Resumen de Suicide, Violence, and Cultural Conceptions of Martyrdom in Palestine

Neil L. Whitehead, Nasser Abufarha

• Much of the scholarly discourse on "suicide terrorism" focuses on the political strategies of these acts of violence and fails to consider their cultural dimensions, which are key to understanding how these acts gain popular support and become potential individual motivations. These forms of violence are conceived in cultural forms related to local knowledge and historical memory that are poorly understood by Western researchers and reporters. The difference in the terminology of describing the act as “suicide” in Western discourse while it is referenced as “martyrdom” in Palestine signals the width of this epistemological gap. These acts are far more complex than a desperate “suicide” or a unstoppable desire to “kill the enemy.” Through their performance and wider representation such acts generate collective cultural conceptions among Palestinians and at the same time continue a violent dialogue with the Israeli state.