Saturday, April 14, 2007

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Blown Up

My sister is about to go live in Morocco (Interzone, if you're William S. Burroughs) for the next two years, which makes this a bit unnerving to me, but, according to Le Monde, two suicide bombers recently blew themselves up in Casablanca near the American cultural center. They wounded a passerby, but otherwise caused no real damage, except to themselves obviously. I wonder- do these people consider a suicide bombing that goes this way to be successful? Because I guess it does scare people, so maybe that was a success. It's really not great strategy though. At some point, you'd think they'd come up with a plan b. Is the point of doing it just to do it? Could we expect at some point that they won't even need to kill other people and we could just give them a demilitarized zone to blow themselves up in? Are they basically taking the prevailing yen for meaningless decontextualized experiences to a logical extreme? Death as performance art? Suicide as publicity stunt?

6 comments:

Greg von Winckel said...

Why is she moving to Morocco?

Rufus said...

She's married and they both got teaching jobs there for the next two years. I suppose one gets tired of teaching in Oregon high schools...

Greg von Winckel said...

Wow. That is more adventurous that me. Best wishes on that.

Rufus said...

It's interesting how many people I know are leaving the homeland. Another friend of mine moved to Amsterdam, and you're in Austria, and I'm starting the process of getting Canadian citizenship. Actually, the rest of you make me moving to Canada sound pretty boring.

Greg von Winckel said...

Why not move to Europe? It's just cooler here.

Rufus said...

Well, it's definitely easier to get around, especially for those of us who hate to drive. The first day after I returned here all I could think was 'Why do they put everything so far away from everything else?'