Stories of suicide and social justice

R. Srivatsan’s (2016) view of suicide as a historically specific event enfolded with meaning and Clare Shaw’s (2016) thoughtful elucidation of the transformative power of personal stories attest to the complexity and challenge of conducting research into the meanings and functions of narratives of suicide both methodologically and ethically. Because one of the aims of my original article was to bring narrative theories and methods to bear on issues relating to the ethical and political aspects of personal narrative within the practice of suicidology, I hope this will again serve as a useful framework for responding to the commentaries and the specific challenges they present. Srivatsan’s call for a political view that moves beyond current biomedical or social science perspectives to consider the symbolic dimension of suicide in its complex historicity is significant in two important respects. First, it presents as a way of transcending the ethical tension over the privileging of the narrator or the narrated to address the question of what the discursive response to suicide says about a given community, its structure, and dynamics. Because meaning is not intrinsic to the act of suicide, but results from the social and cultural traditions, symbols, and institutions that enfold it, suicide serves as an important site of social reconstruction (Higonnet, 2000). In this view, suicide survivor narratives are simply one of a number of proliferating accounts that surround suicide that serve certain social functions and that can be studied in their particular contexts. At their broadest level, Srivatsan suggests that suicide survivor narratives can be understood as an emerging form of community discourse striving to develop a coherent voice through which to redress imbalances in power, challenge notions of moral responsibility, and assert suicide attempt survivors’ social value.