Chapter
Sacrificial Immortality: Toward a Theory of Suicidal Terrorism and Related Phenomena (IN: The Psychoanalytic Study of Society, vol. 18, ed. by L B Boyer et al.)
Hazani M
This chapter outlines a theory of suicidal terrorism in the broad sense of the term, that is, including all manifestations of self- & other-directed aggression in the name of absolute truth (i.e., mass suicide, suicidal homicides, homicidal suicides, & passive-aggressive phenomena). The core of the author’s argument is that suicidal terrorism is a possible outcome of a ruptured, incomplete, or incoherent totalistic system, which while presenting the survivors with an external enemy, fails to rid them of their internal persecutors. Lifton’s paradigm of symbolic immortality serves as a foundationf for these arguments, while various international examples of suicidal terrorism are explored. (95 refs)