Unwritten Suicide Note: A Meditation on the Other Side

Adrián I. P-Flores ()
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Adrián I. P-Flores: Health Equity & Access Research & Treatment Lab, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA

Social Sciences, 2025, vol. 14, issue 4, 1-6

Abstract: This auto-theoretical essay examines the philosophical and historical underpinnings of suicide through a critical analysis of the author’s own suicide note, employing psychoanalytic theory and post-colonial critique. Through historical investigation, the author traces how the concept of suicide, coined in 1642 by Sir Thomas Browne, emerged alongside new configurations of selfhood that were fundamentally shaped by colonial encounters, particularly the “discovery” of America and the rise in modern liberal thought. The analysis reveals how suicide’s conceptual structure is inextricably linked to Western modernity’s founding ruptures, where the capacity for self-destruction became a marker of Western subjectivity while being denied to colonized and enslaved peoples. The author concludes that suicide, far from being a purely personal act, is fundamentally structured by colonial history and white supremacy, functioning as a form of “white enjoyment” that attempts to resolve the metaphysical ruptures at the heart of Western consciousness.

Keywords: critical suicide studies; race; psychoanalysis; ontology; colonization; violence; suicide note (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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