Late Modern Subjectivity and its Discontents: Anxiety, Depression and Alzheimer’s Disease PDF
Preview Late Modern Subjectivity and its Discontents: Anxiety, Depression and Alzheimer’s Disease
‘This book is a much welcome contribution to the study of contemporary social pathologies. Based on analyses of late modern subjectivity, the authors present original and thought-provoking cultural readings of anxiety, depression and Alzheimer’s disease. The book will challenge every reader to think anew about these phenomena.’ Svend Brinkmann, University of Aalborg, Denmark ‘This fantastic collection of essays takes seriously Freud’s observation that malaise in civilization affects malaise of the individuals. The authors show how neoliberal society today contributes to people’s psychological and physical suf- fering. In a groundbreaking way, they link the rise of anxiety, depression and Alzheimer’s disease to social changes that we are experiencing in today’s capi- talism. For anyone wanting to understand why people are suffering so much in the developed world, these essays are an essential read!’ Renata Salecl, Birkbeck, University of London, UK Late Modern Subjectivity and its Discontents This book analyses three of the most prevalent illnesses of late modernity: anxiety, depression and Alzheimer’s disease, in terms of their relation to cultural pathologies of the social body. Usually these conditions are interpreted clini- cally in terms of individualized symptoms and responded to discretely, as though for the most part unrelated to each other. However, these diseases also have a social and cultural profile that transcends their particular symptomolo- gies and etiologies. Anxiety, depression and Alzheimer’s are diseases related to disorders of the collective esprit de corps of contemporary society. Multidisciplinary in approach, the book addresses questions of how these conditions are manifest at both the individual and collective levels in relation to hegemonic biomedical and psychologistic understandings. Rejecting such reductive diagnoses, the authors argue that anxiety, depression and Alzheimer’s disease, as well as other contemporary epidemics, are to be analysed in the light of individual and collective experiences of profound and radical changes in our civilization. A diagnosis of our times, Late Modern Subjectivity and its Discontents will appeal to a broad range of scholars with interests in health and illness, the sociology of medicine and contemporary life. Kieran Keohane, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the School of Sociology and Philosophy, University College Cork, Ireland. Anders Petersen, Associate Professor of Sociology at Aalborg University, Denmark. Bert van den Bergh, PhD candidate at the Faculty of Philosophy of Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. The Social Pathologies of Contemporary Civilization Series editors: Anders Petersen, Kieran Keohane and Bert van den Bergh Breaking decisively with the often ideological and moralistic approach of treat- ing problems of health and well-being as discrete and individual problems to be addressed in isolation both from one another and their broader social contexts, this series pursues the investigation of the ways in which contempo- rary malaises, diseases, illnesses and psychosomatic syndromes are related to cultural pathologies of the social body and disorders of the collective ésprit de corps of contemporary society. It avoids reductive psychological and biomedical understandings of pathologies – including depression, stress-related illnesses, eating disorders, suicide and deliberate self-harm – to focus instead on the socio-cultural contexts in which they occur, examining the radical changes to social struc- tures and institutions, and the deep crises in our civilization as a whole to which such conditions are connected. The Social Pathologies of Contemporary Civilization thus welcomes manu- scripts from a broad range of disciplinary perspectives across the humanities and social sciences – sociology, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, politics, economics and cultural studies, as well as from the fields of medicine social care, therapeutic practice and the healing arts – that explore the fruitfulness locating health and well-being not simply in the individual body or soul, but within a trans-disciplinary imagination that takes into account the integral human person’s situatedness within collective social bodies, particular commu- nities, entire societies, or even whole civilizations. Late Modern Subjectivity and its Discontents Anxiety, Depression and Alzheimer’s Disease Kieran Keohane, Anders Petersen and Bert van den Bergh First published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 Kieran Keohane, Anders Petersen and Bert van den Bergh The right of Kieran Keohane, Anders Petersen and Bert van den Bergh to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including ph otocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Names: Keohane, Kieran, author. | Petersen, Anders, 1973- author. | Bergh, Bert van den, author. Title: Late modern subjectivity and its discontents: anxiety, depression and Alzheimer’s disease / Kieran Keohane, Anders Petersen and Bert van den Bergh. Other titles: Social pathologies of contemporary civilization. Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY : Routledge, 2017. | Series: Social pathologies of contemporary civilization | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016041016| ISBN 9781138213937 (hardback) | ISBN 9781315447209 (ebook) Subjects: | MESH: Sociology, Medical | Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice | Depression | Anxiety | Alzheimer Disease Classification: LCC RC455 | NLM WA 31 | DDC 362.19689–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016041016 ISBN: 978-1-138-21393-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-44720-9 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Cenveo Publisher Services Contents Notes on contributors ix 1 Introduction to a series 1 KIERAN KEOHANE, ANDERS PETERSEN AND BERT VAN DEN BERGH 2 Modern subjectivity/post-modern subjectivity 8 DANY-ROBERT DUFOUR 3 Return of the age of anxiety: the embedding of a late modern social pathology 24 ANDERS PETERSEN 4 Sadean depression and the work of culture 41 BERT VAN DEN BERGH 5 Alzheimer’s disease: a social pathology of contemporary civilization 69 KIERAN KEOHANE 6 A research prospective 88 KIERAN KEOHANE, ANDERS PETERSEN AND BERT VAN DEN BERGH Index 109 Notes on contributors Anders Petersen, Associate Professor of Sociology at Aalborg University, Denmark, is author/editor of six books and numerous articles. His main areas of research are: social theory; social pathologies of contemporary civi- lization; creative methods; sociological perspectives of the self; the sociology of diagnosis. His current research project can be followed at www.dc.aau.dk Kieran Keohane, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the School of Sociology and Philosophy, University College Cork, Ireland, is author/editor of six books and numerous journal articles. Research and teaching interests include social pathologies of contemporary civilization; the symbolic disor- ders and socio-psychopathologies associated with accelerated moderniza- tion, globalization and risk, including: ennui, anomie, melancholia, affective disorders, psychoses and the hysterical conditions of the twenty-first cen- tury; and as a consequence of this work, he is also interested in epidemiol- ogy, public health and social policy. Bert van den Bergh, PhD candidate at the Faculty of Philosophy of Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands, with the support of Netherlands Organisation of Scientific Research. Since the late 1990s he has been teaching Cultural Philosophy at the Department of European Studies of The Hague University of Applied Sciences. His interest is in themes that are to be found on the interface of both philosophy and psychology – for instance, the theme of the contemporary ‘depression epidemic’ and the genealogy of emerging forms of subjectivity under the auspices of the ‘neoliberal revolution’. Dany-Robert Dufour is Professor of Philosophy and Education at University of Paris VIII. He teaches regularly in Brazil and Mexico, and is also fre- quently involved in various artistic activities. A key theme in his work is what he terms the ‘liberal cultural revolution’, a theme on which he has published several volumes. One of these is The Art of Shrinking Heads: The New Servitude of the Liberated in the Era of Total Capitalism (Polity 2008). His latest works are Le Délire Occidental (Les Liens Qui Libèrent 2014) and Pléonexie (Le Bord de L’Eau 2015).
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