Suicide and the body politic in Imperial Russia / Susan K. Morrissey.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Morrissey, Susan K., 1963- author.

Series:

Cambridge social and cultural histories ; 9.

Cambridge social and cultural histories ; 9

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Suicide--Russia--History--20th century.

Suicide.

Suicide--Sociological aspects.

Russia--Social conditions--1801-1917.

Russia.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xv, 384 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

Suicide & the Body Politic in Imperial Russia

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In early twentieth-century Russia, suicide became a public act and a social phenomenon of exceptional scale, a disquieting emblem of Russia's encounter with modernity. This 2007 book draws on an extensive range of sources, from judicial records to the popular press, to examine the forms, meanings, and regulation of suicide from the seventeenth century to 1914, placing developments into a pan-European context. It argues against narratives of secularization that read the history of suicide as a trajectory from sin to insanity, crime to social problem, and instead focuses upon the cultural politics of self-destruction. Suicide - the act, the body, the socio-medical problem - became the site on which diverse authorities were established and contested, not just the priest or the doctor but also the sovereign, the public, and the individual. This panoramic history of modern Russia, told through the prism of suicide, rethinks the interaction between cultural forms, individual agency, and systems of governance.

Contents:

Part I. Public order and its malcontents

Victims of their own will

Virtue and vice in an age of Enlightenment

The regulation of suicide

Punishing the body, cleansing the conscience

Policing and paternalism

Arbiters of the self: the suicide note

Part II. Disease of the century

Sciences of suicide

Crime, disease, sin: disputed judgments

A ray of light in the kingdom of darkness

Part III. Political theology and moral epidemics

Freedom, death, and the sacred

Children of the twentieth century.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-107-16993-3

1-280-70985-5

0-511-25712-0

0-511-49680-X

0-511-25760-0

0-511-25605-1

0-511-31978-9

0-511-25662-0

OCLC:

476022500