Suicide Case Files as Sites of Identity Creation

Abstract

In this chapter we want to use the artefacts that constitute the inquest file to draw out some of the assumptions inherent in the inquest process regarding documents and identities. Specifically, we are concerned with relationships: how they extend into documents and how they constitute different kinds of persons and identities, during someone’s lifetime and beyond. We will do so by drawing on recent ethnographic approaches to the study of documents (Riles, 2006a) and of the lifecycle (Hallam et al., 1999; Hockey and Draper, 2005). This emphasis on continued connections may at first appear surprising as death tends to be conceptualised as a severing of relationships and an end to existence. Indeed, the inquest process itself is framed as a precondition to achieving closure by establishing the medical causes of death and the circumstances leading up to it. For instance, until the inquest has been completed, no final certificate of death can be issued. Yet we suggest that this official inquiry into the causes and circumstances of a sudden death also creates a space in which social identities are scrutinised, redefined and challenged, and involves the acquisition of new identities beyond the life-course (Hockey and Draper, 2005).