Abstract
Recognized in the 20th- and 21st-century history of political suicides as a radical act of protest and a spectacular expression of an intense experience of suffering, self-burning has returned since 2010 when Mohamed Bouazizi's act sparked protests in Tunisia. Its last wave in Europe includes those cases of self-incinerations in which the conditions for their political performativity are only partly fulfilled: the acts are public and communicate with the antagonist in the symbolic places of power, but their motivations aren't explicitly formulated as political. When self-annihilation is triggered by the basic needs and rights to maintain life - such as unemployment, housing crises, conflicts at work and other forms of precarity - means and ends with respect to life become indistinguishable. How can life be weaponized as a transindividual form of dissent if self-destruction also brings an end to desperation and suffering of the person? How are we to attend to irreperable acts of self-annihilation, which stand in dire contrast to contemporary practices of self-care, vitalist intensity and self-enhancement?
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