Examining Malcolm Browne's photograph of the burning monk as well as appropriations of it by the Ministers' Vietnam Committee, I argue that self-immolation is a powerful rhetorical act that utilizes self-inflicted violence as a means of performing a visual embodiment of violence done by an "other." I assert that the power and resonance of Browne's photograph stem from its freezing in time of what Barbie Zelizer terms "the about to die moment." Additionally, this study expands Zelizer's concept by examining how appropriations of the burning monk image demonstrate the resonance of images of the dead and their potential to promote agency and civic engagement. (Contains 95 notes and 2 figures.)