 1968, of humans, animals, or gods: victims offered up or volun- Ryszard Siwiec immolated himself in the midst of a harvest teering themselves so as to generate a boon. For believers, festival that had packed into the stadium of Warsaw at least Jesus’s death on the cross effected humankind’s redemp- 100,000 citizens and communist authorities.21 He was a 59- tion from the original sin, which Adam and Eve’s disobe- year-old accountant, married and father of five, who had dience had brought on all their descendants. The sacrifice come that morning by train from a small town. He had pre- of Iphigenia was intended to propitiate an angry goddess pared his protest calmly, leaving behind a tape recording on who withheld the wind from the sails of the Greek fleet em- which he urged his fellow Poles to unyoke themselves from barked on the Trojan War. Mayan rulers captured in warfare the “murderous regime” (McKelvey 1992:26) that had par- other lords, whom they trussed up like balls to be bounced ticipated in the invasion of Czechoslovakia. He had dressed down temple steps to their deaths and expected that this in a dark suit and used his long train ride to write a farewell would procure cosmic fuel for the prosperity of their own letter to his wife. When he burst into flames on his seat cities. in the stadium, he caused some commotion around him. Sacrifices are predicated on a contract between giver Any camera that might have faced his way quickly turned and receiver, the latter a god or cosmic engine. The contrac- in another direction, the radio broadcaster made no men- tual nature of the sacrifice business is poignantly described tion of the disturbance, and the festival went on. In sub- by Zeus, when the gods argue how to make Achilles return sequent days, newspapers ignored the event. When word Hector’s corpse for a proper funeral: of his action finally seeped out, it was accredited to a mad- Still, the immortals loved Prince Hector dearly, man. Twenty years later, after the regime had collapsed, his best of all the mortals born in Troy . . . letter was finally delivered to his wife, and his story became so I loved him, at least: known. he never stinted with gifts to please my heart. Never once did my altar lack its share of victims, winecups tipped and the deep smoky savor. These, THE ENCOURAGING PREMISE these are the gifts we claim—they are our rights. [Homer 1990:590] Why does protest suicide occur, given its self-destructive finality, the precariousness of its yield, and its utter depen- Marcel Mauss could not have said it better.22 We are in gift dency on others to continue the process sparked by the de- territory and all inhabitants know what is expected there: parture of its initiator? The argument that some, most, or all A gift must be given, accepted, and repaid. (Of course, even of the individuals engaged in protest suicides are “suicidal” shared expectations do not by necessity make for a safe life. and likely to kill themselves at some time for personal psy- Consider poor Hector; when fate had decided against him, chological reasons is irrelevant to protest suicide as an event even gift-pleased Zeus could not reciprocate, at least not to in cultural space. Even if those individuals were suicidal—a Hector’s living body. Sometimes, a god might have been proposition wanting in empirical supportability—they have otherwise engaged when the deep smoky savor rose, or pol- chosen, different from so many others who have ended itics and quarrels among the immortals eclipsed the pur- their own lives, to place this act in the service of a pub- chasing power of one sacrifice in favor of another.) lic concern. We ought to recognize their death fashioning The exchange value of human life also figures in other in the same manner in which we consider Van Gogh a great types of contracts that do not involve gods or cosmos but painter rather than just another schizophrenic, or Mother that are drawn up between individual and society. We do Theresa an outstanding philanthropist despite whatever not have to stray far from either protest or suicide to find ego trip might have propelled her altruism. What, then, such examples. Most “regular” suicides include in their web encouraged some individuals in different places and times of meanings and messages a strand of protest—against hav- to link the divestment of their life with a moral request ad- ing been hurt, rejected, or failed by others; against devas- dressing an unknown multitude and to entertain the hope tating circumstances; against the meanness of opportunity; that this alignment could make a difference in the world? or against the unceasing resurgence of depression. On the 108 American Anthropologist • Vol. 108, No. 1 • March 2006 lower end of the scale, such self-centered reproach may be protection rather than anger and scorn. One has failed her uttered and perceived in a barely conscious and not readily and must feel the guilt. Added to these libations of self- admitted manner. When a suicide note assures its recipient reproach, which cleanse all shame off the victim’s name, that “neither you nor anybody else is responsible for my is the obligation that her kinsmen avenge her stolen life suicide,” it means what it says while simultaneously insin- on the culprit, in this case Victor, whose broken promise uating the guilt that it hastens to annul. On the higher end Agnes identified as the major source for her despair. In ear- of the scale, those ending their lives denounce explicitly a lier days, before Western religious and administrative hege- specific person or group. This tends to be part of a cultural mony has changed traditional ways, Victor and his mother, package, in which the suicidal performance is scripted so most likely, would have been killed by Agnes’s kinsmen; that it, indeed, conveys its motive and accusation to the the possibility was implicitly suggested at a public meeting. community, which is then obligated to redress the wrong Nowadays, retaliatory killing has given way to an indem- suffered by the victim. nity payment by Victor’s family. The suicide and her com- This kind of exchange between suicide and society is munity, so it emerges from this and other reports, behave as illustrated by a superb case study from New Britain, Papua if they had entered a contract of exchange. The suicide “re- New Guinea (Counts 1980). In a small Kaliai village, Agnes ceives” empathy and sorrow, a name cleansed of shame, an has moved in with Victor. This is neither a proper nor a admission of guilt, and a measure of revenge. The contract smart thing to do, because Agnes would be shamed in case is initiated by the suicide offering her part of the bargain. the cohabitation does not lead to marriage. But Agnes is 16, (However, life is a steep down payment for goods she can in love, and encouraged in all this by Victor’s mother who, behold briefly only in her anticipation.) as will soon turn out, has played a duplicitous game. She A third and last example for the ubiquitous idea that has used Agnes as the bait that would lure Victor from an life can be given in exchange for the otherwise unobtain- amorous adventure in another village back to the proper able derives from a site much closer to home than Papua turf, which is one’s own community. Weeks go by, while New Guinea or ancient sacrifices. It is a childhood fantasy, Victor’s family is in no hurry to initiate the customary mar- probably familiar to all of us. Your parents have treated you riage negotiations and Agnes’s family feels embarrassed and unfairly—perhaps refused to give you what you desire and angry. Finally, shifty Victor casts his desire on another girl, deserve. You are angry, angry, angry. And then you imagine Agnes is dismissed, and her pain over the rejection is inten- what would happen if you were to die right now. Perhaps sified by her parents’ reproach and by the sharp gossip of you picture the manner in which your death would come the villagers. Betrayed by her lover and his mother, denied about, perhaps you jump-cut right to the next scene, the familial support, and washed over by shaming comments climax, your mother and father receiving the news of your wherever she turns, Agnes feels trapped. She scratches onto death: They break down in tears, wail, and are crushed by coconuts veiled accusations and suicide threats; but these guilt. Some of us gleefully hugged this image, others milked messages are not received. Agnes dons her best finery and parental despair right into the funeral scene; that tableau of oils her body. Then she walks beyond the village and hangs our parents’ guilty sorrow was sheer satisfaction. But, we re- herself from a palm tree (Counts 1980:332–335). alized quite soon, that we would not be able to hover over Over the next few weeks and months unfold the reac- the gratifying scene and whisper—as they always used to tions of relatives and villagers. “Why did you kill my child,” do—“See, I told you not to.” We knew that we could not the father cries out in the village plaza (Counts 1980:332) hear, see, or smell their guilty sorrow and regrets. We would and voices in his desperate cry the popular sentiment that be dead. End of fantasy. “Were I to die now, you would be so suicide is closer to homicide than we think. Throughout sorry” is a healing fantasy. In its creation the child admits to Papua New Guinea, shame is a strong and active ingredient recognizing the depth of parental love, without which the in individuals’ perceptions of themselves. It is the motivat- imagined punishment would not work. And we can let go of ing force that urged Agnes and many other women and men the tableau now, consoled, and without having had to die to take their life. But shame works its host only when it rico- for it. However, this fleeting fantasy is built on a tenacious chets off other people’s disdainful glances, pursed lips, and premise: Our death makes a difference to others and in the scornful gossip, or if it is feared to do so. Different from world; therefore, we can invest our death or exchange it for guilt, shame needs a public to become all consuming and something else. Most of us will never act on this premise. inescapable. Most of us are realists, consider the exchange rate much too Once shame has engendered self-destruction, the close high, luckily will never stumble into situations in which a ring of relatives surrounding the victim and the wider ring bad exchange rate still seems a good bargain, or do not live of villagers will pause to face and admit their own guilty in places and times that entice or pressure us to enter such contribution to the sad event. “They killed him with talk” exchanges. (Counts 1980:343), people say and know that they owe The performance of protest suicide as well as something to the victim of circumstances and gossip. One the premise on which it is based enlist rationality— ought to recognize the seriousness of her plight. Agnes, the exchange and value calculation; strategies for attracting silly girl of easy virtue, is repositioned as a loving and trust- notice, resisting authority, and swaying public opinion— ing child whose error should have called for guidance and although imagining fills in at critical turns. Prior to the Andriolo • The Twice-Killed 109 socioeconomic logic of the exchange model is the assump- a different party in this exchange: suicide, “we,” and con- tion that life—or, more accurately, dying—can be “given”; temporary culture. a burned or starved body is not just that but also flesh tran- The conscious giving of one’s life is qualitatively dif- substantiated into a message. When we say, for example, ferent from anything else the body can give, such as hard “The salmon feeds us,” we do not mean it. We have not work, pain, or a kidney. This difference derives from two asked the salmon, and neither do we attribute to the fish components of the act, ending life and giving it deliberately the mental and moral faculties that could make his presence and altruistically. Ending life is digital and irreversible; it is on our plate the consequence of his generous intention to either–or and followed by nonlife (at least as we know it). let himself be caught. We use a metaphor, along the line The unique quality of human existence is factored into all of “Mother Nature.” When tribes of the Canadian north- moral debates on the intentional termination of life, such west coast said the same sentence, they meant it, because as euthanasia, murder, death penalty, and suicide. Giving their myth depicted the salmon as wise and powerful be- life deliberately and altruistically is an action that only hu- ings that had taken pity on humans and, indeed, decided mans can perform. Animals, we assume (perhaps mistak- to feed them, in exchange for respect. Imagining converts enly), have no cognition of death and therefore cannot metaphors into reality and vice versa, frequently employ- deliberately give their life. And whenever gods sacrificed ing mimesis as catalyst. The Maya lord was subjected to a themselves in myths, it was not their life they gave, but a gruesome and ridiculous death-bounce down the temple temporary existence on earth from which they returned to steps, because that made him look like a ball that resem- resume their immortal one. bled the sun that, every evening, sank into the underworld The lesson learned from Coetzee is this: Because only to confront the forces of darkness and rise victoriously ev- humans can give deliberately and altruistically this unique ery morning. Ball games and human sacrifices mimicked good—their life—it requests our attention. Only other hu- the circular motion of the sun, and this resemblance to the mans can imagine—that is, mind in their own body—what generator of cosmic energy gave them efficacy. The bleed- such an act entails, what it feels like. Only we can rescue, by ing lord, trussed into a visual metaphor, engendered, so it way of imagining, protest suicides from disappearing into was believed, real benefits in the real world. the void of deeds that go unrecognized as if they had never When protest suicide equates dying with giving (not happened. If we turn the other way, protest suicides are unlike the formula for the conversion of mass into energy, killed twice, once by their own hands and once by the si- E = mc2), it offers to a metaphor the opportunity to be- lence of our imagination; such was the case of the Polish come social reality and to instigate real changes in the real accountant Ryszard Siwiec. The Mishnah, the codified col- world. The famous sentence from John’s Gospel, which in- lection of oral law included in the Talmud, makes the same troduces Jesus, reads “And the word was made flesh and point with exhilarating brevity and precision: “Where there dwelled among us” (John 1:14); it equally represents the is no human being, be one” (Mishnah Avot 2:6). process and the product of sending a metaphor into the Imagining serves the interest of its object; the self- real life of the imagination. sacrifice is recognized; it has a face, a name, a narrative; it is emplaced within the range of astonishing deeds hu- mans are capable of performing. Furthermore, this kind of imagining that houses human deeds in human conscious- THE ETHICS OF ATTENTIVENESS ness gives richly back to its hosts by assuring them of their The protest suicides of modern times make an offer that, active membership in the human race. An event that dom- so they hope, cannot be refused; however, they make it in inated the news at the time of this writing serves to ex- a deserted market place. The contract partners once relied plain this line of reasoning. Why did so many individuals on, god and society, have changed their image and priori- feel moved to donate money to the victims of the Asian ties. (There are, as always, exceptions. Some fundamentalist Tsunami, which struck in December 2004? Who knew what interpreters of Islam assert that Allah still gives full value this money would really accomplish? Some of it would fall for militant martyrdom.) This leaves two options: to ignore into the cracks of bureaucracy, strained logistics, incom- those who base their deep play on an outdated exchange petence, or greed, and never reach the victims. But that script or to fill the role of the transpartisan addressee with did not deter the givers whose generosity was braided, to a modern successor. I advocate the latter and suggest that be sure, from many strands: They were shaken by the pri- “we” ought to respond to the public self-sacrifice. By we, I mordial speed and scale of the disaster; they fathomed the mean the democratic we that may or may not vote and that long and arduous recovery; they might have been grateful always gets some business done in spite of broad lethargy that it did not happen to them; and because the destruc- and sharp opposition. (E.g., few people are engaged in an- tion was caused by nature, it offered a clear cause, unob- imal rights, but awareness of this issue and concomitant scured by local or international politics. But besides all this changes in attitude and behavior have increased consider- and some more, the human toll of the event made us re- ably in the recent past.) We ought to pay attention to protest alize that there is one world, and that we belong to this suicides and their call. In support of such an ethics of atten- world. Whatever else we paid for in these donations, we also tiveness, I offer three lines of reasoning, each focusing on paid for confirming our being-in-this-world, our identity as 110 American Anthropologist • Vol. 108, No. 1 • March 2006 citizens of the world, our membership in humanity. Great quest. Gilgamesh and Achilles strove to be remembered for woe, great beauty, and great truth, if we meet each with con- their great deeds. And so they are, if largely owing to the scious recognition of their human factors, will heighten our poetic power of the texts in which they figure. Edifices built sense of belonging to this race—as do the fields of crosses from lasting material recall both victors and victims—albeit at Verdun, Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, and the elder in segregated memorial sites. Cities erected the splendid brother’s midnight speech in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s monuments of enthroned rulers and the equestrian statues Journey into Night (1956). of their military mavericks, while towns and villages com- Both arguments advanced in favor of an ethics of at- memorated local sons who had died in wars unleashed by tentiveness ascribe to imagining a role that would land it the mighty ones. Since World War II, however, the concern on the positive side of the range which Elizabeth Costello’s with memory, memorials, and witnessing has broadened lectures have staked out between the humanizing and the considerably as well as headed in new directions. dehumanizing potentialities of embodied minding. Those Some remembrance work of recent vintage has opened who take notice of a protest suicide pause to register that it itself to the daunting complexity of the task and, rather has happened. Perhaps from this delay of slippage surges, than embalming the past in a dignified, nonconfrontational as in the case of Jan Palach, the trajectory of change desired ambience, it attempts to show the wound that does not by the act of hopeful despair. Perhaps the moment of heed- heal, the loss that is forever. It recalls both anguish and fulness has no greater impact than the routinely requested guilt, the evil suffered and perpetrated. At first, memorials minute of silence. Those who take notice of a protest sui- of pain were erected by those who sustained it (Israel’s Yad cide also register themselves as conscious participants in Vashem), and only those who could claim the moral high humanity. ground made documentaries about the Holocaust (Alain If such attentiveness, a task requiring but minor effort, Resnais’s Night and Fog 1955; Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah benefits both giver and receiver, why is it not expended 1985) or about the German occupation and its collabora- more often and more freely? Why do the media give only tors (Marcel Ophuls’s Hotel Terminus 1988, and The Sorrow scant and short-lived attention to the occurrence of protest and the Pity 1970). But now the memorials of pain, loss, suicides? Why does public reaction range from embarrassed and absence are also built by those who inflicted it, who indifference to revulsion, unless the ideological thrust of bear the guilt24 (see the Holocaust memorials and monu- the protest or some personal characteristics of the protester ments against fascism in Germany and Austria).25 Another touch one’s sympathy? Among the notable exceptions is modern trait is the fierce insistence on the individuality of Scott Anderson’s article in the New York Times Magazine those who have lost their lives amidst so many others. The (2001), which describes the recent hunger strike in Turkey. names of victims read at a memorial service or engraved on It originated in several prisons in protest against newly in- a monument constitute the very quiddity of the commemo- troduced restrictions and, indirectly, against governmental rative enterprise. If not by name, each single victim is repre- oppression. It acquired momentum for a while, when it was sented by an individual item, and the selfsame multiplicity taken up by released prisoners, their relatives, and sympa- of these stark icons plants rows of empty chairs (Oklahoma thizers, who conducted death fasts in small communes in City), tree trunks, or stone slabs. This mark was set, proba- an Istanbul neighborhood and developed methods to ex- bly, with Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial: Two walls tend their dying life well over a year.23 Interestingly, Ander- rise up, inscribed with 58,245 names to be searched for son’s informative and moving report focuses on a young and touched by those who knew them; viewers see them- and beautiful woman who, by the end of the article, has selves reflected in the dark stone while they perform the abandoned her fast. recognizing task. (However, although it locks into this tight A major obstacle in the way of popular attentiveness is embrace the rememberer and the remembered, the memo- the extreme version of embodied minding that protest sui- rial features only U.S. sorrow rather than acknowledging cide practices. The body becomes a self-destructive perfor- responsibility or grief inflicted by the U.S. presence in mance site. It denounces injustice by enacting its fatal con- Vietnam [Morris 2003:688]). sequences. It requests attention in exchange for the ultimate The contemporary places of memory are not marginal. sacrifice, an offer that might seem bullying to prospective They have forced their way into public discourse and re- respondents and lacks resonance in a culture that values life quest fiercely that one takes sides and engages with them. far above any cause. Analogously to Lord Chandos, protest For example, a monument against fascism, designed by suicides take imagining to its limit and risk alienation of Esther and Jochen Gerz and built in 1983 in a suburb of those who, not surprising in the age of anesthesia, recoil Hamburg, presents itself as a countermonument that de- from feeling in their body the agony of burning or starving. sists from telling the viewer what to think. Instead, the Attentiveness to protest suicide, even though encum- plain, even ugly, four-sided column sheathed in lead invites bered by the harrowing embodiment of pain and death, is passersby to cover it with engravings—names; doodles; and aided by a cultural trend: Remembrance, a close kin to atten- statements, some pious, some nasty, some stupid, some sin- tiveness, has become topical, and its painful edges are now cere. It is gradually lowered into the ground as the scribbles being palpitated rather than repressed. Of course, tasking stretch up (Schmidt-Wulffen 1994). The demanding visi- future generations with recalling the past is an ancient re- bility of monuments is buttressed by the recent trend of Andriolo • The Twice-Killed 111 the architect as superstar. Memorial and architect propel anxiety of responsibility, the fear of failure, the shadow of each other into expressive virtuosity and into prime-time the hour glass. news. The memorial desires an intriguing form that catches Along with attentiveness and memory, Coetzee’s imag- the eye, then nails the mind to its tough message. The ar- ining is a child of cura–Sorge–care. Thus, we should expect chitect desires the creative torque of vexing meanings that its bipolar inclination, its ability to adapt to the highs and will birth new forms. Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum lows of caring. It can be enlisted to reduce the pain we inflict Berlin was visited for two years before it housed any dis- on each other, and it can be tempted to expose the naked- plays and, thus, became itself the exhibit, the memorial: ness and humiliation of the tortured. Protest suicide, too, The Holocaust as a vast, empty space, emaciated by narrow- grows out of cura, although it takes to the utter limit both ing walls and clasped by the broken, jagged-edged star of Sorge and selfhood. The sorrow of the world seems unbear- David.26 able, but responsibility urges the self not to dive out from My proposal that protest suicides have a justifiable under the load of caring. The sorrow bearer will be crushed, claim on our attention is inspired by a recent book, The but because he has kept his pledge of responsibility, he be- Ethics of Memory, by the philosopher and social critic Avishai queaths to care a toehold for the future. Margalit (2002). It is a lucid and original contribution to Surely, cura–Sorge–care is too brilliant an idea to be as the growing academic discourse on remembering. It takes young as the 20th century, as landlocked as German philos- up as a principle question the following: “Are we obligated ophy, and as inanimate as a linguistic signifier. Before en- to remember people and events from the past?” (Margalit tering Heidegger’s work, Sorge took center stage in Goethe’s 2002:7). This question is answered in the affirmative along Faust, Part Two, whence it came from the German philoso- a path paved with clarifying component questions, such pher and writer Johann Gottfried Herder, whose source was as who ought to remember? What is to be remembered? a Latin fable of the origin of humankind. And this is the What actions are requested in the process? Groups bound fable that declares cura–Sorge–care the quintessential hu- together by “thick” relations rooted in a shared past, geo- man condition. Once Cura, personalized as a minor player graphic proximity, or common goals and values constitute in the Elysian Fields, picked up and molded a lump of clay the “we” that ought to remember great pain suffered or rather absentmindedly. She was pleased with its shape and inflicted. Such remembrance is not a demand but a pre- asked Jupiter to endow it with spirit; this he did. Subse- scription for attaining a desirable good, as in a doctor’s state- quently, the three creative contenders—Jupiter, Cura, and ment: “There is no obligation to be healthy. But if you want Earth, who claimed partnership on account of the clay— to be healthy, this is what it takes” (Margalit 2002:105). could not agree whose trademark this item should bear. Margalit links the benefits of communal memory to a con- Saturn (time) was called to arbitrate. “You, Jupiter,” he said, cept that is pivotal to Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of Be- “will get the spirit after its death and you, Earth, its body. ing and Time (Margalit 2002:32–35). As we follow this con- Since Cura built this item, it will be hers as long as it lives.”27 cept back into Heidegger’s work, we recognize its formidable age and its nimble pertinence to the principal players in this article: Coetzee’s notion of imagining, protest suicide, and KARIN ANDRIOLO Department of Anthropology, State Uni- attentiveness. versity of New York College at New Paltz, New Paltz, Heidegger defines the basic quality of human exis- NY 12561 tence as Sorge, a German word that is similar to its Latin equivalent cura but somewhat different from the contempo- NOTES rary connotations of the English word care. Sorge embraces 1. Hugo von Hofmannsthal is now mostly known for his libret- equally two constituent meanings: responsibility and worry tos to several operas by Richard Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier, Die Frau (1963:191–200). One could envision the meaning of Sorge ohne Schatten, Elektra, Arabella, and Ariadne auf Naxos. The letter is called “Ein Brief” or “Brief des Lord Chandos an Francis Bacon” as two strands twisted into a cord. One strand contains the and was first printed in the Austrian newspaper, Der Tag. It is meaning-fibers concerned, careful, solicitous, devoted, scrupu- reprinted in Hofmannsthal 1976:7–20; for an English translation, lous, attentive, provident, and painstaking; the other strand see Hofmannsthal 2004. bundles together apprehensive, anxious, grieving, sorrowful, 2. Coetzee is no stranger to the play with initials and names. The initials E. C. also belong to the protagonist of his earlier novel Age of worrying, uneasy, careworn, and fretting. Throughout its entire Iron (1990). In this book, Elizabeth Curren, another elderly woman, length the cord contains all the fibers. Yet, along any stretch struggles with her body as she is painfully dying of cancer. on which the eye might come to rest, some fibers have sur- 3. The novel is called Foe (Coetzee 1986). The name of the author faced and conceal those lodged inside, which, as the eye of Robinson Crusoe can be spelled Defoe or De Foe. moves further on, soon attain visibility by wrapping them- 4. Kafka’s short story “The Hunger Artist” (1971a) provides an un- sparing reflection on the lack of public attention to the protago- selves around the outer layer of before. In its twined con- nist’s silent shriveling away. notations, the word touches felicitously on the complexity 5. Because protest suicides are public performances, hindrance of a person’s relation to self, other, and world. Sorge, our has to be reckoned with. The prolonged dying that affords the caring existence, may seem at times a galvanizing concern, hunger striker control over the clarity of her message and even the buildup of momentum also hazards external interference— at other times a troublesome burden; but it is always both: whether force feeding by authorities or emotional pressure from a hopeful, confident, self-affirming enterprise, laden by the family members. Even the quick flare-up of self-immolation is not 112 American Anthropologist • Vol. 108, No. 1 • March 2006 swift enough for the rescuing instinct, which often merely pro- now died, embodying the self-sacrificing philosophy of the Lord longs an agonizing death. Recent protest suicides in South Korea Mayor of Cork (Ellman 1993:59–64). forestall the interruption of their sacrifice, and even increase its 17. Only those volunteers who were certain that their relatives visibility, by setting themselves aflame in an elevated place, such would not sign the permission needed for force-feeding were al- as railroad bridges or balconies, from which they fling themselves lowed to take their place in the fast. down. Such self-immolations in South Korea generally occur dur- ing a yearly season of demonstrations commemorating an upris- 18. On June 11, 1963, Thich Quang Duc, a 73-year-old Buddhist ing in 1980 against the military dictatorship, which left hundreds monk immolated himself in Saigon. He sat perfectly still while he dead. Many of the recent protesters have been students (Hornik was consumed by flames, surrounded by fellow monks and watched 1991:34). by many onlookers. This most publicized self-immolation was fol- lowed by that of 36 monks and one young Buddhist woman during 6. Maze prison is also referred to as “Long Kesh.” the course of the Vietnam War (Queen 1996:1). 7. The following synopsis of the Irish hunger strike of 1981 and 19. Milan Kundera’s novel The Incredible Lightness of Being (1984) all details of the events are informed by Allen Feldman’s excellent reflects the heady spirit of these days in Prague. study on violence in Northern Ireland, which is based on 25 oral histories and 100 interviews (Feldman 1991). 20. The synopsis of Jan Palach’s self-immolation and its trajectory is based on Green 1999 and Steele 1999. 8. The following synopsis of the hunger strikes of 1913–22 is based on Sweeney 1993a:423–430. 21. The synopsis of Ryszard Siwiec’s self-immolation is based on McKelvey 1992. 9. The IRA first split into an “Official” majority and a radical “Pro- visional” wing (PIRA). Later, the Irish National Liberation Army 22. In his famous book The Gift, which was originally published (INLA) split off the Official IRA. Bobby Sands and most of the in 1924 (see Mauss 2000), the French anthropologist Marcel Mauss protesting prisoners belonged to PIRA. staked out the place for exchange-theoretical thinking in anthro- pology. It has been visited ever since. 10. Bobby Sands, for example, was interned in 1972 shortly after he had joined PIRA and was held without trial for four years. In 23. The hunger strike in Turkey began in 2000 and turned into the 1977, a year after his release, he was arrested again, convicted of longest hunger strike in history, with a death toll of over 80 peo- possession of firearms and sentenced to 14 years; his term was to ple. (Some of these died in consequence of police raids rather than be served at Maze. starvation.) Even though the number of participants has dwindled since the beginning of 2002, there are still hunger strikers in Kuc¨ ¸uk¨ 11. Maze Prison had approximately 1,300 inmates. The number Armutlu, the Istanbul neighborhood mentioned (Anderson 2001; of Blanketmen fluctuated; 400 was the count prior to the hunger TAYAD 2002). strike. 24. The German vocabulary, at least, comes prepared for the hard 12. Smuggling contraband into, around, and out of prison was turn toward building monuments that exhibit one’s guilt. It of- developed to perfection. Principal items were pen refills, smoking fers three different words for monuments: Denkmal, Mahnmal, and equipment, cigarette papers on which all correspondence was con- Schandmal. The reoccurring -mal indicates a sign or monument; ducted in the most minute of writing. They were even able to smug- Denk- connotes remembering; Mahn- connotes admonishing; and gle in some quartz crystal radios enclosed in a pharmaceutical vial. Schand- is a sign of shame. The radio was designed for them by a Swedish technician; when placed in the mouth, it could receive signals from a BBC antenna 25. Particularly informative on Holocaust memorials is the work close by (Feldman 1991:199, 299). of James E. Young (1993, 1994). 13. Terence Mac Swiney derived this philosophy from The Imitation 26. In her review of Daniel Libeskind’s (2004) memoirs, Ruth of Christ by Thomas a` Kempis (a` Kempis 1998; Ellman 1993:60). Franklin (2005) shows unsparing disdain for the narcissistic notion that the mighty project is the architect’s foreordained destiny. Re- 14. A similar form of self-help, called “sitting dharana,” existed in garding Libeskind’s entry for the competition to design the Jewish India; however, it worked for the opposite end of the social scale— Museum Berlin, Franklin writes, “Unable to resist a single opportu- Brahmin, the caste highest in terms of ritual purity. Causing the nity for a symbolic gesture, he chose 6,000,001 as his identifying death of a Brahmin was judged a heinous crime with serious con- number for the competition” (2005: 30). sequences. The culprit could anticipate harassment from the angry ghost, and, after his own death, he would suffer punishment in 27. The narrative is #220 of the Fables of Hyginus; it is quoted a putrid hell for an immensely long time until reborn in a lowly in full by Heidegger (1963:197–198). Heidegger also refers to the form. A Brahmin who had extended credit to somebody who de- work of Johann Gottfried von Herder and Johann Wolfgang von ferred payment unduly would sit in front of his debtor’s door and Goethe. announce that he would starve himself until receiving his due. In most cases, the Brahmin did not have to act on his shrewd threat REFERENCES CITED for long, because the dreaded punishment hastened the debtor’s quittance (Andriolo 1993:56). Anderson, Scott 2001 The Hunger Warriors. New York Times Magazine, October 15. 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