Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper proposes a "discourse on death" as both a resistance to and a way beyond the current political impasse suggested by Foucaultian biopolitics. I address the death of the suicide bomber as "thanatopolitical," and argue that the suicide bomber represents a profound limit to modern, biopolitical reason. Beginning with a discussion of Kant on suicide, I draw on Kant's distinction between suicide and sacrifice, thus problematizing the activity of the suicide bomber. While I see Kant as a modern precursor to biopolitics, I also find in his theory of imagination (Einbildungskraft) a way to move beyond our current hegemonic, biopolitical idiom. I argue that the suicide bomber must be understood "productively" -- rhetorically and affectively -- through his/her rhetorical effects on everyday practices surrounding bodily integrity and community. This is not a rational or conceptual enterprise, but draws, finally, on Foucault's late work on ethics. Here, Foucault points the way toward a "discourse on death," suggesting how we might begin to free ourselves from the prejudicial idiom of biopolitics, freeing ourselves toward a new understanding of the political sacred.