Book Panel: "The Burial of Suicide Bombers: Body, Territory and Identity (or Belonging)" by Riva Kastoryano

Based on official reports that specify the terrorists’ place of birth, their travels and sojourns throughout the globe, as well as the complex web that links them to each other, on interviews with experts and with public and intelligence officials in three cities struck by suicide bombers and with representatives of local communities in the country of origin, and the country of residence, this book analyzes and compares the responses of the US, Spain and Great Britain with regard to the burial of the remains of suicide bombers exploded on their territory. States do not recognize suicide bombers as warriors. States’ reactions to these bodies have primarily a symbolic significance. The burial suicide bombers poses practical questions of these jihadis, driven by an identity narrative on their belonging to the umma. The theoretical framework in this book refers to a reflection on a non-territorial war, with the body used as a weapon thereby escaping the control of the state and making justice inapplicable. To raise the question of the burial of the suicide bombers comes to question territory as belonging. For states, burying the remains of suicide bombers come to project themselves in the globalization by “relocating” the body as a reminder of their territorial belonging against an imagined non territorial, global nation represented by umma; a way of binding the body, this object of global power to “a land” that is national, and in the case of the second generation of immigrants in Europe, to “restore” a territorial citizenship.