Rethinking the gendering of agency in male suicide: More-than-human materialities in cinematic representations of violence against the self

In contemporary Western contexts, suicide is often understood as an explicitly individual choice and act. This understanding has been advanced by an anthropocentric perspective, which sees suicide as a thoroughly human phenomenon. But what if the exercise of agency in suicide is more than human? In response, this paper examines the gendering of male suicide as an important site of understanding the socio-cultural constitution of suicide. I begin by briefly discussing traditional and more progressive ways of understanding male suicide. Drawing on elements of Judith Butler’s and Karen Barad’s philosophical work, I then theorise male suicide as performative by analysing selected scenes from the Hollywood films, Leaving Las Vegas, Monster’s Ball and A Star is Born, with each film representing a different method of suicide. In so doing, I unpack the way human and non-human agencies engender violence in male representations of suicide. Throughout the paper, I argue that agency in male suicide is more-than-human because that which is human depends on non-human materialities. I also argue that non-human materialities offer new possibilities of challenging hegemonic, and by extension, masculinist interpretations of male self-destruction.

Katrina Jaworski is an Associate Professor in Cultural Studies at the UniSA Creative Academic Unit, University of South Australia. Having published on the topic of suicide for over 20 years, her research focuses on the agency of suicide, with attention to gender, body, sexuality, ethics, and poetry. She also works on Rwandan genocide, the philosophy of dying bodies, trauma, and the cultural politics of thinking. To date, she has authored the following books: The Gender of Suicide: Knowledge Production, Theory and Suicidology (Routledge); co-edited Women Supervising and Writing Doctoral Dissertations: Walking on the Grass (Lexington); and Rethinking Madness: Interdisciplinary and Multicultural Reflections (Brill). Co-authored with Nikki Sullivan and Abraham Weil, her forthcoming book is titled, A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory, 2nd edition (Edinburgh University Press). Today's seminar presentation is based on an invited book chapter to be published in Interconnecting Violences of Men: Continuities and Intersections, edited by Kate Seymour, Bob Pease, Sofia Strid and Jeff Hearn (Routledge, 2024).