Professor Don Handelman, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Self-Exploders, Self-Sacrifice, and the Rhizomic Organization of Terrorism

Abstract:

Many of the human bombs of today's terrorism are self-exploders, products of terrorism that is assembled through rhizomic organization. The rhizome is a social metamorph, trans-forming itself through its own dynamics of ongoing movement, through its assemblages and lines of flight. The terrorist self-exploder is a self-transformer, intending to act on the world through one's own self-destruction. Such acting on the world through self-sacrifice may have cosmic implications, integral to world-making, the creation of worlds through the destruction of worlds. The transforming rhizome and the transforming self-exploder are highly complementary dynamics. To argue this perspective I take another look at the 'spiritual manual' left behind by the 9/11 self-exploders, the manual as a ritual guide to self-sacrifice that opens the way to Divine creation.

Profile:

Don Handelman is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His many publications include: Models and Mirrors: Towards an Anthropology of Public Events (1990), Nationalism and the Israeli State (2004); (with David Shulman) God Inside Out: Siva's Game of Dice (1997) and Siva in the Forest of Pines: An Essay on Sorcery and Self-Knowledge (2004). And, edited collections: (With Galina Lindquist) Ritual in its Own Right: Exploring the Dynamics of Transformation (2005); and (with Terry Evens) The Manchester School: Practice and Ethnographic Praxis in Anthropology (2006).

There will be no informal encounter after this seminar because we proceed directly to Dinesan Vadakkiniyin’s obligatory lecture for the degree of PhD, 3.15 pm in Bergens Sjøfartsmuseum.