What a Word Carries with It
While writing A Invenção do Suicídio, I kept coming back to a question. What are we already saying about a death when we call it suicide?
When I read ancient accounts, I encounter experiences and judgements that the word alone barely allows us to see. The same act could be understood as loyalty, shame, refusal or despair. In other periods, voluntary death came to be judged in terms of guilt and interpreted through medicine. In the book I traced these shifts closely through the sources.
I wrote the book between 2019 and 2023 and submitted it to Editora da UFABC in 2024. The digital edition is available free of charge. The print edition will be available in early 2027.
Get the free PDF from EdUFABC ↗
I want to use this space to tell you where some of the questions that make their way into my books come from. Sometimes it starts with an ancient passage. At other times, a conversation after class sends me back to the text and leads me to read it differently.
Alexandre H. Reis