Toward a Genealogy of Transgender Suicide

• In Event: The Role of Public Discourse in Democratic Retrenchment and Reinvigoration

Abstract

A recent, growing literature on the politicization of suicide and suicidality argues that as discriminatory social policies targeting a certain group increase, so too does suicide within the group. Amidst the rash of legislation against transgender people in the United States, specifically transgender youth, this paper asks how recent conversations and concerns about increasing rates of suicide among transgender people fit into the broader narrative of the “queer suicide epidemic.” It proposes a genealogy of the transgender suicidal subject, in the Foucauldian sense, using archival research to compare how early experts in suicidology discussed transgender subjects with the ways in which the subjects expressed themselves and their own suicidality. The goal in unearthing subjugated knowledges is to be able to speak to and advise those seeking to confront the increasingly hostile powers that aim to make life for transgender people in the US unlivable.

Author

• Alison Elizabeth Parks, Stetson University