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Paper short abstract

This paper examines the suicide of a young man in northern Benin (2025), focusing on silence, fieldwork conversations, and familial conflicts linked to changing land tenure and responsibilities, and reflects on healing and the ethical intensity of long-term ethnographic research.

Paper long abstract

This paper reconstructs contexts and perceived reasons surrounding the suicide of a young man in northern Benin, which occurred unexpectedly in my long-term field site in 2025 and profoundly affected both myself and my research partners. Ousmane had been regarded as a successful agriculturalist assuming responsibility for his household and guiding his family through periods of transformation. His suicide abruptly shattered this image—one I had also previously shared.

The event generated a situation of helplessness and was initially met with multiple forms of communicative silence. These included refusal to speculate about the reasons for the suicide, commonly framed as knowledge accessible only to God; silence surrounding possible warning signs; and avoidance of discussing conflicts that may have contributed to his death. However, my return to the field—by chance a few weeks after Ousmane’s death—and my thirty-year familiarity with him and many of his kin facilitated conversations that gradually transformed this silence. In these exchanges, both my interlocutors and I began to reflect collectively on the event.

The paper analyzes these conversations, the silences they addressed, and their potential for healing. It examines deep-seated familial conflicts that appear to have played a role in the suicide, emerging in the context of accelerating individualization of land tenure, economic resources, and shifting family responsibilities. I argue that, in this case, overcoming silence in the field contributed to the creation of new perspectives for those affected by the loss. The paper also reflects on the emotional intensity and ethical challenges of extreme fieldwork experiences.