Projecting a Body Politic: Photographs, Time, and Immortality in the Kurdish Movement

Abstract

Many followers of the socialist Kurdish liberation movement surround themselves with photographs of fallen militants who they respect and cel-ebrate as martyrs. These images hold considerable power: they are able to direct speech, shape bodily comportment, and command the everyday lives of their spectators. This paper asks where this potency stems from and what effects it has. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with Kurdish communities in Turkey and Europe, it argues that displays of martyrs’ photographs project a Kurdish body politic in the making, enrolling both those whom they depict and those who handle them into an alternative project of sovereignty that remains under acute assault. Key to this effect is how the photographs make the dead latent in the present. On the one hand, this makes the images immensely powerful media of political mobilization. Embodying the sacrifice of lifetime made by the fallen, the images become powerful vectors for feelings of indebtedness, commitment, and dedication that make distinct demands on the disposable time of those who contemplate them. On the other hand, photography’s capacity to make the absent present and thereby upset linear emplotments of time also makes it a potentially unsettling medium. As a result, photographs of martyrs become crucial sites where political belonging and commitment are fashioned, consolidated, and potentially rebelled against.