Bjelic1990

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Bjelic1990
BibType ARTICLE
Key Bjelic1990
Author(s) Dušan I. Bjelić
Title Public Suicide as a Deed of Optionless Intimacy
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, Ethnomethodology, Suicide, Public Space, Press Conferences
Publisher
Year 1990
Language
City
Month
Journal Symbolic Interaction
Volume 13
Number 2
Pages 161–183
URL Link
DOI 10.1525/si.1990.13.2.161
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

This article offers an ethnomethodological analysis of suicide practices in situ. By analyzing a videotaped record of a public suicide by a government official this article is able to examine the temporal relations between the unfolding suicide act and the situational contingencies arising from its interactional context. In the case examined, the suicide was planned as a ceremony, in part to indicate the official facing corruption charges. A press conference provided the pretext for the suicide ceremony in which the official intended to deliver a prepared speech to accuse his accusers and bid farewell to loved ones before shooting himself. Things turned out differently than he planned, though he did in the end shoot himself. The analysis focuses on how the audience's reaction to the imminent suicide foreclosed the suicide cermony while at the same time pre-emptying the pre-suicide speech deferring the impending suicide.

Notes