Table Of ContentDiscourses of Men’s Suicide Notes
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Bloomsbury Advances in Critical Discourse Studies
Series Editors: Michał Krzyżanowski, David Machin and John Richardson
Bloomsbury Advances in Critical Discourse Studies is a series that looks at
exciting, cutting edge work in critical discourse studies, in terms of its
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Titles published in the series:
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Discourses of Men’s Suicide Notes
A Qualitative Analysis
Dariusz Galasiński
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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To my life
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Contents
Acknowledgements viii
1 Introduction 1
2 Th e Gift of Suicide: Stories of the Ultimate Solution 29
3 Ambiguities of Suicide: Stories of the Reasons 47
4 Suicide: Th e Act Outside of Discourse 67
5 Men Who Kill Th emselves: Identities in Suicide Notes 87
6 Th e Note: Exercise in Timing 109
7 See You Later: Non-fi nality of Suicide 129
8 Instructions: Narratives of Continuing Control 147
9 Conclusions: Dilemmas of Suicide 167
Notes 179
Bibliography 181
Index 199
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the editors of the Bloomsbury Advances in Critical
Discourse Studies series for taking on this volume. I am also indebted to Michał
Krzyżanowski for his insightful comments on a late draft . I would also like to
acknowledge the help of Monika Zaśko-Zielińska and Maciej Piasecki in giving
me access to the Polish Corpus of Suicide Notes.
I will never be able to thank Justyna Ziółkowska enough for our long
conversations on suicide notes and her comments on the fi rst draft ; they
enriched this book. I thank Ania Galasińska for our long conversation about the
book in Exmouth. It opened new possibilities.
And, as ever, to Ania and Michał, thank you for being close.
viii
1
Introduction
Th is is not a book about suicide, it is about suicide notes. It is about how suicide
and those who take their own lives are discursively constructed in their suicide
notes. It is through exploring those constructions that insight is off ered into the
social anchoring and meanings of suicide from the point of view of those who
do it. In contrast to the very rare research via interviews into the experiences of
those who survived a suicide attempt, suicide notes off er unsolicited data
through which to view suicide. But saying that this book is not about suicide is
not simply a piece of information that I would like the readers to have. No, this
statement places this book (and the research underpinning it) outside of the
dominant tradition of research into suicide notes.
Th is book is founded on a contradiction between suicide and masculinity.
Suicide is one of the most stigmatizing acts and, although there is evidence
that today’s stigma is more subtle ( Feigelman et al. , 2009 ), people who have
killed themselves are still considered more blameworthy, weak, cowardly, selfi sh
and sinful than those who died, for example, from cancer ( Sand e t al. , 2013 ).
On the other hand, the dominant model of masculinity (see e.g. Connell, 1995 )
is anything but what people who kill themselves are considered to be. And
so, in essence, the contradiction is about how a strong ‘master of the universe’,
as Faludi ( 2000 ) puts it, can perform such a cowardly act. Also, most particularly,
what do they say in their fi nal act of communication? Put diff erently, my
book aims to redress a signifi cant gap in the literature on suicide notes and
‘private’ constructions of suicide. With its focus on men and masculinity,
it answers the acute need for a more thorough understanding of suicide
behaviour in the group which is at greatest risk of suicide. In this Introduction, I
aim to place it within the tradition of studying suicide notes, masculinity and
discourse.
1
