Can an individual act of suicide be socially significant, or does it present too many imponderable features?

This book examines suicide like no other. Unconcerned with the individual dispositions that lead a person to commit such an act, Usurping Suicide focuses on the reception suicides have produced - their political, social and cultural implications. How does a particular act of suicide enable a collective significance to be attached to it? And what contextual circumstances predispose a politicised public response?

From Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation during regime change in Tunisia to Dimitris Christoulas's public shooting at a time of increased political upheaval in Greece, and beyond - this remarkable work examines how the individuality of the act of suicide poses a disturbing symbolic conundrum for the dominant liberal order.

Suman Gupta is a Senior Lecturer in Literature at the Open University; Director of the International Collaborative Project on Globalization, Identity Politics and Social Conflict; and Honorary Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Research in Human Rights, Roehampton University. He is the author of six books - including Marxism, History and Intellectuals, Corporate Capitalism and Political Philosophy, and The Replication of Violence: Thoughts on International Terrorism After 11 September 2001, and has edited several books and published numerous scholarly papers.

Introduction

1. On Suicide Archives and Political Resonances - Suman Gupta
2. The Irresistible Rise and Fall of Posthumous Bouazizi - Suman Gupta
3. Austerity Annuls the Individual: Dimitris Christoulas and the Greek Financial Crisis - Theodoros A. Spyros and Mike Hajimichael
4. Self-Immolations in Bulgaria: A Quietly Accumulating Record - Milena Katsarska
5. Self-Effacing Suicides and Troubled Talk - Suman Gupta