Abstract

GERCHMANN, Augusta  and  ANTUNES, Cesar Augusto. Suicide as part of the show: on school massacres. Rev. bras. psicanál [online]. 2019, vol.53, n.4, pp. 103-116. ISSN 0486-641X.

The text addresses the problem of suicide from a conceptual rapprochement between narcissism and the second drive theory, life drive and death drive. We seek to approximate suicidal conduct with specific homicidal behaviors: school massacres in various countries, as attitudes that appear to lack religious or ideological predisposing factors as the cause or justification for extremely cruel act. We consider ourselves to be living in a social moment of intense fragmentation where collectivism and individualism, instead of complementing each other, become antagonistic. In an adverse society, confused young people with disenfranchised parents seek in the making a show out of the act a way of validating their existence. To differ from the masses, even at the expense of their lives, death narcissism, in its pure state, finds its raison d'être on social media. The desire to differentiate, to leave an "imprint" in this world, brings suicide closer to news media homicide, either through the transmission of the suicidal act itself or through massacres that precede taking their own lives.

Keywords : suicide; suicidal spectacle; school massacres; death narcissism; consumption of being.

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