Martyrdom and Guilt Sadly, (too) many people across the Arab and Muslim world-- and no doubt elsewhere too—will fully and painfully understand the below words that discuss the conditions that make a story such as the Tunisian self-immolator Muhammad Bouazizi’s so powerful and momentous that put an entire area of the world on fire, literally. “More important than a storyteller, however, for such a story to be genuine—maybe, even to be possible—it needs to encounter a guilty conscience. Nothing is better in nurturing the formation of a martyrdom story. Martyrdom (political martyrdom included) is as much the deed of the one who performs it as it is of those who witness it. The self-immolator’s death, no matter how spectacular, will remain utterly meaningless unless it is captured by a receptive gaze—that is, unless it occurs within a community eaten up by guilty thoughts and feelings. The guilt can be due to several factors: habitual toleration of injustices, collective cowardice and ethical numbness, passivity in front of political oppression, a general sense of defeat in front of a force (totalitarian government, foreign military occupation, and so on) perceived as invincible, if illegitimate. In other words, self-immolators are effective in societies that feel responsible in part for their servitude, where feelings of complicity, mutual resentment, and distrust have not only poisoned people’s private lives, but also undermined whatever social life is left.”
Posted on: Sat, 08 Jun 2013 21:04:33 +0000