The Great Health of Melancholy (original) (raw)
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Melancholy and the Somatic Subject of Stress Management
This article explores the curious relation between the Aristotelian concept of melancholy and the contemporary concept of stress and stress management in organizations. Through a symptomatological reading of the most important Aristotelian text on melancholy, Problems XXX, I, it identifies the mélaina cholé – the black bile – as the somatic subject of a higher order of self-management among extraordinary individuals and discusses how the conceptualization of this somatic subject has been popularized in the contemporary presentation of stress and stress management in popular literature. It discusses this popularization and its effects on three levels: the individual, the organizational and the managerial, suggesting that the properties, which used to be reserved for the extraordinary in character among politicians, poets, philosophers and artists has been popularized under the assumption of an anthropology, which subsumes the great, culturally constructive achievements under a general idea of Arbeitskraft, of labour power.
It is Christmas 2006, Time Magazine proclaims me person of the year. I look at the cover and raise my eyebrows. What? Me? 'Yes, you. You control the Information Age. Welcome to your world.' My world. From this Time-issue I may conclude that this is the earthly heaven of the sovereign individual in an intimate embrace with information communication technology. The fruit of this love affair, according to Time, is a world-wide 'social experiment' of energetic, productive, innovative, creative, in short of free spirits. At long last: we are free, we are equals and we are interactive. Adhortations such as those in the Christmas issue of Time, are frequently let loose upon us these days. They are characteristic of a time in which drive and entrepreneurial spirit are considered to be among the highest values. It seems a paradox that encouragement appears to be all the more necessary in this Realm of Freedom. As a consequence this incitement turns into something obsessive, it becomes a somewhat frenetic summons. What is being pursued here and what is it that is being avoided? I hope to address these questions in the following article by allotting a central place to an experience which, in the course of European history, has been understood in various ways and, therefore, has been undergone in various ways, namely: melancholy. A glance at the vicissitudes of this experience may afford a view of the (changing) condition of our culture.
Death in Life and Life in Death: Melancholy and the Enlightenment
Gesnerus
This article, which deals with the 17th and 18th centuries, is concerned with the presence of death in the melancholiac's life as revealed in both the accounts written by sufferers themselves and medical works. It shows the exceptional place which melancholiacs consider themselves to occupy, compared to the rest of the living, as they inhabit the no-man's-land between life and death. The privileged status echoes the classical theme of the melancholic genius (Problem XXX). Although some, like George Cheyne or Samuel Johnson, denied the link, this cliché is nevertheless very present in the self-description of the melancholy. Suffering, which is always physical, is a sign of moral superiority.
The Deconstruction of Freud's Theory of Melancholy_Mlacnik
Družboslovne razprave/, 2018
In the article, the author presents an interpretation of melancholy and its discourse through the perspective of Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction and “violence of writing”. In part one of the article, the ambivalent and contradictory conceptions of melancholy in the West are outlined in order to show the working of the logic of difference that makes any unified and universal definition impossible. Sigmund Freud first introduced a universal theory of melancholy in his essay “Mourning and Melancholia” (1917), while part two of the article analyses the inherent enigmas and contradictions in Freud’s psychoanalytical distinction between mourning and melancholy in the specific socio-historical context. The binary oppositions in support of Freud’s dichotomy are also exposed. In the conclusion, the author shows how Freud’s paradoxes are deconstructed in contemporary theories in the humanities and social sciences that address various social and political discourses. KEY WORDS: deconstruction, violence of writing, Mourning and Melancholia, loss, psychoanalysis
The Deconstruction of Freud’s Theory of Melancholy
2018
In the article, the author presents an interpretation of melancholy and its discourse through the perspective of Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction and “violence of writing”. In part one of the article, the ambivalent and contradictory conceptions of melancholy in the West are outlined in order to show the working of the logic of Différance that makes any unified and universal definition impossible. Sigmund Freud first introduced a universal theory of melancholy in his essay “Mourning and Melancholia” (1917), while part two of the article analyses the inherent enigmas and contradictions in Freud’s psychoanalytical distinction between mourning and melancholy in the specific socio-historical context. The binary oppositions in support of Freud’s dichotomy are also exposed. In the conclusion, the author shows how Freud’s paradoxes are deconstructed in contemporary theories in the humanities and social sciences that address various social and political discourses.
Comparative and Continental Philosophy, 2014
This essay attempts to discuss the relation of mood to philosophy in the context of Benjamin's early thought. Reviewing Ilit Ferber's Melancholy and Philosophy: Benjamin's Early Reflections on Theatre and Language, I try to show that melancholy, far from merely a psychological-solipsistic-pathological condition as it is generally understood today, is rather to be understood as philosophical attunement and which as such is inseparably connected with profound ethico-political questions concerning responsibility and justice, with work and play and with a possible phenomenological disclosure of the world as a whole. Walter Benjamin's early works are seen, in this context, to be indispensable help to think such questions anew. keywords Walter Benjamin, melancholy, mood Ilit Ferber, Philosophy and Melancholy: Benjamin's Early Reflections on Theatre and Language, Stanford University Press, 2013, 264 pp, $24 . 95 (pbk), ISBN-13: 978-0-8047-8520-4.