Reclaiming the Social Body through Self-Directed Violence

This article dives into the theories of suicide bombers. Despite what many people think, suicide bombing does not only include ethnicity. There are religious groups and other protest groups that have taken part in the violence that not only kills the attacker, but kills others as well. Many people have been beaten down and have lost control over their physical bodies due to oppression. Suicide is their way of being able to have control over their bodies in a different sense. Many westerners look at suicide bombing as an awful and horrific act, which is something that I agree with. Christian religious groups look down upon it as well. In the Christian religion, committing suicide is a way into Hell since there is no way to ask for forgiveness.

I did find this article a little hard to follow. The author seemed to have jumped around a lot, which made it difficult to keep focused. There seemed to be an unbiased point of view from the author. In the article the facts were laid out and no opinions were given. The facts laid out were from an anthropologist point of view, which makes the article relevant to the class. I may have enjoyed the article a little more had it not been for being hard to follow. However, the article did spike my interest in suicide bombing. It was one of those things that I did not think about because it has not directly affected me. Most people do not think about a subject unless it directly affects them, which is why the population seems uneducated and arrogant. Maybe if more people took time to learn more about suicide bombing and other forms of terrorism, there would be less of a threat to our country. The article was not exactly what I thought it would be. I thought the article was going to be purely about suicide bombing, but it went into detail to show how this type of self-destruction is different from other forms of self-destruction that do not involve terrorism. Linos, Natalia. Reclaiming the social body through self-directed violence: Seeking anthropological understanding of suicide attacks. Anthropology Today. October, 2010 Volume 26, No 5.