Using Kenneth Burke's concept of dramatism as a way of exploring multiple motivations in symbolic expression, Tibet on Fire examines the Tibetan self-immolation movement of 2011-2015. The volume asserts that the self-immolation act is an affirmation of Tibetan identity in the face of cultural genocide.

Preface
1. Introduction: The Tibetan Situation
Tibet as Rhetorical Situation
Politics, Performance, and Drama
Argument and Identification
2. Before Self-Immolation: Western Media and Tibetan Protests, 2008
Charm Offensive: Angry Monks in the Western Press
Buddhist Anger as an Anti-Colonial Tradition
China Syndrome: The Global Suppression of Tibetan Voices
3. Irreversible Speech
Running on Fire: The Act Itself and the Creation of an Image
New Media and the Great Firewall of China: Distributing the Act
Censorship and Self-Immolation
Spreading Like Fire: Act and Agency
4. Making a Scene: Actor, Time, and Place
Pointillism and the Paradigmatic Tibetan Self-Immolator
Selecting an Origin: How The List Positions the Actor
PRC Responses: Lunatics, Puppets, Murderers, and Terrorists
5. Purpose: Politics, Buddhism, and Tibetan Survival
Hijacking Religion and Justifying Murder
What Self-Immolators Say: Statements of Purpose
Democracy, Division, and Dharamsala Dilemmas
Tibetan Self-Immolation as Response to Genocide
Blood on His Hands? The Dalai Lama's Dilemma
Emptiness Also Is Form: Buddhism and Necessary Worldliness
6. External Affairs: The Globalization of China's War on Tibet
Soft Power in a Hard World
Standing for Something: Solzhenitsyn and the Endtimes of Human Rights
Silencing the Dalai Lama: Signs of China's Global War on Free Speech
7. Conclusion: Tibet's Next Incarnation

John Whalen-Bridge is Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at National University of Singapore