Attempts to attribute intent, or complete lack thereof, in suicide cases are understandable. Intent is dramatized in suicide narratives because the stakes are so very high. Grasping for understanding, we run the risk of ascribing complete and reasonable deliberation (such as in Maynard’s case), or a psychopathology in which any sort of intention is impossible. Suicide becomes the purview of either the mad or the meaningful, and nothing in between. Speaking from little more than personal experience, I suggest that it might not be so. Despite all the answers psychiatry and pharmacology have to offer, none of them can resolve the haunting self-knowledge that in some sense, I tried to die, both meaningfully and without really meaning it. An explanation within the discourse of mental illness feels necessary, but insufficient. And I tentatively conclude that this is okay. While impulsive self-manslaughter attempts can be explained, the feeling of having committed the act will persist like a haunting and threat, unsettling and unsettled. Maybe I just haven’t come to terms with it yet, but something tells me the terms might simply not be there. Like Hume, I find myself involved in the labyrinth of trying to locate an “I,” which maybe I cannot.
Meanwhile, life continues. In the weeks following my last overdose, my days were surprisingly normal. I had scared myself, and I renewed commitments to better self-care; I did that the previous time, too. Surviving my own attempted manslaughter brought no revelation. On a few fleeting instances I have paused for something like sentimentality, or appreciation. My best friend was sick one night. I sat with her, stroked her hair and watched her fall asleep; I was pleased to watch her feel better, and was pleased to be alive to watch her feel better. My lover’s body was always warm, remarkably warm. He felt like energy, and once or twice in the weeks after I didn’t die, I pressed my face against his chest to appreciate heat and heartbeat. After writing that sentence, I rested two fingers against my throat to feel my own pulse.
Index
accidents, 3, 119
ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), 77
Agamben, Giorgio
“What Is an Apparatus?,” 115–116
AIM (American Indian Movement), 58, 59
Alexander, Keith, 110–111
Alsip, Olivia, 45, 53
alt-lite, 22
alt-right, 12–13
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 77
American Indian Movement (AIM), 58, 59
Antifa, 9, 11, 13, 14, 21–22
anti-fascism, 7–24
anti-fascist violence, 22
Anti-Oedipus (Deleuze and Guattari), 15
anti-World Bank/anti-IMF demonstration, 49
The Appearance of Black Lives Matter (Mirzoeff), 107–108
Apple, 115
Arendt, Hannah, 76
The Argonauts (Nelson), 30
AT&T, 110–111
The Babadook (film), 30
“bad protesters,” 74
Bakken Formation, 57
Baltimore, MD riots, 38, 43
belief, webs of, 28–30
Ben’s Chili Bowl, 52
Berger, John, 72, 73
Big Data, 120
Bismarck, ND, 60, 61, 65, 69
Bismarck Tribune, 68
Black, Hannah, 106
black bloc march, 47
Black Liberation, 59
black life, demonization and decimation of, 36
Black Lives Matter, 18, 41, 42, 101, 107
Bornstein, Aaron, 116–117
Bowser, Muriel, 47
Brecht, Bertolt, 14
British Union of Fascists (BUF), 19
Brooklyn’s East Flatbush riots (2013), 40
Brown, Michael, 36, 37, 101, 103, 107
BUF (British Union of Fascists), 19
Bush, George W., 111
Butler, Judith
Frames of War, 103
“The California Ideology,” 116
Cameron, David, 35–36, 40, 100, 103
Castile, Philando, 100
centrist liberals, 12
Charlottesville, VA, 10–11, 77–78
Chief Red Cloud, 58
Chu, Andrea Long, 84
Clapper, James, 110–112
Clark (personal friend of author), 1–2
classism, 35
Clinton, Hillary, 2
collective fury, 39
corpses, 99–108
counterviolence, 22
Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), 55, 57–59, 64
Damiens, Robert-François, 104–105
Damigos, Nathan, 22
Dandelion Cloverdale, 61–62
DAPL (Dakota Access Pipeline), 55, 57–59, 64
Davis, Angela, 43
Dawkins, Richard, 28
de Oliveira, Fabiano, 83
Dead City Legal Posse, 51
Deleuze, Gilles, 15
Depardieu, Gérard, 82
Derrida, Jacques, 31, 32
desire, 87–97
Discipline and Punish (Foucault), 104–105
The Discoverie of Witchcraft (Scot), 37
Disrupt J20, 45, 47, 50–53, 72–73, 75–76
dragnet arrests, 46–49
drug use, ghosts and, 27
Duarte Square, 109–110
duck/rabbit perception puzzle, 33
Eco, Umberto, 23
Egypt revolution (2011), 118–119
Ellingson, Julie, 63–64
Ellison, Bruce, 66
Energy Transfer Partners, 64, 69
Erickson, Ladd, 56, 65–66
Facebook, 111, 115
Fanon, Frantz
Wretched of the Earth, 39
fascism, as un-bannable, 17
“fascist habit,” 16
felony riot charges, 45–54
Ferguson, MO riots, 36, 38–39, 43, 107
First Amendment, 50, 71–72, 78
Foley, James, 99–100
43 Group, 19–21
Foucault, Michel, 87, 89, 92
Discipline and Punish, 104–105
Frames of War (Butler), 103
Free Speech, 76
Freeman, Sandra, 55–59, 61, 63, 65–66, 69–70
Freshet Collective, 58–59, 61–62, 67
FuckTheory, 92
Garner, Eric, 41, 107
ghosts, 25–34
Ghosts (play), 32
Goebbels, Joseph, 105
Goldsmith, Kenneth, 107
Goldstone, Mark, 46, 50–51
“good protesters,” 74
Google, 110–111, 117
government surveillance, 112
Gray, Freddie, 38
Gray, Kimani, 40
Great Sioux Reservation, 57–58
green card, 81–84
Green Card (film), 82
Green Revolution, 118–119
Greenwald, Glenn, 77
Guatarri, Félix, 15
habitual police brutality, 35
Hall, Evelyn Beatrice, 77
hallucinations, ghosts and, 27
Hamlet (play), 32
Harris, Sam, 28
hauntology, 31
Hess, Rudolf, 17–19
Heyer, Heather, 77
Hintz, Jerry, 64
Hitchens, Christopher, 28
Hocquenghem, Guy
The Screwball Asses, 93
Homer, 30
Horning, Rob, 113, 115
Hume, David, 126–127
“Of Suicide,” 127
Treatise on Human Nature, 125–126
Hyde, Edward, 126
Ibsen, Henrik, 32
Kauffman, L. A., 41
Kerkhoff, Jennifer, 50
King, Martin Luther, Jr.
“Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” 11
King, Rodney, 39–40
Konopinski, Jules, 20
Ku Klux Klan, 78
Kurdi, Alan, 100, 108
Lakota Tribe, 58, 66, 68
“Letter from a Birmingham Jail” (King, Jr.), 11
liberal centrism, 4
Logic (journal), 120
London riots
(2011), 39–40
looting, 39–40
Los Angeles, CA riots (1992), 39–40
Louis XV, King of France, 104–105
love, 81–85
manarchist, 91–92
Mandan, ND, 60, 62, 65, 67
Markus, Michael. See Rattler
marriage, 81–85
Marsh, Ian
Suicide: Foucault, History and Truth, 125
mass surveillance, 117
The Mass Psychology of Fascism (Reich), 14
Maynard, Brittany, 123, 127
Mbembe, Achille
Necropolitics, 102
Meltzer-Cohen, Moira, 67, 68
#MeToo hashtag, 119
micro-fascisms, 15, 23
militancy, of 43 Group, 20–21
Miller, Stephen, 83
Mirzoeff, Nicholas, 107
The Appearance of Black Lives Matter, 107–108
Mosley, Oswald, 19, 20
Murray, Charles, 22
Nair, Yasmin
“Your Sex Is Not Radical,” 95
National Security Agency (NSA), 109–112
The National Jury Project, 65
Nausea (Sartre), 4
Nazis.state ban on, 19
Necropolitics (Mbembe), 102
Nelson, Maggie
The Argonauts, 30
“neo-Antifa,” 14
“neo-fascism,” 14
Netanyahu, Benjamin, 105
New Inquiry, 38–39
New York Review of Books, 23
Newsham, Peter, 47, 49
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 75
NIMBYism, 21
nonmonogamy, 91
North Dakota, 72. See also
Bismarck, ND; Mandan, ND
North Dakota Stockmen’s Association, 63–64
NSA (National Security Agency), 109–112
Obama, Barack, 57, 83, 111
Obama, Michelle, 12
Obergefell v. Hodges, 84
Occupy Wall Street, 41, 46
Of Being Numerous (Oppen), 2, 114
“Of Suicide” (Hume), 127
ontologies, 31
Open Casket (painting), 106
Oppen, George, 118
Of Being Numerous, 2, 114
Osterweil, Vicky, 38–39, 40
Othello (play), 37
Parker, Alison, 99–100
Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, 48
Patriot Act (2001), 111
Peltier, Leonard, 60–61, 66
persistent looking, 107
Pine Ridge Reservation, SD, 58, 69
pornography, 93–97
PRISM data collection and surveillance program, 110–111
protester violence, 42
Protevi, John, 16
public viewings, of corpses, 105
queer privilege, 92
queering, 88
Quine, Willard Van Orman, 28–30
quotidian policing, 42–43
Rankine, Claudia, 102
Rattler, 55, 61, 65, 68–69
reactionary state, 74
Reich, Wilhelm
insight of, 14–15
The Mass Psychology of Fascism, 14
Rice, Tamir, 100, 101
rights, 71–79
riots, 35–43
Roberts, John, 78–79
Roy, Arundhati
Things that Can and Cannot Be Said, 74
Sartre, Jean Paul
Nausea, 4
Sassoon, Vidal, 21
Schmidt, Eric, 117
Scot, Reginald
The Discoverie of Witchcraft, 37
The Screwball Asses (Hocquenghem), 93
Sessions, Jeff, 77–78
sex, 87–97
Shakespeare, William, 37
#ShutItDown hashtag, 41
Shutz, Dana, 106, 107
Siddiqi, Ayesha, 99, 103–104
“slacktivism,” 119
Smith, DeAndre, 40
Snowden, Edward, 109–111, 113
social contract
about, 74
romantic illusion of, 75
socializing data, 120
South Dakota, 69
Southern Poverty Law Center, 12
Spencer, Richard, 7, 9, 12, 13, 21, 22, 46, 52–53, 77–78
Standing Rock (Sioux), 55–70, 64, 68, 76
Sterling, Alton, 101
structural racism, 35
suicide, 123–128
Suicide: Foucault, History and Truth (Marsh), 125
surveillance, 110–117
Tarnoff, Ben, 120–121
techno-capitalism, surveillance through, 112
technoscientific intelligence, 119–120
Things that Can and Cannot Be Said (Roy), 74
Third Reich, 18
Tidal (journal), 109, 110
TigerSwan, 64–65
Till, Emmett, 105–106
Till, Mamie, 105–108
tortuous killing, 104–105
Treatise on Human Nature (Hume), 125–126
Treaty of Fort Laramie (1851), 66
Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868), 58, 66
Trump, Donald J.
Dakota Access Pipeline and, 57
election of, 1–2
as a fascist or anti-fascist, 8–9
immigration policies under, 81, 83, 103
inauguration protests of, 45
opposition to, 74
rights under, 76, 77–78
starting term as president, 7–8
truth, types of, 29
Tufekci, Zeynep, 96
Tunisian revolution (2010–2011), 118–119
Turtle Island, 61
“Twitter revolutions,” 119
Two Spirit Nation camp, 62
Unite the Right, 77–78
ur-fascist, 23–24
US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), 81–83
USA Freedom Act (2015), 111
USCIS (US Citizenship and
Immigration Services), 81–83
Verheyden-Hilliard, Mara, 48, 50
violence
corpses and, 99–105
what constitutes, 21–22
Virilio, Paul, 3, 113–114, 119
Voltaire, 77
Water Protector Legal Collective (WPLC), 58, 60–63, 67
webs of belief, 28–30
West, Cornel, 21
“What Is an Apparatus?” (Agamben), 115–116
white supremacy
African’s benefits from, 13
deaths caused by violence of, 12
rights of, 78
tradition of reliance of black devil, 37
violence and, 22–23, 42
Whitney Biennial, 106, 107
Williams, Bernard, 43
Williams, Linda, 94
Wilson, Darren, 36, 37
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 23–24, 33–34, 118
Wizner, Ben, 112
Women’s March, 52–53
Wounded Knee, 58
WPLC (Water Protector Legal Collective), 58, 60–63, 67
Wretched of the Earth (Fanon), 39
Yiannopoulos, Milo, 12, 21, 46, 77–78
Younge, Gary, 13
“Your Sex Is Not Radical” (Nair), 95
Youth Act, 51