Diálogos con los muertos: yos ilustrados, suicidio y derechos humanos

Abstract

Since ancient times, the theme of suicide has been linked to the concept of a «dialogue with the dead». That genre, made popular by Lucian and widespread in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, comes to represent the possibility of transcending the limits of selfhood and of local customs. In neoclassical literature, the contrasts and comparisons inherent in the dialogue form or in epistolary fictions enable the exploration of universal truths about natural law and natural rights. The realm of the dead is ultimately democratic. The narrative displacement of the scene to an encounter on the margins with the Ancients or with heroic rebels in the New World permitted Enlightened political writers such as Montesquieu, Voltaire, or Condorcet to escape censorship. In exploring the philosophic grounds for republican thought, eighteenth-century writers draw on suicidal protagonists who are not only geopolitically «Other» but female, to dramatize their claims to universal human rights.