My Ph.D. research focuses on the recent public self-immolations in Bulgaria and studies a particular case that invigorated mass political protests across the country. I inquire into the shock generated by the act and its effects on those witnessing, the national imagining and social movements. As I think about how this type of embodied political act affects at the level of sensibilities, I also trace how it may have helped form alternative political subjectivities, channeled, performed and managed in symbolic representations and in the media, art, videos and commemorative writings.