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Ian Marsh, Suicide: Foucault, History and Truth. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010, 264 pp. $US 34.99 paper (978-0-521-13001-1), $US 95.00 hardcover (978-0- 521-11254-3)
I read this book while on maternity leave, often putting my sleeping baby and the book in the stroller and heading across the street to Vancouver Public Library. The background noise kept the baby asleep, but it proved awkward to read the book in such as public space. Awkward not only because of the contrast between a young life and a grim topic, but also because, thanks to the increasing psycho-pathologization of motherhood, new mothers are often seen as emotional ticking bombs, hazardous to themselves and to their babies. New mothers are routinely monitored for signs of postpartum depression, and their emotional troubles are often attributed to hormonal fluctuations, rather than to the stress of caring for an infant in a nuclear family setting.
Ian Marsh's Suicide: Foucault, History and Truth chronicles the process through which suicide, similar to motherhood, became pathological at the hands of the 'psy' disciplines, psychiatry in particular. Here too, hormonal imbalances and mental illness are often seen as the main culprit. Marsh's Suicide, written in the style of a "history of the present," begins with "mapping a contemporary 'regime of truth' in relation to suicide," where the author examines how a "compulsory ontology of pathology" is produced and reproduced in professional accounts of suicide, how authority is established, objects and subjects defined, and truths disseminated. This compulsory ontology of pathology is applied crossculturally (Taiwan and Japan appear as examples) and encompasses practically every single case of suicide. Even when particularly healthy and happy individuals commit suicide, pathological factors are read back into their lives retroactively through a practice called "psychological autopsy." Although not discussed by Marsh, it is worth noting that even the actions of suicide bombers are sometimes explained in terms of underlying psychopathological factors.
In the next section of the book, Marsh delves into...