Can the suicidal speak?
Despite repeated calls in suicide prevention campaigns for suicidal people to express themselves, many do not feel safe to do so. Because breaking the silence is crucial in preventing suicides, fear of speaking is counterproductive. How can we explain these silences ? The thesis herein states that, despite the secularization, decriminalization, and even depathologization of suicide, injunctions to live and to futurity render suicidal people, their acts, and their discourse unintelligible. Mechanisms are in place to blame, control/punish, and pathologize suicidal people, preventing them from speaking. I support the notion that the injunctions to live and to futurity are promoted by the totality of current discourse on suicide. Whether using a medical, social, or biopsychosocial model, these various approaches to suicide arrive at the same conclusion : suicide is never an option. In their unequivocal condemnation of suicide, these approaches only listen to suicidal people’s voices through a logic of surveillance, creating spaces that are unsafe for expression. Inspired by crip theories and disability studies, which critique the medical and social models of disability and develop other models, I recommend adopting a socio-subjective model of disability to interpret suicide.