“Flames were coming from a human being; his body was slowly withering and shriveling up, his head blackening and charring,” wrote the journalist David Halberstam, who witnessed the grim event. “In the air was the smell of burning flesh.” Four additional monks, and one nun, followed suit.


A photograph of Thich Quang Duc’s self-immolation became iconic. (Most curiously, a man named Mike Stimpson, who recreates famous photos as Lego tableaux, made a version.) More than 50 years after his death, his crystallized remains have been publicly displayed as “relics.”

A handful of Americans self-immolated during the Vietnam era, but the most famous instance  in the United States likely occurred in 1996, when a 46-year-old artist and activist named Kathy Chang broke with her habit of public dance performances for peace by burning herself to death in front of a University of Pennsylvania library.

Mohamed Bouazizi, the man who —  as it were — ignited the Arab Spring, was a fruit vendor in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia. He had been humiliated in a December 2010 confrontation with a (female) municipal inspector who confiscated his wares, and slapped his face. When he tried to protest, he was beaten, and denied an audience with the governor. And so the 26-year-old poured paint thinner over his body and burned himself alive.

Perhaps times have changed since the era of Thich Quang Duc. Perhaps, in the dazzling array of digital distractions (and status updates) that vie for our attention, people burning themselves to death should no longer expect that act to gain much attention.

Self-immolation is a singular gesture that, it turns out, occurs all the time. And for the most part, the global audience ignores it. That sounds unthinkable.

But so does the act itself.