“All Googled Out on Suicide”: Making Collective Biographies Out of Silent Fragments With “The Unassuming Geeks”

Abstract

This article reprises and extends previous work coauthored by a middle-aged, female scholar/ narrative therapist and a group of young men. Those young men, who described themselves collectively as the “Unassuming Geeks” had all spent some time in their lives seriously considering suicide. This article focuses on the moment 10 years later, when the same group met together to mourn the loss of one of their members. This text articulates the collective witnessing and writing practice the group used and employs devices borrowed from ancient Greek theatre, together with fictionalized accounts, in an attempt to cultivate a “poetics of insufficiency” and disrupt notions of authenticity within “voices.” In looking back to what was silent/silenced and unsaid in previous work, the edges between therapy, research, and writing are blurred and troubled. Ongoing mutuality and accountability is considered.