This dissertation explores politico-symbolic deployments of death in figurations of national identity and sovereignty in the Kurdish conflict in Turkey. Many Kurds have died in their successive rebellions over the last century. However, biological death has not necessarily excluded them from Kurdish culture and politics. Rather, through a symbolic economy of “gift” the Kurds resurrect their dead as martyrs – affective forces that powerfully shape public, political and daily life and promote Kurdish national identity as a sacred communion of the dead and the living. For its own part, the Turkish state has been endeavoring to eradicate this persistent power of the Kurdish dead by obstructing their appropriation and assimilation into the regenerative realms of Kurdish national-symbolic. While these struggles are still in effect, with the shift in Kurdish politics away from the original goal of national independence in 1999, the Kurdish dead emerged as a site of contention also among the Kurds. At least until 2005 the place of the dead in Kurdish politics also shifted with a new politics of memory that the leadership of Kurdish movement initiated to buttress the “peace process”. Based on two-year fieldwork in Diyarbakır, the informal capital of Kurds in Turkey, this study explores the Kurdish political imaginaries and subjectivities that are generated in and through these multiple struggles and contentions over the Kurdish dead, situating death as a central symbolic and semantic field constitutive to national identity and sovereignty. This study contributes to the ethnography of the Kurds, Turkey and the Middle East as well as theories of death, the body, nationalism, sovereignty and political subjectivity. / text

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of St. Andrews, 2000. / Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. [231]-259) and index.

Thesis (Th. M.)--Covenant Theological Seminary, 2005. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 121-126).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 1995. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 177-192).

Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of History, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 39-42).

Thesis (Th. M.)--Covenant Theological Seminary, 2005. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 121-126).

This paper looks at three significant instances of the representation of abolitionist martyrdom in nineteenth-century America to first sketch the abolitionist discourse and its varied conceptualizations of martyrdom and second question the rationale and success of this strategy for manumitting slaves. Accordingly, I start with Brown, who (with help from sympathetic northerners and the megaphone of the Associated Press) appealed to the martyrological tradition in order to transform his paramilitary failure at Harper’s Ferry into a powerful symbol of his own abolitionist righteousness over and against the state’s iniquity. Though the superficial differences between Brown and arch-sentimentalist Harriet Beecher Stowe have discouraged their comparison, a look at the logic of martyrdom reveals a similar strategy at work in both Brown’s martyrization and Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which makes death an argument for the manumission of slaves. I argue that this hugely successful novel reveals the potency of martyrological thinking in 19th-century America as it also reveals martyrdom and its logic to be the foundation of sentimentalism like Stowe’s. Finally, I look at the speeches and nonfiction of Frederick Douglass to argue that his own martyrization of John Brown is different than what we see in Brown and Stowe because it provokes change rather than validating abolitionism that already exists. To various degrees, these writers seem aware that there may be a problem in the rhetorical use of martyrdom against the putatively secular state; they consequently employ different strategies for negotiating the meaninglessness of suffering and death with the soteriological and eschatological assumptions of their day. These negotiations reveal the extent to which martyrdom could be taken seriously as a hammer of abolitionism by different authors and thus also indicate the degree to which martyrdom can be taken seriously as a political solution whatsoever. Ultimately, I want to argue that martyrdom and its logic are at best dubious when applied to secular politics precisely because it relies upon the analogy to Jesus Christ as savior, which cannot hold outside Christianity. Simply put, the death of a mortal cannot register eschatologically and, more importantly, death does not make a cogent argument for anything. Instead, martyrdom is preaching to the choir par excellance; whether the choir is Christian, abolitionist, or something else, martyrological appeals do not grow its membership, as martyrologists since early modernity have assumed.

Esta dissertação tem como tema o martírio cristão em escritos mendicantes no século XIII. Busca aprofundar reflexões sobre a temática martirológica da seguinte maneira: primeiramente, posiciona o martírio em relação a outros tipos de morte, destaca os fatores de aproximação e distanciamento entre o morto comum e o mártir e levanta, a partir da análise dos conceitos de “sagrado” e “violência”, duas hipóteses explicativas para a diminuição de canonizações oficias de mártires no século XIII. Uma trata dos problemas em torno do sujeito que executa o papel ativo na cena do martírio, ou seja, o assassino. Outra reflete sobre dispositivos de controle da violência e a possibilidade de terem diminuído o status oficial do mártir. Após, visa analisar como os conceitos de martírio e mártir eram trabalhados nos escritos das ordens franciscana e dominicana e como se distanciavam de alguns conceitos que antecederam essas ordens. A partir da história intelectual, percebe-se que em alguns momentos após as perseguições aos cristãos no âmbito do Império Romano, a morte deixou de ser exigida, sendo enfatizado o sofrimento para a configuração do mártir. Os mendicantes efetuam um retorno à exigência da morte. Por último, centra a atenção sobre Pedro de Verona, mártir dominicano morto em 1252 e canonizado em 1253. Propõe-se, por um viés de antropologia histórica, analisar as relações de intercâmbio em que o frade foi visto como participante pelos produtores dominicanos de textos sobre sua vida, morte e culto. / This paper works with the Christian martyrdom in the mendicant writings of the thirteenth century. In three chapters, it seeks to deepen reflections on the subject of martyrology as follows: in the first one, it positions martyrdom in relation to other types of death, highlights the factors of approximation and distance between the common dead and the martyr and raises, from the analysis of the concepts of “sacred” and “violence”, two explanatory hypotheses for the reduction of official canonizations of martyrs in the thirteenth century. One deals with the problems surrounding the subject who performs the active role in the scene of martyrdom, that is, the killer. Another reflects on the mechanisms to control violence and the possibility of it having diminished the official status of the martyr. The second chapter aims at analyzing how the concepts of martyrdom and martyr were worked out in the writings of the Franciscan and Dominican orders and how they deviated from some concepts that preceded these Orders. Through intellectual history, it can be seen that at some moments after the persecution of Christians under the Roman Empire, death was no longer required, and the suffering was emphasized for the configuration of the martyr. The mendicants make a return to the requirement of death. The third chapter focuses on Peter of Verona, a Dominican martyr who died in 1252 and was canonized in 1253. It is proposed, through a bias of historical anthropology, to analyze the relations of exchange in which the friar was seen as a participant by the Dominican producers of texts about his life, death and cult.

Esta dissertação tem como tema o martírio cristão em escritos mendicantes no século XIII. Busca aprofundar reflexões sobre a temática martirológica da seguinte maneira: primeiramente, posiciona o martírio em relação a outros tipos de morte, destaca os fatores de aproximação e distanciamento entre o morto comum e o mártir e levanta, a partir da análise dos conceitos de “sagrado” e “violência”, duas hipóteses explicativas para a diminuição de canonizações oficias de mártires no século XIII. Uma trata dos problemas em torno do sujeito que executa o papel ativo na cena do martírio, ou seja, o assassino. Outra reflete sobre dispositivos de controle da violência e a possibilidade de terem diminuído o status oficial do mártir. Após, visa analisar como os conceitos de martírio e mártir eram trabalhados nos escritos das ordens franciscana e dominicana e como se distanciavam de alguns conceitos que antecederam essas ordens. A partir da história intelectual, percebe-se que em alguns momentos após as perseguições aos cristãos no âmbito do Império Romano, a morte deixou de ser exigida, sendo enfatizado o sofrimento para a configuração do mártir. Os mendicantes efetuam um retorno à exigência da morte. Por último, centra a atenção sobre Pedro de Verona, mártir dominicano morto em 1252 e canonizado em 1253. Propõe-se, por um viés de antropologia histórica, analisar as relações de intercâmbio em que o frade foi visto como participante pelos produtores dominicanos de textos sobre sua vida, morte e culto. / This paper works with the Christian martyrdom in the mendicant writings of the thirteenth century. In three chapters, it seeks to deepen reflections on the subject of martyrology as follows: in the first one, it positions martyrdom in relation to other types of death, highlights the factors of approximation and distance between the common dead and the martyr and raises, from the analysis of the concepts of “sacred” and “violence”, two explanatory hypotheses for the reduction of official canonizations of martyrs in the thirteenth century. One deals with the problems surrounding the subject who performs the active role in the scene of martyrdom, that is, the killer. Another reflects on the mechanisms to control violence and the possibility of it having diminished the official status of the martyr. The second chapter aims at analyzing how the concepts of martyrdom and martyr were worked out in the writings of the Franciscan and Dominican orders and how they deviated from some concepts that preceded these Orders. Through intellectual history, it can be seen that at some moments after the persecution of Christians under the Roman Empire, death was no longer required, and the suffering was emphasized for the configuration of the martyr. The mendicants make a return to the requirement of death. The third chapter focuses on Peter of Verona, a Dominican martyr who died in 1252 and was canonized in 1253. It is proposed, through a bias of historical anthropology, to analyze the relations of exchange in which the friar was seen as a participant by the Dominican producers of texts about his life, death and cult.

Dans la littérature arabo-islamique médiévale, le thème de l’amour a été traité par un grand nombre d’ouvrages en prose. Un véritable genre littéraire des traités d’amour courtois s’est développé à partir du IIIe/IXe siècle. Si les débuts et l’“âge d’or” du genre ont déjà fait l’objet d’études, ses développements tardifs demeurent encore inexplorés. Le Wāḍiḥ al-mubīn fī ḏikr man ustušhida min al-muḥibbīn, écrit par Muġulṭāy (762/1361), présente à ce titre des caractères originaux. A travers l’analyse littéraire de ce texte, il apparaît en effet que le Wāḍiḥ, tout en s’appuyant sur le patrimoine littéraire sur l’amour courtois qui le précède, se fait porteur d’une conception tout à fait nouvelle du Ýišq (amour-passion) ainsi que d’une théorie originale du martyre par amour. Par les déclarations mêmes de son auteur, de même que par sa structure et par son contenu, l’ouvrage se présente comme un manuel de comportement à suivre. La conception de l’amour que l’ouvrage sous-tend constitue donc un véritable tournant dans l’histoire du genre. Le Wāḍiḥ est le seul ouvrage de ce type à avoir été censuré. Les raisons de l’hostilité que l’ouvrage a rencontrée auprès des autorités mameloukes sont à rechercher dans la “théorie de l’amour” prônée par Muġulṭāy. Elle ne se dégage pas seulement de sa longue introduction, mais transparaît aussi dans la comparaison entre les notices du Wāḍiḥ et celles d’autres ouvrages du patrimoine arabo-islamique médiéval. Tout en rapportant des aḫbār très connus, Muġulṭāy réussit à les refondre de manière novatrice. Il présente ses histoires d’amour et de mort comme matière à édifier ses lecteurs. Le comportement des amants mentionnés dans le Wāḍiḥ, qu’ils soient les victimes de l’amour profane (hétérosexuel ou homosexuel) ou de l’amour de Dieu, est toujours présenté comme exemplaire. Ses martyrs deviennent dès lors des modèles de conduite à suivre par tout bon musulman. / In medieval Arabic Islamic literature, the topic of love was treated in a quite big number of prose works. A true literary genre of courtly love treatises started to develop from the 3rd/9th century. While the first period and the “golden age” of this genre have already been quite intensely studied, its later development remains still unexplored. The al-Wāḍiḥ al-mubīn fī ḏikr man ustušhida min al-muḥibbīn written by Muġulṭāy (762/1361), even though it has its place among the treatises of this genre, has its own special features. The analysis of the text shows that, even if it is based on the traditional literary background of courtly love, the Wāḍiḥ defends a very new notion of passionate love and an original theory of martyrdom of love. Muġulṭāy presents his work as a handbook of good behaviour. A confirmation of this intention is to be found in the structure and the content of his treatise. Muġulṭāy’s approach of courtly love represents then a real turning point in the history of the gender. The Wāḍiḥ is the only courtly love treatise that has been censored by political and religious authorities. The reasons of the interdiction that has stricken the book are probably to be sought in Muġulṭāy’s theory of love. The author explains his theory’s main features in the introduction, but also in lover’s stories as the comparison between the aḫbār in the Wāḍiḥ and others books of Arabic literature shows. Even if the stories are very well known and have been told again and again, the fact that Muġulṭāy is presenting his histories like edification matter for his reader changes them in something really new. No difference is made between his lovers who can be the victims of God love as well as of profane love (heterosexual or homosexual). They are all martyrs and became the models of the behaviour that has to be followed by every good Muslim.