"It is rare to read scholarly treatments of suicide that resist being captured by the suicide prevention imperative. The Impossible Subject of Suicide accomplishes this and more, making visible the cultural and regulatory practices that naturalise desires to live and pathologise desires to die. Drawing on a long line of queer and feminist theorising and deploying somatechnics to critically interrogate taken-for-granted truths about suicide, Tack offers original and thought-provoking insights that invite more expansive possibilities for living and dying."
Jennifer White, Professor, School of Child and Youth Care, University of Victoria, Canada
"In her bold and challenging book, Saartje Tack destabilises the near unanimous understanding of the desire and realisation of ones own death as a pathological act that should be prevented. By deftly citing Foucault and Butler, and more pointedly turning to somatechnics, she explores the interconnections between power, subjectivity, and agency to mobilise new ways of thinking and living (with) suicide."
Margrit Shildrick, Guest Professor of Gender and Knowledge Production, Stockholm University, Sweden
"By showing just how deeply engrained is the notion of suicide prevention in understanding suicide, Saartje Tack challenges the degree to which suicidal people can be heard on their own terms without being robbed of their agency. This book is an overdue reminder that our surest ways of understanding suicide and suicide prevention do more harm than good."
Katrina Jaworski, Associate Professor of Cultural Studies, Adelaide University, Australia
"This is a courageous book. It unsettles common-sense and academic thinking about suicide and persons who decide they no longer wish to live. Thoughtfully argued and accessibly written, Tack convincingly shows how the need to prevent suicide at all costs makes it impossible to acknowledge the agency of the suicidal subject."
Kathy Davis, Senior Research Fellow, Department of Sociology, VU Amsterdam, the Netherlands
