My study addresses how and why responses to the act of self-immolation often involve desensitized reactions, such as the use of puns. Self-immolation was once more respected and influential than it is today. The best example of this is Thich Quang Duc’s 1963 self-immolation protest that may have profoundly affected the Vietnam War. To understand the transition from Duc’s self-immolation to our current times, I contextualize the rhetoric involved in self-immolation throughout history, culture, religion, and media. Integral to self-immolation is its body rhetoric that prompts rhetorical discourse. This discourse involves performative rhetoric, the disputed cause of the self-immolator, the mediation of the self-immolation, and the audience response. I consider current online user responses from various online spaces that report and/or react to recent self-immolations in America. My findings indicate that self-immolation is still able to challenge American ideologies, profoundly influence audiences, and prompt critical rhetorical discourse / The rhetoric of self-immolation -- Theorizing self-immolation rhetoric -- The self-immolation situation in India and Buddhism -- The self-immolation situation in America -- The self-immolation of Daniel Shaull and Cecelia Casals. / Department of English

Can private bodily pain be transformed into a communication medium fit for the public sphere? Can the body in pain be utilized as a means for political participation? If so, how? Under what circumstances? By whom? And to what effect? To begin answering these questions, this dissertation concentrates on extralinguistic confrontational practices such as self-immolation suicide protests that are exercised by those who have been marginalized and excluded from political participation. By focusing on hitherto neglected forms of communication that are visual, spectacular, violent, unruly, and physical, the study expands and complicates the current discussions about the public sphere that are usually yoked to speculation on the boundaries of reason and words. Arguing that the body in pain is a theoretically considerable and practically available mode of public participation, the dissertation examines the rhetorical potency as well as fragility of body rhetoric. Each chapter analyzes different cases of self-immolation, addressing such issues as embodiment in publicity, the gap between private sensation and public discourse, the role of emotion in constituting the public sphere, and the judgments of the audience. The cases offer an opportunity not only to theorize how subaltern people appear out of the darkness of sheltered existence and enter the space of appearance by utilizing their body, but also to rethink the civic art of looking upon suffering. Through the exploration of the place of embodied performance, visual spectacle, and moral stuntsmanship within the larger discussion of democracy, the dissertation endeavors to rehabilitate publicity as a nondialogical political value.

The subject of this thesis is self-immolation in Buddhist countries. The author shows examples from both history and the present and interprets them as a ritualised pattern passed on from the fourth century until the present time, the continuity of which was based on literary tradition as well as on historical occurrences. She demonstrates that self-immolations in Vietnam and Tibet also follow the centuries long tradition and prove to have the same components. The author intends to answer the question of the origin of the tradition in Buddhism and its broad popularity compared to other forms of self-sacrifice. Reasons for self-immolations among the Buddhists might have been manyfold: to demonstrate their loyalty to the buddhist doctrine and the Buddha, to use it as means of attaining enlightment immediately or as a form of a political protest. All of the above can be understood as a sacrifice to the Three Jewels of Buddhism, i.e. the Buddha, the Drarma and the Sangha. The author also handles self-immolation in Buddhism as a question of ethics in order to present the problem in its completeness. In doing so, she concentrates on the point of view of the followers of Buddhism themselves. The phenomenon proves to have many forms and therefore even the Buddhists are nor united in their opinions....

Submitted by Silvana Teresinha Dornelles Studzinski (sstudzinski) on 2015-06-25T12:25:52Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Karine Viana Maciel.pdf: 2535958 bytes, checksum: 49b9572829afd97dff02ab49891de5f4 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-06-25T12:25:52Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Karine Viana Maciel.pdf: 2535958 bytes, checksum: 49b9572829afd97dff02ab49891de5f4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013 / Nenhuma / Esta dissertação é composta por dois artigos, um de revisão sistemática da literatura e um empírico. A pesquisa desenvolvida teve como foco de investigação as tentativas de suicídio realizadas a partir do uso do fogo. No estudo I, realizou-se uma revisão sistemática da literatura nacional e internacional sobre a temática das tentativas de suicídio através de queimaduras autoinfligidas, no período de 2007-2012, nas bases de dados Academic Search Premier, MEDLINE/Pubmed, Lilacs e Scielo. Encontrou-se 23 artigos, a maioria de natureza quantitativa e que foram publicados em diferentes revistas da área da saúde e por diferentes profissionais. Os resultados apontam que este acontecimento ocorre com maior freqüência nos países subdesenvolvidos, em que as taxas para o suicídio consumado apresentam-se maiores para o sexo masculino e, nos casos de tentativas de suicídio, a grande maioria dos sujeitos é do sexo feminino. Os estudos também averiguaram que as pessoas que tentavam suicídio pelo fogo apresentavam baixo nível de escolaridade, deram na maioria adultos jovens e tinham histórico psiquiátrico e/ou abuso de drogas e dificuldades de relacionamento social e familiar. Já no estudo II, o objetivo foi compreender os significados da escolha do fogo como um dispositivo para a tentativa de suicídio e identificar os aspectos emocionais que permeiam a vida desses indivíduos diante do trauma da queimadura. Participaram do estudo oito mulheres que haviam sofrido queimaduras autoinfligidas há pelo menos um ano e meio e que estavam em acompanhamento médico ambulatorial para reparação das cicatrizes da queimadura em um hospital de Porto Alegre. Todas as participantes responderam a uma entrevista semiestruturada que investigava a história de vida das participantes, o momento de atear-se fogo, a experiência da queimadura, seu atual contexto de vida, os sentimentos após o ato, a reinserção social e como a queimadura tem afetado no seu dia a dia e sua saúde psíquica e física. Além disso, também foi aplicado um questionário de dados sociodemográficos e clínicos. A idade das mesmas variou entre 24 e 55 anos, cinco delas relataram serem casadas/viver junto, duas se separaram após a ocorrência da queimadura e uma delas era viúva. A maioria das participantes colocou fogo em si mesmo num ato impulsivo, em que elas não tinham conhecimento sobre as cicatrizes deixadas pela queimadura e admitiram tê-lo feito para intenção de chamar a atenção de algum familiar próximo a elas. Após o ato, surgiram dificuldades relacionadas à reinserção social, enfrentamento com o olhar de estranhamento do outro e com o seu próprio, diante de uma nova imagem. Concluiu-se que é de extrema importância que se invista em programas de informação e prevenção a fim de evitar que novos casos de queimaduras autoinfligidas venham a ocorrer, causando consequências devastadoras destes sujeitos. / This dissertation consists in two articles, a systematic review of the literature and an empirical. The conducted survey focused on research suicide attempts made from the use of fire. The study 1 carried out a systematic review of national and international literature on the topic of suicide attempts by self-inflicted burns in the period 2007-2012, the databases Academic Search Premier, MEDLINE / PubMed, Lilacs and Scielo. It was found 23 articles, most quantitative and which were published in various journals in the area of health and by different professionals. The results show that this event occurs more frequently in developing countries, where the rates for suicide present higher for males, and in cases of attempted suicide, the vast majority of subjects were female. The studies also found out that people who had attempted suicide by fire had low level of education achievement, were mostly young adults and had psychiatric history and/or substance abuse and difficulties on social and family relationships. In the study 2, the aim was to understand the meanings of the choice of fire as a device for the suicide attempt and identify the emotional aspects that permeate the lives of these individuals before the burn trauma. The study included eight women who had suffered self-inflicted burns for at least a year and a half and were under medical supervision for outpatient repair of burn scars at a hospital in Porto Alegre. All participants completed a semi structured interview that was investigating the life history of the participants, the time to fire themselves, experience the burn, their current life context, the feelings after the act, social reintegration and how the burn has affected in their daily lives and their mental and physical health. In addition, a questionnaire was administered to sociodemographic and clinical data. The age of them ranged between 24 and 55 years old, five of them reported being married/living together, two got divorced after the burn occurrence and one was widowed. Most participants set fire to themselves in an impulsive act, in which they had no knowledge about the scars left by burns and admitted having done so with the intention of calling a close relative’s attention. After the act, there were difficulties related to social reintegration, coping with the look of estrangement from the other and with their own, before a new image. It was concluded that it is extremely important to invest in prevention and information programs to avoid the occurrence of new cases of self-inflicted burns that cause devastating consequences in these people.

Burn injuries are associated with significant mortality and morbidity. Intentional burn injuries are not well understood, and warrant study to improve adjustment and outcomes. The present study examined group differences between intentional and unintentional burn injuries, comparing individuals with self-inflicted (SIB; n=109) and other-inflicted (OIB; n=109) burns to an unintentional burn (UB) group. Compared to UB, those with intentional (SIB, OIB) burn injuries were more likely to be young, female, unmarried, unemployed, abuse substances, and have positive alcohol/drug screens at hospital admission. Individuals with intentional burns report more psychological distress, lower quality of life in some areas, and lower life satisfaction. When SIB and OIB were examined individually, OIB were more likely to be African American compared to SIB and UB. OIB also had more anxiety and paranoia than UB. SIB was more likely than OIB and UB to have had medical problems or psychiatric disorders and treatment prior to the burn injury. Those with SIB were 3 times more likely than UB to die in the hospital even after controlling for age, severity of burn, and inhalation injuries. Moreover, the SIB group had high rates of suicidal ideation at discharge and follow-up. Treatment implications for burn treatment providers were discussed.

The master thesis titled "Self-immolation of Jan Palach - from reality, newspaper/TV news to film cover and film reviews of Burning Bush" concerns of film cover of real events in three parts drama called Burning Bush, which is the main topic of the movie. The thesis aims to ascertain to what extent it is the movie with a documentary elements, where authors would have to represent only real events and to what extent it is artistic movie where authors have more space in creativity and could change reality to impress spectators with theatricality and emocionality, with the risk they will change the meaning of real events, therefore they would manipulate with the spectator. The thesis also essays the media content before the 1989 and after the 1989, while it aims to find out not only what is the difference in the newspaper and TV news, but also what difference is in the quantity of the content regarding to Jan Palach in the times of totality and democracy.

The notion that religion intensifies nationalism and escalates conflict is widely accepted. In spite of its frequent association with violence, however, religious doctrines and institutions sometimes appear to have the radical power to deescalate conflict and reroute the expression of political grievances away from bloodshed. How, and under what conditions, might religion lend itself to the mitigation of ethnic conflict? Focusing on Buddhist nationalisms in East Asia and Southeast Asia, the three papers in this dissertation study the influence of religious beliefs on political attitudes and conflict behavior at various levels of analysis. Using ethnographic approaches, case study methods, and original field data collected from nearly a hundred interviews among Tibetan subjects in India and Sinhalese monastics in Sri Lanka, these essays seek to deepen the nuances and complexity in our understanding of the relationship between Buddhism, nationalism, and violence.Paper #1 studies the relationship between Buddhism and suicide protest, focusing on the puzzle of self-immolation: Why do high-commitment protesters in some conflicts choose this method over conventional tactics of nonviolent resistance or suicide terrorism? Taking the wave of Tibetan self-immolations between 2009 and 2018 as a case study, this paper probes the causal importance of strategic considerations, structural constraints, and normative restraints that may have influenced the protesters’ choice of method. I develop a theoretical framework proposing that suicide protesters evaluate potential tactics based on three criteria: disruptive capability, operational feasibility, and ethical permissibility. Leveraging in-depth interviews and a close reading of the self-immolators’ last words, I conclude that the Buddhist clergy’s broad conception of violence, interacting with international norms, constrains the protesters’ tactical latitude by narrowing the parameters of what qualifies as nonviolent action, thereby eliminating many of the standard repertoires of contention from the movement’s arsenal while sanctioning self-immolation as a legitimate form of dissent. I argue that a fundamental paradox in the self-immolators’ theory of change, namely the tension between a tactic’s disruptive capability and ethical permissibility, ends up restricting their freedom of action. Paper #2 zooms out to examine the relationship between religion, nationalism, and violence. It starts with a broad question: How, and under what conditions, might religion lend itself to the mitigation –– or the escalation –– of ethnonational conflict? To what extent do religious ideas travel from scripture to political preferences and conflict behavior? I develop two hypotheses predicting the influence of scriptural ideas on nationalist commitment and suggestibility to violence –– devoting special attention to how a group’s conception of its own national interest might be affected when the religious identity of its members supersedes their political identity. The paper finds that the Buddhist belief in rebirth can undermine the strength of one’s nationalist commitment by injecting a dose of ambiguity into one’s conception of identity. This suggests that a religious belief such as rebirth can be mobilized to deescalate ethnonational conflict by highlighting the fluidity of ethnic identity and thus lowering the stakes of conflict. Moreover, it also finds that Mahayana Buddhism’s emphasis on altruism, while rooted in compassion toward others, can end up increasing an individual’s suggestibility to violence and therefore should not be assumed to be a pacifying force in conflict. Mahayana doctrines, though built on more inclusivist founding principles than the Theravada tradition and therefore more resistant to exclusivist ideologies like nationalism, are nevertheless susceptible to utilitarian reasoning and lend themselves readily to the justification of violence. In our interviews, Tibetan monastics, educated under a uniform Mahayana curriculum, turned out to be far more suggestible to violence than their Theravada counterparts in Sri Lanka, an observation that supports our counterintuitive hypothesis linking an altruism-oriented curriculum with suggestibility to violence. Paper #3 takes a historical case study approach to examine how Buddhist religious ideas may have, in interaction with liberal international norms, influenced the Tibetan leadership’s de-escalation politics in the Sino-Tibetan conflict. While paper #2 of this dissertation explored Buddhism’s relationship with nationalism and violence at the level of rank-and-file citizens, this paper shifts the focus from group-level preferences to elite-level decision-making. It relies on document analysis and process tracing methods to answer a particular historical question: How did the independence-seeking Tibetan nationalist leadership of the 1960s evolve into compromise-seeking pacifists in the 1980s and subsequent decades? I seek to illuminate the pathways by which religious beliefs and charismatic leadership structure, in interaction with the normative constraints of liberal internationalism, may have facilitated the Tibetan leadership’s de-escalation politics in the Sino-Tibetan conflict. To do so, I leverage counterfactual history (Belkin & Tetlock, 1996), biographical data of key leaders (Creswell, 1998), and document analysis of their speeches and writings –– including a close examination of the Dalai Lama’s annual March 10 speeches from 1960 to 2011. While the other two papers explore the multifaceted relationship between Buddhism, nationalism, and violence by studying the political attitudes and conflict behavior of ordinary people and rank-and-file monastics, this paper delves into the political and psychological evolution of two Tibetan leaders, the Dalai Lama and former Tibetan prime minister Samdhong Rinpoche, to examine the ways in which private religious beliefs can interact with global norms to guide and constrain the high-level foreign policy decision-making of political elites.

This master thesis, The reform movement and the normalization of relations in Jihlava (1960-1971), maps the course of that period in Jihlava, the capital of the region Vysočina. The first part of this work includes a brief introduction into the atmosphere in Czechoslovakia in 1960s and the historical development in Jihlava in the same period. The second chapter describes the course of events from the beginning of year 1968, colloquially called "The Prague Spring". New politicians ascended to the politic power and established a new theory, which was called "Socialism with a human face". The third part deals with the invasion of the Warsaw Pact army of Czechoslovakia on 21st August 1968. The text focuses mainly on Jihlava. The fifth chapter describes the course of events in Czechoslovakia since the second half of year 1968 to April 1971. This period is called normalization and is characterized by retreating from the post-January policy, personnel changes, restoring censorship, etc. The last part of the thesis concerns itself with Evžen Plocek. He was an active reform politician in Jihlava and committed suicide in April 1969. He burned himself to death due to the consequences of the Warsaw Pact army invasion of The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in 1968.