‘I Dialoghi di San Giorgio’//Martyrdoms

The choice of theme for this year’s Dialoghi was based on a number of reflections: martyrdom – according to its general etymological definition as “self-sacrifice to bear witness to an ideal”
– is a universal phenomenon that cuts across cultures and human
history, and whose ‘declarative’ character fundamentally distinguishes
it from sacrifice.

It can certainly be considered as having an archetype in Western civilisation: Prometheus is one of our culture’s founding myths, while the cross figures prominently among our most commonly found symbols.

For a long time martyrdom seemed to have disappeared from our
phenomenological horizons, as if there were no longer any room for it
in an increasingly secularised society. Although the twentieth century
was a century of martyrs – according to the traditional definition of
people who undergo and knowingly accept suffering and death to bear
witness to a belief – the phenomenon was ignored or neglected. It was
as if an unshakeable culture of life inevitably involved denying the
value of suffering and death.

But the eruption into globalized society of “new martyrs”,
embodying an offensive vision of bearing witness by willingly
destroying themselves and others, challenges beliefs in the value of
human life, once apparently so deeply rooted and widely shared. It also
forcefully raises inevitable questions at a time when the power and
mystery of the phenomenon is strikingly amplified by the mass media.

To what extent can a semantic analysis inform our efforts in
distinguishing between and understanding the various forms of
martyrdom? Just how far is the modern version of martyrdom due to a new
intrusion of religion into civil life? What is the relationship between
religious testimony and political vocation? From this point of view
what do ‘traditional’ martyrs – who continue their
silent march in today’s world and seem to show no interest in the
visibility of their gestures – have in common with the ‘modern’ martyrs, who parade their gestures and augment their communicational impact through media exposure?

What mechanisms make suicide and assassination acceptable as ‘civil’
forms (legitimate and meritorious) of violence? Can martyrdom – in its
new forms – be considered an ‘analyser’ capable of
revealing the workings of the globalized post-modernist society? What
‘discourse’ do martyrs entrust their tortured and killed bodies with?
Can artists and poets help us to decipher this discourse? What role does the rite of martyrdom play – in its various forms – in the symbolic economy of our different civilisations?

Such issues cannot only be left to the experts, but must be tackled
with an authentically interdisciplinary approach involving, alongside political scientists and historians of religions, sociologists, philosophers, anthropologists, artists, and writers.

The participants at the dialogues include: Elizabeth Clavarie, Anna
Bozzo, Giovanni Filoramo, Bruno Karsenti, Gilles Kepel, David Laitin,
Charles Malamoud, Robert Pape, Ian Shapiro and Bernard Yack.

Information
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