1.1.1. The medical model of suicidality

The medical/psychiatric model of suicidality conceptualizes suicidality as an individual pathology to be cured with drugs or various therapies (Bayatrizi, 2008; Joiner, 2005; Marsh, 2016; Usborne, 2017). Thomas Szasz (1999: 31) characterizes this process as "transforming badness into madness" and shows that this pathological model is founded on three beliefs: "[…] (1) such a disease is the 'cause' of the unwanted acts or feelings of the subject–who now becomes the patient; (2) the 'patient' has no responsibility for his acts or feelings–now called 'symptoms'; and (3) psychiatrists are authorized, perhaps even obligated, to treat the patient's disease with or without the patient's permission" (Szasz, 1999: 18). 10 Emerging in the late 18^th century, a specific power apparatus intended to maximize the life of the population, biopower (Foucault, 1976; 1997), created conditions under which suicidal ideations and acts became identities and were recast as specific forms of madness. These conditions allowed biopolitics (or politics centered on the life of the population) to flourish through the deployment of demography, statistics, and other tools used by early sociologists, among others. This simultaneously facilitated the emergence of a competing discourse on suicidality, which I discuss below.

1.1.2. The social model of suicidality

A competing discourse on suicidality is the social model, which focuses less on individual pathology and more on the social and political pathologies that lead to suicide, as illustrated in the work of Emile Durkheim (1867). I argue that contemporary anti-oppressive activists/scholars, such as feminist, queer, trans, disability or mad activists/scholars, have inherited part of their reflections on suicidality from these early sociological analyses of suicide. Far from being homogeneous, these anti-oppressive activists/scholars demonstrate a variety of positions and interpretations of suicidality (e.g. Bauer et al., 2015; Button, 2016; Chrisjohn et al., 2017; Cover, 2012; Dorais and Lajeunesse, 2004; Hjelmeland and Knizek, 2020; McDermott and Roen, 2016; Mills, 2018; Pyne, 2015; Reynolds, 2016; Roen et al., 2008; Taylor, 2015; White et al., 2016). However, according to my previous analyses (Baril, 2017; 2018; 2020a; 2020b), a surprising "consensus" emerges from these different interpretations of suicide. Indeed, from a social and political perspective that conceptualizes suicidality as the result of heterosexism, cisgenderism, ableism, colonialism, capitalism or other systemic factors, anti-oppressive activists/scholars promote sociopolitical change as a means of eradicating the oppressive practices believed to cause suicidality. In sum, the social model believes in the social roots of suicidality and calls for a structural remedy. As Bayatrizi (2008: 102) contends:

[…] [T]he medical camp insists that suicide is a result of mental maladies, while the sociological camp stresses social and cultural malaise. Suicide is a disease either of the individual or of civilization; its pathology afflicts either the individual body or the body politic. What was not put in question is the assumption that suicide is, indeed, pathological and nothing more.

We could say, therefore, that the social model of suicidality is founded on two assumptions: 1) that suicidality does not result from mental illness, and 2) that suicidality is a social and structural issue (Bauer et al., 2015; Chrisjohn et al., 2017; Cover, 2012; Longmore, 2003; Mäkinen, 2016; McDermott et Roen, 2016; Mills, 2018; Roen et al., 2008; White et al., 2016). In opposition to the medical/psychiatric model, the social model suggests a "historicization and politicization" (Taylor 2015: 206) of suicidality by pointing out norms and structures that push marginalized groups to want to die. 11 Proponents of the social model argue that "hate kills" suicidal people (Reynold 2016; Dorais and Lajeunesse, 2004) and that oppressive systems are the causes of those deaths (Chrisjohn et al., 2017). For example, Mills (2018: 317), in an analysis of suicides under austerity measures in the UK, argues that austerity provokes slow deaths and ultimately kills: "Put another way, people are killing themselves because austerity is killing them. Austerity suicides may be read as the ultimate outcome of the internalisation of eugenic and market logic underlying welfare reform driven by austerity. Such deaths make visible the slow death endemic to austerity." While I believe that the social model undoubtedly has positive impacts, and while I agree with anti-oppressive activists/scholars that we must examine the factors influencing high rates of suicidality in marginalized communities (I am particularly sensitive to these type of analyses since I myself identify as a transgender, bisexual and disabled man), I believe that the social model nonetheless perpetuates a similar pathologization found in the medical model, even though in this case the pathology is situated in the sociopolitical realm. 12

1.1.3. The biopsychosocial model of suicidality

Between these two oppositional perspectives, a third important approach has emerged in the past decades: the biopsychosocial model of suicidality (Beattie and Devitt 2015: 46-49; Webb, 2011: 97). Adopted by many healthcare professionals, it is the model underlying the international guidelines and strategies regarding suicide prevention. It can be found, for example, in documents produced by the World Health Organization (WHO). In a recent publication, the WHO (2018: 2) states that "Research, for instance, has shown the importance of the interplay between biological, psychological, social, environmental and cultural factors in determining suicidal behaviours," calling for a "multisectoral national prevention strategy" (WHO, 2018: 5). It is possible to describe this third model of suicidality as an integrated approach that tries to mobilize the strengths and contributions of both the medical and social models. 13 However, this model is not without flaws, and some authors have pointed out some of its limitations, as well as its depoliticising and biologizing effects. For example, from a critical suicidology lens, Mills (2018: 309; 315) argues that this model remains based upon a "psychocentric approach" that tends to dismiss the importance of structural factors in suicidality, such as austerity, and to overemphasize the pathological self, notwithstanding the "lip-service" discourse that acknowledges the complex factors of suicide.

Despite significant differences, these three dominant conceptualizations of suicidality nevertheless all theorize suicidality as a "problem" in need of fixing (Bayatrizi, 2008). They all support prevention campaigns stating that "suicide is never a good option," as suicide is considered an irrational or too radical an answer to mental or social suffering. In their unanimous condemnation of suicide, these models only acknowledge suicidal people's discourses in relation to surveillance, regulation and prevention in order to help identify those "at risk" and to convince them to opt for solutions other than suicide (Baril, 2017; 2018; 2020a; 2020b). In so doing, not only do these models fail to recognize the oppression faced by suicidal people, but they also unintentionally perpetuate it. Indeed, I believe that one of the most perverse effects of all these models and their prevention strategies, despite their good intentions, is the silencing of suicidal people. I contend that despite these models' willingness to listen to suicidal people, their unilateral negative perception of suicidality prevents suicidal people from reaching out and talking about their suicidal ideations. I argue, therefore, that the voices of suicidal people are mostly absent from these models and that these absences prevent solidarity. One could say that suicidism is like the ghost of suicidality's theorizations−ubiquitous and pervasive, but simultaneously never fully visible, named or recognized.

1.2.1. A deadly silence

In lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer (LGBQ) circles, a famous logo depicting a pink triangle against a black background with the mention "Silence=Death" was used in the 1980s by activists groups, such as ACT-UP, to denounce the silence surrounding the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the fact that government inaction was leading to more deaths each week (Fung and McCaskell, 2012). In a similar fashion, we often hear in public discourses on suicidality that there is an "epidemy" of suicides (Chrisjohn et al., 2017; Beattie and Devitt, 2015; Bering, 2018, Usborne, 2017). With 800 000 completed suicides each year at the international level, and likely many more suicidal ideations and suicide attempts (WHO, 2018), the phenomenon touches almost everyone directly or indirectly. In stark contrast to the indifference shown in the early years of the HIV/AIDS crisis, we are constantly talking about suicidality, but not in a way that invites suicidal people to "break the silence." The slogan "silence = death" could thus be resignified and redeployed for suicidality. Indeed, despite the billions of dollars invested in prevention campaigns that summon suicidal people to reach out and speak out, they remain silent. 14 David Webb discusses openly his own past suicidal experience as a suicidology scholar. He explains why so many suicidal people linger in silence:

In the current environment […] talking about your suicidal feelings runs the very real risk of finding yourself being judged, locked up and drugged. Suicidal people know this and […] will do their best to prevent it happening to them. We hide our feelings from others, go underground. And the deadly cycle of silence, taboo and prejudice is reinforced. […] There is a fundamental flaw at the core of contemporary thinking about suicide; which is the failure to understand suicidality as it is lived by those who experience it (Webb 2011: 5). 15

The taboos, stigmatization, and even criminalization that surround suicidality–including prison sentences for not dissuading someone from ending their life or for helping them to do so (Davey, 2010; Gandsman, 2018), or insurance policies that offer no coverage to families of people who take their own lives–reduce suicidal people to silence (Bergmans et al., 2016; Bayatrizi, 2008; Stefan, 2016; Szasz, 1999). What is evident in diverse testimonials, including those from David Webb and Anna Borges quoted in the introduction, 16 is that suicidal people feel unsafe to discuss their suicidal ideations. As Webb reminds us, safer spaces are the key to eliciting open conversations, testimonials and thoughts: "In order to tell our stories, with all-of-me [sic] fully present, we need a space that is safe. […] All of me cannot be present when the biggest issue on my mind at the time, my suicidal thoughts, are denied, rejected, or avoided" (Webb, 2011: 59). Susan Stefan, who interviewed a large number of suicidal subjects, concludes that suicidal people will not reveal their wishes to anyone when they are determined to achieve their goal:

[The experiences] of most of the people I interviewed, and abundant case law, is that many people who kill themselves often plan their suicides carefully and conceal those plans with great success from the people who know them best, including friends and family. The people I interviewed were unanimous in saying that the more determined they were to kill themselves, the more they concealed their intentions from the people in their lives" (Stefan, 2016: 107-108).

Statistics confirm this reality: suicidal people hide in order to end their lives (Beattie and Devitt, 2015; WHO, 2014; Peck, 2003). My argument is that they do not speak because they fear the negative consequences of doing so in a suicidist environment. Indeed, as empirical research shows, suicidal people, as is often the case for those considered "mad" and "crazy," are institutionalized and drugged against their will, are excluded from insurance programs, are either not hired for new jobs or fired from their current jobs, are expelled from university campuses, have their parenting rights revoked, are seen as incapable of sound judgment and of consenting or not to healthcare, and are subjected to other unfair treatments (Beattie and Devitt, 2015; Hewitt, 2010; 2013; Joiner, 2005; Stefan, 2016; Szasz, 1999; Webb, 2011).

1.2.2. Breaking the silence: Safer spaces needed

However, suicidal people have key messages to deliver and crucial expertise on suicidality (including on suicide-prevention strategies) that are simply not taken into consideration (Bergsman et al., 2016; Webb, 2011). 17 Indeed, when Stefan questioned the suicidal people she interviewed about the most important messages that they would like to convey regarding suicidality, there was consensus among them about the need to be listened to, for real:

I asked, "If you could tell suicide prevention policymakers and mental health professionals three things, what would they be?" There was one message that was by far the most common […] "DON'T […] treat them as if they are annoying and difficult, and pump them full of drugs. LISTEN for God's sake" [Survey 40]. "Don't come from a place of preventing—come from a place of connecting […]" [Survey 75]. "Listen, listen, listen. Listen with your whole being." [Survey 93] "Be kind. Be understanding. Listen with your heart" [Survey 209]. (Stefan, 2016: xxvi).

A few researchers have begun to appreciate the importance of suicidal people's discourses and voices and have started to examine the notes left behind by those who ended their life (Furqan et al., 2018; Gratton and Genest, 2008; Perreault et al., 2016). This groundbreaking approach is necessary and provides, I believe, key information about suicidality from an "insider perspective." What surprises me, however, is why suicidal people don't seem to be perceived as reliable experts, contrary to all other marginalized groups who are regarded, from an anti-oppressive perspective, as having an expertise due to their situated viewpoint and their lived experience. Even in critical suicidology in which "insider perspectives" are valorized, we hear from experts, family, friends or ex-suicidal people (Bering, 2018; Rowe, 2016), but the voices of current suicidal people remain erased, as is the case in White et al.'s (2016) edited volume. 18 It would seem beneficial to take into consideration these voices and to try to understand them while they are still alive, not only once they are dead. In order to do that, we need to create safer spaces for suicidal people to express themselves, and one of the most important features of a safer space is an acknowledgment of the systemic oppression experienced by a specific group and of the microaggressions they face (Baines, 2017). Without the recognition of an oppression, a safer space is moot. Just as "safer spaces" for disabled people that do not recognize the existence of ableism cannot be considered "safer spaces," "safer spaces" for suicidal people that do not recognize suicidism are not spaces that invite suicidal people to openly and safely discuss their experiences.

1.4.1. Suicidal subjects, testimonial and hermeneutical injustices

Based on the arguments I put forward in the previous sections, I contend that suicidal people are subjected to forms of "epistemic injustice" that deny their legitimacy as knowing subjects. In other words, suicidal subjects are not seen as knowledgeable on the topic of suicidality, but are more often perceived as mere victims of suicidality. Miranda Fricker (2007: 1) identifies two types of epistemic injustices: "testimonial injustice" and "hermeneutical injustice." While the former refers to the fact that some people's voices are less credible in the eyes of dominant groups simply because they belong to marginalized groups, the later refers to the idea that marginalized individuals do not have easy access to the theoretical tools needed to understand and explain their oppression.

"Testimonial injustice occurs when prejudice causes a hearer to give a deflated level of credibility to a speaker's word; hermeneutical injustice occurs at a prior stage, when a gap in collective interpretive resources puts someone at an unfair disadvantage when it comes to making sense of their social experiences. An example of the first might be that the police do not believe you because you are black; an example of the second might be that you suffer sexual harassment in a culture that still lacks that critical concept" (Fricker, 2007: 1).

In a subsequent piece published with Katharine Jenkins, Fricker discusses an earlier notion theorized in her work: "hermeneutical marginalization," conceptualized as a precondition to hermeneutical injustice (Fricker and Jenkins, 2017: 268). Fricker and Jenkins explain that "[h]ermeneutical injustice is the injustice of being frustrated in an attempt to render a significant social experience intelligible […] where hermeneutical marginalization is a significant causal factor in that failure. Someone counts as hermeneutically marginalized insofar as they belong to a social group that under-contributes to the common pool of concepts and social meanings" (Fricker and Jenkins, 2017: 268). In other words, hermeneutical marginalization happens when someone, for example a disabled person, doesn't have the same equality of opportunity to build knowledge regarding disability and ableism because they are excluded (or their opinion and ideas are less valued) from certain forms of employment and knowledge building communities such as academic milieus, decision-making processes, public policy development, etc.

I contend that suicidal people experience both types of epistemic injustice, as well as hermeneutical marginalization. I argue that testimonial injustice is produced by interlocking sanist, suicidist and paternalist views that regard the judgment of suicidal people as irrational, incompetent, illegitimate or alienated and which destroy the suicidal subject's credibility. In that sense, suicidal people's voices are invalidated. Furthermore, as a group, suicidal people lack the conceptual tools necessary to understand their experiences outside the mainstream curative and preventative frameworks and to make them intelligible to others. As we saw above, no matter what model one uses to theorize suicidality, suicide is not considered a valid option and hence is not rendered intelligible or rational. 23 This doesn't mean that suicidal people are not able to develop those analytical tools and don't have the capacity or agency to do so, but simply that there is a scarcity of theories, notions and concepts to help them conceptualize their experience as part of a larger system of oppression rather than an individual problem. To give an example, the fact that a suicidal person finds it difficult to reach out due to a multitude of reasons−fear of negative consequences and stigma, guilt at the idea of leaving their loved ones or "depriving" them from life insurance that doesn't apply in the case of suicide, the conviction they are being selfish or cowardly−demonstrates that it is difficult for suicidal people to conceptualize their personal experience as part of a larger oppressive system that produces violence and discrimination toward suicidal subjects. In addition, this hermeneutical injustice is partly founded on the fact that suicidal subjects experience hermeneutical marginalization. As demonstrated earlier, suicidal people are not (or very rarely) invited to contribute to knowledge construction on suicidality by either the fields of suicidology or critical suicidology. This makes the theorizing of suicidist oppression incredibly challenging for suicidal people, since no existing suicide-related discourses allow one to conceive this form of oppression. Similar to women trying to make sense of their experiences of conjugal sexual violence in historical or geographical contexts in which sexual assault is not recognized between married partners (Fricker, 2007), or similar to mad people trying to make sense of their experiences of trauma-related psychiatrization in societies in which madness is seen as an objective fact and in which sanism is not recognized (Nicki, 2001), suicidal people do not have easy access to the conceptual tools to interpret suicidism as a form of oppression and violence.

1.4.2. Suicidal subjects, pre-emptive testimonial injustice and testimonial smothering

Fricker and Jenkins also expand on a notion developed by Fricker (2007: 130-131) ten years earlier: the "pre-emptive form of testimonial injustice," defined as "[…] an advance credibility deficit sufficient to ensure that your word is not even solicited" (Fricker and Jenkins, 2017: 272-273) and add that "such pre-emptive testimonial injustice functions to maintain ignorance regarding trans experiences [or other marginalized experiences] and identities by ensuring that only a narrow subset of those experiences and identities reach a wider audience" (273). In the case of disabled people, for example, the media often solicit disabled people only to confirm ableist scripts and narratives that depict disabled people as either having a tragic life or as supercrips overcoming their disabilities (Kafer, 2013; McRuer, 2006; 2018). In a similar fashion, suicidal people experience pre-emptive testimonial injustice when, instead of their voices being dismissed entirely, their testimonials are solicited only to present a tragic/overcoming narrative. As a result, we are exposed only to a "narrow subset" of suicidal experiences (Fitzpatrick, 2016), comprised mainly of those of ex-suicidal people (as, for example, in the edited volume of White et al., 2016), adopting a script that aims to show that once they obtain the help they need, be it chemical, psychological, social, political or otherwise, suicidal people reevaluate their wish to die. In sum, there is a scarcity of suicidal people's discourses in the public sphere and the priority is usually given to ex-suicidal people's discourses in order to give hope to those who might contemplate suicide.

A wide variety of suicidal narratives are further shut down by "testimonial smothering," a phenomenon coined by Dotson (2011) and also discussed by Fricker and Jenkins. When marginalized groups testify publicly about their experiences, testimonial smothering encourages them to voluntarily conceal parts of their testimonials or to transform their messages in order to make them more palatable to a certain audience (Fricker and Jenkins, 2017: 273). For example, some disabled people might be tempted to soften their critiques of ableism in the media in order to convince an audience about the importance of universal accessibility. In the case of suicidal discourses, it is not surprising that most testimonials are narrated in the past tense, such as the one of Webb (2011), or as what Borges (2019) calls passive suicidal ideations, as if revealing current and active suicidal ideations is so menacing and threatening to the injunction to live and to futurity and comes with so many damaging consequences that is it not even an option for current and active suicidal subjects. In that sense, I wonder if some testimonials have been smothered in order to make a difficult topic palatable. 24 I can certainly confirm that testimonial smothering is at work in my case. While I generally use an auto-ethnographic methodology in most of my work on disability and trans issues, mobilizing personal experiences to theorize social and political issues, I didn't automatically turn to subjective experience in my work on suicide. Despite having published four previous texts on the topic, in this article it is the first time I have decided to "come out" (in a footnote and this paragraph only) as a suicidal person, after being questioned about my position/situatedness as an author by one of the peer reviewers of this article. For so many reasons impossible to unpack in the limited space here, I voluntarily concealed, in my past publications, as well as in the tone of this one, some information about me and about my experience of suicidality in order to make my thesis and arguments more palatable and credible to my audience. In sum, it is possible to see how pre-emptive testimonial injustice and testimonial smothering contribute to ignorance regarding suicidal people's experiences, because their voices remain relatively absent from the public sphere or are transformed or adapted to be more "acceptable", in turn fostering hermeneutical injustice and leading to greater difficulty in theorizing suicidist oppression–and hence perpetuating the deadly silencing circle of epistemic violence.

2.3.1. Cripping and queering suicide

In a seminal text at the intersection of queer and critical disability studies, Carrie Sandahl (2003) proposed to use both the terms queer and crip as verbs. 30 Sandahl writes:

Queers and cripples often experience profound isolation while growing up, since they are rarely born into queer or crip families, much less communities. To cope with this isolation, and to resist the negative interpellations of being queer or crippled (not to mention queer and crippled), members of both groups have developed a wry critique of hegemonic norms. In queer communities, the application of this critique has been given its own verb: to queer. Queering describes the practices of putting a spin on mainstream representations to reveal latent queer subtexts; of appropriating a representation for one's own purposes, forcing it to signify differently; or of deconstructing a representation's heterosexism. Similarly, some disabled people practice "cripping." Cripping spins mainstream representations or practices to reveal able-bodied assumptions and exclusionary effects. Both queering and cripping expose the arbitrary delineation between normal and defective and the negative social ramifications of attempts to homogenize humanity, and both disarm what is painful with wicked humor, including camp (Sandahl 2003: 137).

It is in the spirit of queer epistemologies and "cripistemologies" (McRuer and Johnson, 2014) that I would like to situate the epistemological reflections on suicidality offered in this essay. "Queering" is not limited to focusing on sexual and gender minorities, or even positioning them at the heart of our analyses and actions. Queering is about refusing norms, assimilation and the judgment of what is (ab)normal. Queering is reappropriating, recoding and resignifying certain realities. To queer is to question, to blur boundaries, and to refute binary categories (Edelman, 2004; Halberstam, 2008; 2011; Halperin, 2003; Kafer, 2013; McRuer, 2006; 2018). Unlike the work of some scholars who claim to queer suicide (Cover, 2012; Marsh, 2010; McDermott and Roen, 2016) yet offer only analyses that take queer theories as a starting point or queer communities as the objects of their study, this essay intends to queer suicide in a more holistic sense, that is, by queering methods, theories, epistemologies and prevention strategies on the topic of suicidality. Cripping and queering suicidality means allowing suicidal people to reclaim and redeploy discourses on suicidality based on their perspectives, needs and goals. Cripping and queering suicidality blurs the boundaries between "good" and "bad" decisions about life and death, between the "rationality" and "irrationality" of certain actions, between "positive" and "negative" affects, and the binaries of these categories (Baril, 2020b: 325-326). To crip and queer suicidality makes it possible to resignify the negative and abnormal meaning automatically given to it in order to allow different narratives to emerge; the fact that positions like the one adopted in this essay are not presented in any of the literature consulted on the topic of suicidality (regardless of their approach) reveals that such different narratives do not exist or are censored (or "smothered" to reuse Dotson's term) from the public space. As with other complex phenomena, there should be a variety of interpretations, theorizations and positions about suicidality. While a wide range of theorizations exist, it seems astounding that almost all of them arrive at the same position/conclusion: "don't do it." It is fruitful to consider this conclusion as an injunction to live and to futurity that is part of what I would call a "compulsory liveness" in a suicidist system, similar to compulsory heterosexuality or compulsory able-bodiedness (McRuer, 2006). The compulsory liveness aims to impose on everyone a will to live and makes the desire/need for death of some people abnormal, unconceivable and inintelligible, like suicidal subjects themselves.

Robert McRuer (2006), in the introduction to his seminal book at the origin of crip theory, denounces the constant interrogation that able-bodied people direct toward disabled people, asking about their supposed desire to be "normal:" "The culture asking such questions assumes in advance that we all agree: able-bodied perspectives are preferable and are what we are collectively seeking. A system of compulsory able-bodiedness repeatedly demands that people with disabilities embody for others an affirmative answer to the unspoken question, "Yes, but in the end, wouldn't you rather be more like me?" (McRuer, 2006: 9). A similar compulsory mechanism (compulsory liveness) is at play regarding suicidality: non-suicidal people are constantly wondering why suicidal people are suicidal and what can be changed (in them or in society) so that they may conform to the non-suicidal norm. 31 Through the injunction to live and to futurity, non-suicidal people implicitly ask the same question to suicidal people: "Yes, but in the end, wouldn't you rather be more like me, that is someone who wants to live a long life and enjoy living it?" Some, if not a majority, of suicidal people might answer positively to this question and should therefore be supported to arrive at solutions to help them abandon their suicidal state. However, it seems problematic to take for granted that all suicidal people would have an affirmative answer to this question, or to "assume in advance that we all agree" about the correct answer to this question, to reuse McRuer's words. Furthermore, it is simply unintelligible from a suicidist (and sanist) perspective that someone could answer the following: "No thanks, I don't want to be cured, I don't want to be fixed, or I don't want to wait to see the social revolution that will eradicate the oppression that makes me suffer… I just want to die now; I have lived enough. I don't care if my life is over; this is what I want." Like Deaf, disabled and crip people who told us, in the past decades, that they don't want the "ideal solution" that mainstream societies offer them (e.g. cochlear implants, cures, etc.) but instead want their voices, perspectives, needs and claims respected and supported (Clare, 2017; Fritsch, 2016; Kafer, 2013), suicidal people should not have imposed on them pre-conceived solutions devised by the majority of people who don't experience their reality but who nevertheless believe that they have the best solutions to offer.

In my work, I am less interested by a politics of negativity, antisociality, antifuturity or failure, along the lines of Edelman (2004) or Halberstam (2008; 2011), 32 that could position suicide as the queer act par excellence to thwart heteronormative and reproductive futurism. Rather, I argue that we should conceptualize the passage from life to death as a social and relational passage, and that this relationality and sociality should be denied to no one, regardless of how they die. The cripping and queering approach to suicidality proposed here aims to take into consideration suicidal people's subjective experiences of suffering. It is a non-coercive approach that insists on the importance of an affective and relational turn (Cvetkovitch, 2012) regarding suicidal people. The approach proposed here opens up the possibility of exploring suicidality without shame, guilt, or negativity with those who contemplate suicide as a way to end their suffering. It allows us to explore with them some crucial questions: What attracts you to the option of suicide? What kind of support or help would you like to have to go through this difficult period or to end your life? Did you inform your relatives and friends about your idea of ending your life, and do they support you in this period or process? Did you consider other options? Did you consider all the implications of that potential decision, for yourself and for your loved ones? Did you plan carefully your end of life, death and post-death? In a similar fashion to trans-affirmative healthcare, the "suicide-affirmative" healthcare model I propose here would offer care and support through an informed-consent model, taking for granted that the expert in the decision to transition, in this case from life to death, is the person making the decision. 33 It goes without saying that before implementing this approach, it would be important to engage in extensive critical reflection regarding the conditions, regulations, safeguards, and type of accompaniment, as well as the simultaneous sociopolitical changes necessary, to reduce suicidal ideations. These concrete aspects of a harm-reduction approach would have to be determined primarily by and for suicidal people and their allies, mobilizing their expertise on suicidality.

2.3.2. "Suicide-affirmative" healthcare: An ethics of "living with" suicidal people

By applying a cripping and queering approach to suicidality, it is possible to develop critical social analyses of the oppressive structures that may increase marginalized people's suicidal ideations and suicide attempts, while at the same time formulating accountable responses to these people's subjective experiences of suffering through "suicide-affirmative" healthcare. My approach seeks to create safer spaces in which the voices of suicidal people can be listened to, legitimized and desubjugated, to paraphrase Foucault (1976; 1997). These safer spaces must be as free as possible from forms of judgment, stigmatization, paternalism and oppression and must foster a welcoming environment so that suicidal people can freely express their lived experiences, thoughts and demands without fear of reprisals and negative consequences. This approach recognizes the pain and suffering that social oppression and/or mental and psychological disabilities can cause (Clare, 2017; Kafer, 2013; Nicki, 2001), without using suicidal people's mental and psychological condition to invalidate their agency (Burstow, 2016). It suggests that we work on multiple levels simultaneously. While it is necessary that we tirelessly tackle the sociopolitical oppressions that can create or intensify suicidal ideations, we must also acknowledge that suicidal peoples' experience of suffering is real and respect their need to end their life after careful consideration in a very supportive process of accompaniment that also offers, along the way, a wide variety of other potential solutions.

Attempting to destigmatize suicide and to recognize it as one viable option among others–albeit one that requires considerable critical reflection with the support of relatives, friends, and healthcare professionals–may help a majority of suicidal people find solutions other than suicide along their exploratory journey of life and death. 34 Simultaneously, the harm-reduction approach I suggest here may allow a small number of suicidal people who are determined to die to be accompanied while preparing their death. They would have the opportunity to explore other solutions with professionals in order to determine if suicide is still, after much consideration, their preferred option, to carefully plan their death several weeks or months in advance, to say goodbye to their loved ones and to leave this world using less lonely and violent means than those usually employed in completed suicides. This would also be less traumatic for the relatives and friends, despite the mourning that accompanies all forms of death. Either way, my approach insists on building relations with suicidal people, on caring for them and supporting them throughout their journey. In some cases, the support of others can awaken in a suicidal person the will to live. In a compelling short documentary entitled 24 & Ready to Die, Emily, a 24 year old physically healthy Belgian woman suffering from psychological distress, recounts that it was through the support of her friends and family and the preparation of her own assisted suicide that she found the desire to continue to live, at least for a while. She says: "Without the option of euthanasia, years of suffering would have been compounded by a gruesome, lonely death. I would have killed myself" (The Economist, 2015). She is not alone in testifying that being able to name her need to die and being listened to and respected in that wish ultimately helped her to go on living. This is also the case, to some extent, with the artist Vivek Shraya who, in a short film entitled I Want to Kill Myself, recounts how, by breaking the silence, she managed to survive her desire to die. She says: "Saying I want to kill myself kept me alive" (Shraya, 2017).

The non-coercive suicide approach I outline in this essay could possibly save more lives than current suicidality models and their prevention strategies that are clearly failing suicidal people, as many authors cited in this essay have demonstrated. In the few countries that have decided to include in their assisted-suicide legislation people whose requests are based on psychological/emotional suffering (Appel, 2007; Stefan, 2016; The Economist, 2015), several candidates changed their minds along the way; preparing for their death was a cathartic process that made some of them want to live. Above all, this process allowed them to talk openly with their relatives and professionals, thus preventing them from lingering in silence and completing suicide without exploring other avenues. In other words, unlike suicides currently performed in isolation, assisted suicide processes would be characterized by support, accompaniment and relationality. Although it has some resemblance with medical assistance in dying, my approach differs radically in its foundation and application. Indeed, while in medical assistance in dying suicidal subjects are explicitly excluded and distinguished from ill/disabled subjects that should be helped to die (from an ableist perspective), the primary goal of the approach sketched here is to offer assistance to suicidal subjects from an anti-suicidist/anti-ableist/anti-sanist perspective. 35 In sum, this approach proposes an ethics of "living with" suicidal people while they are making their ultimate decision.