The Theopolitics of Martyrdom

The figure of the martyr simultaneously inspires awe and reverence, anxiety and suspicion. Various religious traditions interpret and sanction the martyr as a divine model of witness, sacrifice, and love. In secular translations, the martyr is read as a sacrificial figure of social/political cause. In this way, martyrdom has a highly variegated grammar, with religious and secular iterations, but ultimately pertains to a question of relation to truth, in speech and at times, in dying. The martyr bears witness and testifies to truth, in preparation to struggle and give up one’s life for it. While the idea of martyrdom translates suffering and death into a particular grammar, it also holds within it affective frames of collective memory and movement. This roundtable seeks to think through the sociopolitical figure of the martyr between life/death by way of the theological and anthropological—using poetic, visual, and creative variations of language and grammar.