WHILE THEORIZING AND WRITING are solitary exercises, they are simultaneously deeply relational and collective. Our voices as academics and writers are enmeshed with a plurality of other voices, sometimes those of other authors, but also those resulting from a multiplicity of encounters, shared moments, discussions, and exchanges. This book would not be the same if it were not for all the wonderful people with whom I crossed paths throughout the fantastic, difficult, and surprising adventure of writing it. Indeed, the idea for this project first emerged during my postdoctoral fellowship in the United States in 2014. At that time, it was a different project, and the book was not, as it is now, focused on (assisted) suicide. Nevertheless, I believe that the current book is indebted to that former project, even though it wasn’t until 2020 that I began working on it in its current iteration. Therefore, I am grateful to all the people I met during those years who played a role in the development of my thoughts regarding the topics in the book or in my academic journey.
Some are friends, acquaintances, colleagues, or mentors. Some come from various activist or academic communities, such as comrades and colleagues in queer, trans, disability/crip/Mad movements and studies and critical suicidology. I would like to thank all of them, and I apologize to those I have forgotten in the alphabetical list that follows: Julie Abbou, Maria Fernanda Arentsen, Florence Ashley, A. J. Ausina-Dirtystein, Sébastien Barraud, Janik Bastien Charlebois, Leïla Benhadjoudja, Sonia Ben Soltane, Tammy Berberi, Emmanuelle Bernheim, Nael Bhanji, Hélène Bigras-Dutrisac, Isabelle Boisclair, Dominique Bourque, Ann Braithwaite, Mary Bunch, Marie Carrière, Alana Cattapan, Jean-François Cauchie, Sheila L. Cavanagh, Amy Chandler, Ryoa Chung, Patrice Corriveau, Luiza Cesar Riani Costa, Rob Cover, Lucas Crawford, Paisley Currah, Ann Cvetkovich, Lise d’Amboise, Jenny L. Davis, François Delisle, Maxime De L’Isle, Margaret Denike, Bruno Dion, Émilie Dionne, Jay Dolmage, Michel Dorais, Elsa Dorlin, André Duhamel, Mickael Chacha Enriquez, Karine Espiñeira, Samantha Feder, Scott J. Fitzpatrick, Christian Flaugh, France Fortin, Kelly Fritsch, Pat Gentile, Lucie Gosselin, Laura Grappo, Claire Grino, Kim Q. Hall, K. Allison Hammer, Naïma Hamrouni, Michael Harrish, Dominique Hétu, Cressida Heyes, Dave Holmes, Laura Horak, Dan Irving, Katrina Jaworski, Dani Kasprzak, Christine Kelly, Ummni Khan, Hannah Kia, Jennifer Kilty, Loes Knaapen, Kateřina Kolářová, Marc Lafrance, Pierre-Luc Landry, Monique Lanoix, Bruno Laprade, Josée Laramée, Kévin Lavoie, Helen Hok-Sze Leung, Sandra Lehalle, Suzanne Lenon, Susanne Luhmann, Kinnon R. MacKinnon, Shoshana Magnet, Zack Marshall, Robyn Martin, Corinne L. Mason, Marie-Josée Massicotte, Dominique Masson, Jennifer Matsunaga, Laura Mauldin, Mireille McLaughlin, Denise Médico, Maria Nengeh Mensah, Élisabeth Mercier, David Moffette, Françoise Moreau-Johnson, Baljit Nagra, Dahlia Namian, Andrea Nicki, Michael Orsini, Michelle Owen, Laurent Paccaud, Colette Parent, Laurence Parent, Danielle Peers, Shanna Peltier, Guillaume Poirier Girard, Jasbir K. Puar, Annie Pullen Sansfaçon, Jake Pyne, Blas Radi, Baharak Raoufi, Geneviève Rail, Mythili Rajiva, Juliette Rennes, Joel Michael Reynolds, Carla Rice, Phyllis L. F. Rippey, Valérie Robin Clayman, Jamy Ryan, Paul Saurette, Corrie Scott, Christabelle Sethna, Alexis Shotwell, reese simpkins, Stacy Clifford Simplican, Sam Singer, Denise L. Spitzer, Eliza Steinbock, Thérèse St-Gelais, Chris Straayer, Susan Stryker, Anaïs Tatossian, Michael Tattersal, Chloë Taylor, Alanna Thain, Maud-Yeuse Thomas, Cara Tierney, Tom Tierney, Kathryn Trevenen, Alexis Hieu Truong, Marie-Ève Veilleux, Syrus Marcus Ware, Amanda Watson, Jennifer White, Christine Wieseler, Elisabeth Woods, Emily Yue, Libe García Zarranz, and Ruth Zurbruegg. I would also like to thank Christina Crosby, now deceased, who was so welcoming during my time at Wesleyan University. A special thanks to William Hébert and Isabelle Perreault, who not only share long-term friendships with me but also have always been helpful and supportive professionally, including regarding this book project. Another special thanks to Ozzie Silverman and Chantal Maillé for their generous reading of the manuscript and their relevant comments and reflections. Thank you as well to Xan Dagenais for their thoughtful suggestions on earlier articles reused in this book. I would also like to thank Paolo Troilo for his generous permission to use one of his paintings on the book cover. I am also deeply grateful for the half year I spent in 2020 at Kate Kroeger’s cabin in the woods, without Internet, which was a kick starter in the process of writing this book. I have fond memories of those snowy hills, those daily walks in nature, and those evenings sitting by the fire, immersed in this creative project.
I am grateful to all my graduate students as well as the students who worked as research assistants for my various research projects during the past decade. The following were more involved in this specific research project on (assisted) suicide: Sarah Cavar, Loïs Crémier, Vanessa Dubuc, Marie-Claire Gauthier, Clark Pignedoli, Myriam Pomerleau, and Markus Yanakoulias. A special thanks to Celeste E. Orr who, in 2015–2016, did a fantastic literature review on the question of (assisted) suicide and social movements. Their reflections and our discussions were helpful in the formulation of some ideas in this book.
As a French Canadian, English is my second language. I would not have succeeded in completing this manuscript without the support of wonderful translators and editors, who at different times and in various capacities translated passages or revised the manuscript. I want to thank Catriona LeBlanc, Marjorie Silverman, and Stef Gude. Even though it was part of their contracts to work on my manuscript, I believe that their work went beyond this professional commitment. This belief is particularly the case for Marjorie, and I am deeply grateful for the emotional, intellectual, and creative energy she invested in my book.
Two people have also played key roles in supporting and mentoring me in the publication process: Robert McRuer and Victoria Pitts-Taylor. Robert and Victoria were the first “believers” in this book project and were supportive, helpful, and generous in their feedback regarding my book proposal and in their guidance about navigating the publishing world. Their reflections also deepened my arguments and thesis, and I am grateful for their invaluable help. Beyond offering her assistance with my book, Victoria was a fantastic postdoctoral supervisor. Her cutting-edge, brilliant, complex, and nuanced work has been a continual source of inspiration for me. But what touched me the most during my postdoctoral followships at the City University of New York and Wesleyan University under her supervision was her great humanity, infinite generosity, and terrific personality. Thanks, Victoria, for the crucial role you played (and still play) in my life.
Many family members and close friends have also played key roles in my life, and their warm presence over the past few years is reflected, in some ways, in these pages. Thanks to my parents, Louise, Denis, and his wife Sylvie; and thanks to my in-law family, Sheela, Ozzie, and Gabriel. Additionally, Eileen M. LeBlanc has always felt like a second mother to me. I want to thank Eileen for being who she is in the world and for her endless open mind and heart. I can’t go without mentioning another kind of family, so significant in my life, comprising my furry companions: Teddy, Rainbow, Mini-K, and Big-K. Chosen family is so important to me, and my life would not be the same without the presence of Xan Dagenais, Marie-Ève Gauvin, Véro Leduc, Stéphanie Mayer, Marguerite Soulière, Julie Théroux Séguin, Louis Vaillancourt, and Amélie Waddell. Their friendship means the world to me. A special thanks to Stéphanie for all our regular text messages, chats, and Zooms: Her ongoing and generous presence in my life is invaluable. An additional special thanks to Catriona LeBlanc, with whom I shared almost six years of my life. Catriona contributed so much to this book as a translator of earlier versions of articles reproduced in this book, as an intellectual interlocutor with a critical and open mind, and as a former partner who supported me in the ups and downs of my difficult journey to obtain a tenure-track job and to try to write this book.
An especially important person in my writing journey I would like to thank is my partner, Marjorie Silverman, with whom I have had the privilege of sharing my life since 2017. Marjorie has played so many roles in relation to this book: not only as my primary intellectual interlocutor in my daily life (and the first and biggest “fan” of this book!) but also as someone who revised the entire manuscript not once but twice. Marjorie is a unique intellectual partner who nourishes, challenges, and encourages my creativity and passion. Embarking with her on this book-writing odyssey in a secluded cabin in the woods in 2020 was one of the best periods of my life. I will forever cherish those memories. Our daily walks in the snowy, quiet woods, filled with discussions regarding our respective manuscripts, gave birth to this book. But beyond this intellectual companionship, Marjorie and I share a truly unique bond that, on so many levels, has transformed my life forever. With her, I believe that I can be the man I want to be, and the man that I am, without shame and surrounded by love, as we explore together the scariest, darkest, and most difficult aspects of life, including the themes discussed in this book: death and (assisted) suicide. With her, talking about my desire to die makes me feel alive.
Writing a book takes time and money. I would like to thank the faculty of social sciences of the University of Ottawa for the funding provided through the Research Support Program for my research project titled Transforming Our View of Suicide: Suicidism as a New Theoretical Framework (2021–2022). I also received a special funding opportunity, the “Always Be Closing” Collabzium catalyst grant, from the faculty to cover part of the costs associated with the publication process, including the fees for publishing this book in open access. I am grateful to my faculty and university for their support of my work. I would like to thank in particular Sophie Letouzé, who plays a crucial role in supporting professors with their internal and external grant applications as well as with their applications for various competitions, such as the course release competition, which allowed me to dedicate more time to research. In that same spirit, I would also like to thank Sébastien Savard, director of my department at the time when I wrote this book, as well as Victoria Barham, dean of the faculty of social sciences, who were both supportive of my research. I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to the three anonymous reviewers for their intellectual generosity, constructive feedback, and positive engagement with my ideas. Reading their comments made me cry tears of joy. The way they formulated their critiques and suggestions for the book was anchored in respect, care, and consideration. Their feedback was invaluable and definitely made the arguments in the book stronger and better, particularly in Chapter 1. My last words of gratitude are for the Temple University Press team, in particular Will Forrest, Gary Kramer, Ann-Marie Anderson, Ashley Petrucci, and especially my editor, Shaun Vigil, for their continued interest in Undoing Suicidism, and for their expertise, dedication, and professionalism during the publication process. Shaun’s quick and positive response to my book proposal, and his enthusiasm and passion for my book’s ideas, convinced me, despite the interest from other publishers, that working with him and with Temple University Press would be the best choice for me. I have never regretted that decision; Shaun’s dedication, intellectual perspicacity, sensitivity, and vision for my book, not to mention some of his other qualities (e.g., punctual, collegial, supportive, organized), turned a potentially stressful experience into something pleasurable and memorable. Thank you, Shaun, for truly believing in the potential of this book.
While a vast majority of this book comprises original material published for the first time, the chapters contain passages of previously published material, which have often been updated, rewritten, and recontextualized. A shorter and earlier version of Chapter 1 and a few short passages from other chapters and the Introduction of the book appeared as “Suicidism: A New Theoretical Framework to Conceptualize Suicide from an Anti-Oppressive Perspective,” DSQ: Disability Studies Quarterly, 2020, 40(3), published by The Ohio State University Libraries, URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.18061/dsq.v40i3.7053. Licensed under CC BY 4.0. A shorter and earlier version of Chapter 2 and one passage from the Introduction appeared as “The Somatechnologies of Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying Law: LGBTQ Discourses on Suicide and the Injunction to Live,” Somatechnics, 2017, 7(2): 201–217. A few short passages in the book also appeared in the following articles: “Les personnes suicidaires peuvent-elles parler? Théoriser l’oppression suicidiste à partir d’un modèle socio-subjectif du handicap,” Criminologie, 2018, 51(2): 189–212, URL: https://doi.org/10.7202/1054240ar; “‘Fix society. Please.’ Suicidalité trans et modèles d’interprétation du suicide: Repenser le suicide à partir des voix des personnes suicidaires,” Frontières, 2020, 31(2), URL: https://doi.org/10.7202/1070339ar; “Theorizing the Intersections of Ableism, Sanism, Ageism and Suicidism in Suicide and Physician-Assisted Death Debates,” in J. M. Reynolds and C. Wieseler (Eds.), The Disability Bioethics Reader (pp. 221–231), New York: Routledge, 2022 (reproduced with permission of the Licensor through PLSclear). I am sincerely grateful for all the permissions granted.
I have also presented earlier versions of the material published in this book at various venues, including the International Sociological Association Forum of Sociology (Vienna, 2016), the 84th Acfas Conference (Montreal, 2016), the Canadian Disability Studies Association Conference and the Women’s and Gender Studies/Recherches féministes Conference (Toronto, 2017), the Canadian Sociological Association Conference (Vancouver, 2019), and the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting (Seattle, 2021), and in seminars at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales/EHESS (Paris, 2019) and the Université du Québec à Montréal (Montreal, 2021). I also presented earlier versions of the material published here in keynote speeches at the following conferences: the Poetics and Ethics of “Living with”: Indigenous, Canadian and Québécois Feminist Production Today Conference (Banff, 2018); Trans and Non-Binary Youth and Their Families Facing Adversity: Experiences, Strengths, Strategies and Innovative Practices at the 89th Acfas Conference (Québec, 2022); and What Trans Knowledge Does to Gender Studies International Conference (Paris, 2022). I would like to thank the participants at these events for their relevant comments, feedback, and questions.