Usurping Suicide: The Political Resonances of Individual Deaths

Suman Gupta, Milena Katsarska, Theodoros Spyros, Mike Hajimichael
Zed, August 2017, 256pp.

• ISBNs Paperback: 9781786990983
• eBook ePub: 9781786991010
• eBook Kindle: 9781786991027
• Library Edition: 9781786990990

Can an individual act of suicide be socially significant, or does it present too many imponderable features?

Usurping Suicide takes a unique look at the political and cultural implications of suicides committed in places where, due to social or economic pressures, the act has been deemed by certain groups to be of paramount public interest. Contrary to most examinations of suicide, this book is unconcerned with the individual dispositions that may have caused a person to commit such an act, but instead focusses on the reception they have produced. How does a particular act of suicide enable a collective significance to be attached to it? And what contextual circumstances predispose a politicised public response?

Covering specific acts of suicide that bore wider political resonance – from Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation during regime change in Tunisia to Dimitris Christoulas’s public shooting at a time of increased governmental austerity in Greece – the authors argue that the individuality of the act enables its collective purchase, posing a disturbing symbolic conundrum for the dominant liberal order.