Struggle beyond tragedy

This article explores why supporters of the Kurdish Freedom Movement give their offspring to guerillas, despite parents’ knowledge of the likely violent death this can entail. Drawing on extended fieldwork in Iraqi Kurdistan, the article argues that the answer can be found in the lived ideology of the movement, where those who are killed are not seen as tragic figures who shatter social worlds. Instead, remade as martyrs, the dead become figures who perpetuate, renew, and give life to the struggle, and therefore to the people themselves. Accordingly, the ideology provides a means for the movement to create an autonomous revisualization of itself in the face of the surrounding states’ warfare governance. Appreciating such situated understandings of life and death is crucial if researchers do not want to inadvertently circumscribe informants’ revolutionary/utopian projects.