Body, Emotion and Violence: Palestinian Suicide Bombing/Martyrdom (1993-2005)

Palestinian suicide bombing/martyrdom speaks both to the symbolic significance of the human body and also to the connections that this form of violence has to religious and interconnected political authorities and influences. This article examines these religiously and politically inspired events using an analysis of emotion and body, placing particular emphasis on their mediation through culture. Drawing on Palestinian poetry, art and websites as well as existing research that includes mostly un-theorised discussions of body and emotion (especially humiliation) within the context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, this article goes beyond the blatancy of the final explosive act. As such, it uncovers a variety of deeply embedded cultural motifs and metaphors that speak to how body and emotion permeate the Palestinian cultural landscape and collective consciousness. This process, in turn, unearths the importance of ideologies that centre on religion, nationality, authority, land and self to the shaping of the cultural milieu from which the suicide bomber/martyr emerges.