Queering, Transing, Cripping and Maddening Assisted Suicide (2023) (original) (raw)

2023, Undoing Suicidism: A Trans, Queer, Crip Approach to Rethinking (Assisted) Suicide

REFERENCE: Baril, A. (2023). Undoing Suicidism: A trans, queer, crip approach to rethinking (assisted) suicide, Foreword by Robert McRuer, Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 335 pages. Open access at https://temple.manifoldapp.org/projects/undoing-suicidism ABSTRACT CHAPTER 5 Chapter 5 seizes the opportunity to reconceptualize assisted suicide from an intersectional and anti-oppressive approach. While anti-oppression activists/scholars almost always cast the right to die by assisted suicide as one of the most violent positions someone could endorse, the queercrip model of (assisted) suicide and the suicide-affirmative approach I develop show that supporting a renewed form of assisted suicide does not go hand in hand with political conservatism, austerity thinking, or an ableist/sanist/ageist (and capitalist, racist, colonialist, and so forth) logic of disposability. From an anti-ableist/sanist/suicidist perspective, this chapter proposes that we stop seeing assistance in dying and assistance in living as incompatible and start perceiving them as intersecting. The queercrip model of (assisted) suicide at the heart of this chapter represents an alternative to the four models presented in Chapter 1 as well as to the models of assisted suicide discussed in Chapter 4. My queercrip model promotes working simultaneously at multiple levels; while we must tirelessly tackle the sociopolitical oppressions that may intensify suicidal ideation, we must also acknowledge that suicidal people’s experience of suffering is real and respect their need to end their lives by offering a supportive process of accompaniment to reflect on this crucial decision. This model allows us to go beyond the “compulsory ontology of pathology” (Marsh 2010b, 4) regarding suicidality and beyond the ontology of assisted suicide limited to disability/sickness/illness/madness/old age. This double critique of these ontologies, one related to suicide and the other to assisted suicide, opens up the possibility of supporting assisted suicide for suicidal people from an anti-oppressive approach. This model aims to create safer spaces to openly discuss suicidality as well as the possibility of death. It would also help create spaces to explore various alternatives to death for suicidal people who wish to continue living. This chapter is divided into four sections. While the first section presents my queercrip model of (assisted) suicide, the second introduces my suicide-affirmative approach and its characteristics, principles, and advantages. Among the ten principles guid- ing this approach is the harm-reduction philosophy applied to suicidality and an informed consent model of care (often used in trans care). The third section responds to potential objections to my proposed suicide-affirmative approach. In the final section, I discuss the importance of developing an anti- oppressive thanatopolitics. This thanatopolitics is not only for the dead or for the dead-to-be but for all living people interested in fighting for greater social justice when it comes to death, suicide, and assisted suicide. In other words, this thanatopolitics would represent an ethics of living with people who are reflecting on death and dying, including suicidal people.