Weaponization of Life: Human Shields and Hunger Strikers

<p>This conversation with Banu Bargu is centered around the concept of “weaponization of life” that she coins in her book, <em>Starve and Immolate. </em>In it, she describes political self-destructive practices as political practice, in particular in the context of the leftist prisoners’ fast death struggle in the 2000s Turkey. We associate to these practices the concept of human shield to which she also dedicated research. Through these various forms of voluntary incarnated precariousness, we discuss the spectacularization of the action, the economy of life implied by it, as well as the mode of biopolitical sovereignty against which it is deployed.</p> <p>Banu Bargu is associate professor of politics at the New School for Social Research. Her main area of specialization is political theory, especially modern and contemporary political thought, with a thematic focus on theories of sovereignty, biopolitics, and resistance. Her research is situated at the intersection of philosophy, politics, history, and political anthropology, with a regional emphasis on the Middle East, especially Turkish politics. Bargu’s work draws upon the traditions of continental and critical theory as well as the history of Western political thought, with a keen interest in interrogating these traditions from the perspective of salient political issues and current resistance practices around questions of violence, the body, sacrifice, martyrdom, and aesthetics. She is the author of the award-winning <em>Starve and Immolate: The Politics of Human Weapons</em> (Columbia University Press, 2014). Her essays have appeared in such venues as <em>diacritics</em>,<em> Contemporary Political Theory</em>,<em> Angelaki</em>,<em> theory & event</em>,<em> South Atlantic Quarterly</em>,<em> qui parle,</em> and <em>Constellations</em>. Bargu is currently working on a book-length manuscript on aleatory materialism, which examines Louis Althusser’s political thought and his rethinking of the materialist tradition.</p>