Kamikaze's paradise

• Autores: Federica de Cordova
• Localización: Altre Modernità: Rivista di studi letterari e culturali, ISSN-e 2035-7680, Nº. 7, 2012 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Paradisi), págs. 14-23
• Idioma: italiano
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• Resumen

  • The terrorist attack on the Twin Towers on 11 September 2001 represents a pivotal moment in the dynamic that shapes the explanatory and identification category of "the West" in a crisis of relationship with the "other" that has taken on the tone of a clash of civilizations .

    Within this scenario, the present work starts from the interpretation of the suicide terrorist as kamikaze to develop a reflection on the construction of the categories we/other in contemporary Western society. The image of the martyr who seeks - through the bomb that will destroy his earthly life - a road to paradise is an archaic paradox that still resonates in us, reduced to a simplified simulacrum, in itself sufficient to explain the absurdity of a gesture so powerfully destructive. The paradise of the suicide bomber assumes the function of a screen that allows us to distance ourselves from the other, confine him to a world totally alien, so different as to be driven by irrationality and inhumanity.

    In a society that is increasingly immune and saved from the negative, the image of paradise becomes a necessary filter to face the destructive event, avoiding the need to relate with it in an attempt to understand