Towards Ethics of Wonder and Generosity in Critical Suicidology

More than ever before it is clear that suicidology requires a serious re-thinking of its approach to understanding and responding to suicide. This is not simply because disciplines such as medicine, psychiatry and psychology dominate what counts as valid knowledge about suicide. Rather, a serious re-thinking is required because the philosophical roots of suicidology remain taken for granted. This article addresses such a philosophical quandary by arguing that we need to take two steps back before those of us working in critical suicidology proceed any further. I begin by surveying suicidology's philosophical underpinnings. Drawing on the philosophical works of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and Margarite La Caze, I then examine the role of ethics, and its relationship with two such unlikely ethical concepts - wonder and generosity. Finally, I consider what role such ethics might have in providing a new foundation for critical suicidology - a foundation that remains open to change, to difference and unconditional hospitality as means of responding to the painful agency of suicide and its significance in understanding what it means to be human.