When you think of another committing suicide, there are multiple reactions that are created within that individual. Some may pity the deceased, others may blame themselves, and others may deem the act so wrong that they choose to forget the person altogether. Yet, for some reason, when you think of a suicide bomber rather than someone who committed suicide, this feeling changes. At this point the suicide bomber is not only taking his own life but also the lives of other innocent people, which some might argue is actually murder and so we consider the suicide bomber a murderer and not simply someone who killed himself. to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay This separation between killing yourself and killing others is what most find so disturbing and frightening about suicide bombers, but it is important to focus on the individual in order to determine the target of this particular style of bodily rhetoric . In the West, our exposure to suicide bombings is fortunately and unfortunately fed to us by the mainstream media. When we see images or hear a story of a suicide bomber killing innocent people in a small cafe, we first feel anger that a person would do such a thing and often mistakenly link the act to religious extremism. We rarely view suicide bombings as an active form of protest to draw attention to a particular issue that is being overlooked. As Kevin DeLuca mentions in his article, “Unruly Arguments: The Body Rhetoric of Earth First!, Act Up, and Queer Nation,” the body is actually a medium through which one can send messages and present new and unconventional ideas. The body, therefore, can be considered the platform of an argumentative strategy. In this case the argumentative strategy would be the suicide attack and the body would be the platform through which to use this strategy. According to DeLuca, new social movements are noteworthy for three main reasons: they reject traditional organizational structures while forming radically democratic disorganizations. They neglect conventional legislative and material goals while practicing the power of naming, framing worldview, and creating identity. of public argumentation while implementing unorthodox political tactics that highlight bodies as resources for argumentation and advocacy” (De Luca 9). Analyzing the suicide bombing, it can be said that the act follows all three of the above precepts and can therefore be considered a new social movement created to radically change the way mainstream society thinks. Unlike the social movements that society is traditionally accustomed to, suicide bombings take the known vulnerability of the human body and push it to the extreme; death. Other social movements such as Earth First and Act Up obviously put their representatives at risk during protests, but they certainly do not go to the extremes of suicide attacks. As DeLuca mentions, the protester “adopts” the mindset of the idea he represents and effectively becomes one with the issue at hand. For example, the Earth First member who decides to bury himself up to his neck in the logging road adopts the worldview of the terrain he is representing. Similarly, the individual who decides to live in a tree to protect it from being felled adopts the perspective of that tree, becoming one with it, and therefore in solidarity with the object he intends to protect. Interestingly, the thing with which the bombersuicide is becoming one and the same as death, and instead of showing a clear position of solidarity towards an issue they care about, they remove themselves from the picture entirely. The human being is not translating his human body into an ecocentric one like the members of Earth First, nor into a homoerotic one like the Members of Act Up, or rather, the suicide bomber seems to withdraw his body from the argumentative process. While this may seem like a weakness of suicide bombers' bodily rhetoric, it could actually be considered a very effective strength. The fact that their life is so horrible that they decide to take their own life publicly, in front of everyone, shows that there is something in that area that needs to be addressed and that, ultimately, can be seen as a cry for help. This initial act of taking one's own life is an effective rhetorical tactic of suicide bombers, but their act of taking the lives of others is the missing link that must be addressed. While taking another life is not something that should ever be underestimated or supported, it is actually another effective strategy of suicide bombers. As mentioned above, when someone takes their own life it is a sad hardship, but when multiple lives are lost due to one person's actions it is definitely considered a tragedy. The idea of location (and therefore the number of people involved) is vital when it comes to creating an effective suicide bombing because it is directly related to the amount of attention the suicide bomber will attract for his actions. For example, if a suicide bomber decided to carry out his objective in the middle of the desert or on an island with no one around, then it would be considered a normal suicide and there would be no media coverage of the event and therefore the objective of bringing once its objective was achieved, attention to the region would not have been achieved. One reason why suicide bombers choose densely populated centers is because the loss of multiple lives will always attract more attention than the death of just one. Furthermore, the death of innocents is guaranteed to attract even more eyes and therefore there is a greater chance that someone will be touched by the attack and therefore call for some kind of action to address the problems occurring in the area. Another aspect of suicide bombing directly linked to its effectiveness is the idea of distraction. Any act of protest is a distraction from everyday life but when a body is used as an instrument of protest it creates the greatest distraction. The body, and therefore every individual, is supposed to follow certain rules and live life in a certain way to follow a path that has been created for them by society. We should wake up in the morning, eat, go to work/school, come home, eat and sleep. When some kind of disruption occurs in the daily routine, not only the participating individual is thrown out of balance, but also the entire order of society. Suicide bombings are therefore one of those literal and figurative distractions in daily life that deserve significant attention from members stuck in the daily cycle that society has deemed appropriate. The literal act of walking into a crowded downtown and detonating a bomb is obviously an obvious distraction from everyday life that initially causes the world to stop and then react in horror to what has just happened. The figurative act of the suicide attack, even if it occurs in a remote part of the world, also induces one to stop what one is doing and pay attention to the attack. In this sense, suicide bombers have actually caught our attention and focused our attention on their part of the world. Although the tactics.
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