Overview

Deploying feminist and queer theories of embodiment and subjectivity, The Impossible Subject of Suicide stages an intervention into dominant understandings of suicide that position suicide prevention as the only possible and ethical response to suicide, thus ruling it out as a legitimate choice. With attention to scholarly research, news media, fiction, public health, and social media, the author investigates the cultural mechanisms at play in positioning and sustaining suicide prevention as a pre-discursive, a-contextual, and natural response to suicide. As the prevention narrative relies on the assumption that ""normal,"" ""healthy,"" and ""rational"" people want to live, it relegates the suicidal subject to de-agentified subject positions such as mentally ill, at-risk, or vulnerable, and thus effectively silences those who consider death. As such, the suicidal subject cannot exist as a subject in its own right: it is an impossible subject. A study of the ways in which the subject’s agency is conditioned by the expression of a normative desire to live, this book interrogates the taken-for-granted knowledges of suicide that have for decades informed understandings and representations of suicide, and aims to render the lives of those who live with suicide more liveable and open up a space from which those who have culturally been silenced can speak. It will, therefore, appeal to scholars in the social sciences and humanities with an interest in mental health, suicide, and/or questions around agency, embodiment, and subjectivity. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

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9781032631844

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Reviews

""It is rare to read scholarly treatments of suicide that resist being captured by the suicide prevention imperative. The Impossible Subject of Suicide accomplishes this and more, making visible the cultural and regulatory practices that naturalize desires to live and pathologize desires to die. Drawing on a long line of queer and feminist theorizing and deploying somatechnics to critically interrogate taken-for-granted ‘truths’ about suicide, Tack offers original and thought-provoking insights that invite more expansive possibilities for living and dying."" Jennifer White, Professor, School of Child and Youth Care, University of Victoria, Canada ""In her bold and challenging book, Saartje Tack destabilises the near unanimous understanding of the desire and realisation of one’s own death as a pathological act that should be prevented. By deftly citing Foucault and Butler, and more pointedly turning to somatechnics, she explores the interconnections between power, subjectivity and agency to mobilise new ways of thinking and living (with) suicide."" Margrit Shildrick, Guest Professor of Gender and Knowledge Production, Stockholm University, Sweden ""By showing just how deeply engrained is the notion of suicide prevention in understanding suicide, Saartje Tack challenges the degree to which suicidal people can be heard on their own terms without being robbed of their agency. This book is an overdue reminder that our surest ways of understanding suicide and suicide prevention do more harm than good."" Katrina Jaworski, Adelaide University, Australia ""This is a courageous book. It unsettles common-sense and academic thinking about suicide and persons who decide they no longer wish to live. Thoughtfully argued and accessibly written, Tack convincingly shows how the need to prevent suicide at all costs make it impossible to acknowledge the agency of the suicidal subject."" Kathy Davis, Department of Sociology, VU Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Author Information

Saartje Tack is an assistant professor in the Sociology department at VU Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

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