THE AFTERLIFE OF SACRIFICE IN THE KURDISH MOVEMENT

Abstract

What happens when sacrifice is imagined in terms of a debt that can be repaid? In the ongoing conflict begun in 1984 between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party and the Turkish state, Kurdish revolutionary discourse has characterized death as the required price for liberation. After 2002, a shift away from revolutionary violence and an increase in civil politics with more diverse actors allowed for public recognition of sacrifice other than death. This ethnography in Diyarbakır conceptualizes “the afterlives of revolutionary sacrifice” to unearth the multiple temporalities of revolutionary struggle. Rather than viewing sacrifice through the lens of the revolutionary sacred, the article rethinks revolution through the vulnerabilities, relationships of care, and hopes that such temporalities entail. It highlights the afterlives of sacrifice to complicate the traditional narratives of heroism and martyrdom, sheds light on everyday struggles, affects, and relationships, and questions how we value sacrifice for political change.