Violence against bodies. Suicide.

Abstract

The purpose of this text is to examine the forms and semantic/symbolic fields involved in self-inflicted violence of suicide across three registers: pictorial, literary, and historical, in relation to suicides committed from waterfalls. The central example for this analysis will focus on certain aspects related to suicides carried out at the so-called Salto del Tequedama, located in the municipality of Soacha in Colombia. From this, a collective participation becomes evidente, which, expressed in the suicidal act, shows that self-inflicted symbolically involves all the actors engaged (including the person committing suicide) as contributors of evidence upon the body.