This three-part seminar explores the attentional dynamics of martyrdom, with a focus on rage and love as interconnected forms of sustained collective attention. We will focus on the process of making martyrs and the collective practices that enshrine their memory in public life. Each session will explore how the symbolic spectacle of martyrdom shapes the emotional architectures of social movements and why certain cases can act as historic turning points.
Anchored in the deaths of George Floyd and Khaled Said, and enriched by thinkers such as bell hooks, Lama Rod Owens, adrienne maree brown, Vamik Volkan, Michel Foucault, and Chris Hedges, this seminar invites participants to explore the following questions
How can martyrdom function as a communal commitment to memory and to mobilizing action? How can rage serve as a clarifying, sacred force capable of forging moral clarity? How can love sustain long-term resistance and collective care in the face of despair?
Participants will engage in reading, dialogue, and experimental practices of attention. Participants will also be asked to bring stories of their own personal or community martyrs — figures whose deaths or oppression have shaped their political imagination.
Led by Cam Cassar, an educator, organizer and scholar working at the nexus of criminal justice reform, community justice and liberatory pedagogy.