In their perpetration of acts described variously as monstrous or beyond the assumed limits of possibility, the suicide bomber’s belief in their cause outstrips ‘the natural human instinct for survival, or any desire to be remembered … It’s almost as though they could not scale down the enormity of their rage to anything smaller than their deeds.’ (link)
In a biopolitical context, one would assume that the fetishistic elevation of life would preclude self-destruction as a means of expression, unless there were literally no alternative.
As an actor, then, the suicide bomber is already immune to the ‘various deterrents predicated on a desire to continue living and living as well as possible’ (link, p. 629), and it is this capacity which enables them to blow a hole in the membrane of biopolitical state.
