Chapter 10 Suicide, Agency and the Limits of Power 1 Katrina Jaworski Suicide is commonly understood as an explicitly individual choice and act (Andriessen 2006). As one defnition describes: “Suicide can be defned as a deliberate taking of one’s life” (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS] 2004: 3). With some cultural exceptions, this deliberate taking takes place in private. The problem with this understanding lies in how agency is recognized in the material act of suicide. There is an assumption that the person intending to carry out the act must come before the act in order for the act to be deliberate. The ontology of suicide in this regard lies outside discourse, suspended from contexts and norms that may frame and condition the idea of a deliberate taking. But what if, as Michel Foucault claimed, “the author does not precede the works” (1984a: 118–19)? How can someone be the author of their suicide if the one who is doing the taking does not precede it? At best, does this not compound the problem of agency even further? At worst, does this not obliterate agency altogether: the key element on which the intelligibility of suicide as individual act and choice depends? In light of these questions, I have two aims in this chapter. One is to examine the epistemological wiring of intent and agency in suicide. The second is to understand further how power shapes the material act of suicide. These aims cover three areas of analysis. First, I will examine what Foucault’s contention offers towards understanding the constitution of agency in the material act of suicide. I will deploy elements of Judith Butler’s work to theorize a way of thinking of suicide that furthers Foucault’s contribution—namely, his take on author and authorship as a site of examining agency in suicide. I will argue that positioning suicide as relational and already part of discourse does not make the act of taking one’s life any less deliberate. Secondly, I will use my argument to rewire a little the conceptual mechanics of Emile Durkheim’s approach to understanding agency in suicide. I will not retheorize Durkheim’s approach to suicide, as this is not my purpose. Instead, I will examine one limit in Durkheim’s work to see what it offers towards understanding agency in suicide. Thirdly, I will return to Foucault 1 This chapter draws on, and continues my earlier work on, suicide and agency, published in Social Identities. Once again, I draw on Judith Butler’s work on performativity as a methodological tool. As such, this chapter is another installment in my theorization of agency in suicide. Here, I pay more attention to how power shapes the material act of suicide. For earlier publications see: Jaworski (2003, 2010a, 2010b). 9MBB=! :)= /#!)P , /)LA-*+*D*#B:D 7!-.+!LB1!. *) 9!D?2!.L-MLB*) 7!-.*)A**= :)= 7*2!- !=BL!= P 2:)B!D 2- 687).L!- :)= 5M=!C 2- 0-*Q /.A#:L! 7MDB.AB)# 5L=  7-*8M!.L **C 1!)L-:D ALL+,!**C!)L-:D+-*IM!.L*EDBM)B.:=!L:BD: 1-!:L!= ?-*E M)B.: *)  ,, 1*+P-B#AL 5  /.A#:L! 7MDB.AB)# 5L= /DD -B#AL. -!.!-1!=