The Killing of Oneself in the Dispute for Sovereignty

Abstract

Killing oneself or assuming the risk of death in the name of an ethical-political aim, avoiding the infliction of moral or physical wounds on others, has been a recurrent fact throughout history. The instability of the individual resulting from such actions can submit the state or other power to a stupefaction that weakens the exercise of its will. Self-sacrifice of this kind does not always seek to create a counter-power. Indeed, its effectiveness may come from the fact that it does not attempt to create a counter-power and generates a situation that is not the opposite of the previous one, but rather different, with its results getting closer to those desired. Some political self-sacrifices are more appropriate to displace the relationship with the state than to confront it. In the context of threatened state sovereignty, I analyze who is at the heart of political-ethical self-sacrifice, the meaningful nature of the act, some of the individualistic prejudices that obscure its interpretation, and its relationship to other forms of killing oneself.