To say that different cultures at different moments in history have constructed suicide differently is probably to state the obvious. Any book which offers up a history of the subject confrms that this is so. We can read, for instance, that in Ancient Rome, certain philosophers viewed acts of voluntary death as honourable, that in Europe in the Middle Ages, self-murder was taken to be a heinous sin and crime and that more recently suicide has come to be thought of as a symptom or outcome of mental illness or associated with particular economic and social structures (e.g. van Hooff 2000). But what, actually, is the subject of these histories? There are accounts of people acting to end their own lives in pretty much all eras and in all places. That these accounts vary is easy to see, but is what they are accounts of, namely, “suicide”, singular? Is there an unchanging element, essence or experience of suicide or suicidality and it is merely the descriptions and meanings that change according to place and time? Or is suicide mutable and heterogeneous? Is suicide itself—as an event, act or experience—always a historical and cultural product, its form necessarily contingent on the context within which it arises? This chapter tries to address some of these issues, drawing on work from the felds of history and anthropology in order to cast doubt on some of the universalist assumptions implicit in many modern theories of suicide. In so doing, a different perspective on the experiences of suicidal people is offered.