16086
Advanced seminar
WiSe 23/24: (Critical) Theories of Depression (Englisch)
Federica Gregoratto
Comments
Depression is a painful existential situation that seems to be quite widespread in our contemporary capitalist, ultra-individualistic societies. Recent and current interrelated crises, as for example the financial crisis, the climate crisis and the threat of a global war, seem to have exacerbated the phenomenon.
But what does it mean exactly to be depressed, or to live with depression? How could we better conceive of it: as mental and bodily disorder, condition, disposition, mode of experience, habit, …? What kind of relations – to oneself, to fellow human beings, and to the world – does depression foster and is fed by? If one agrees to consider it as a pathology, is it just an individual or also a social pathology? What does constitute its ‘pathological’ (i.e. ‘wrong’) character? Does depression also entail ‘positive’ aspects?
The seminar aims at addressing and discussing these and further questions by drawing upon a vast range of theoretical and literary resources. We will revise the ‘classic’ psychoanalytical (Freud, Klein) and medical accounts (Robert Burton). We will read excerpts from philosophical texts that do not speak explicitly about what we are today used to refer to as depression, but might convey something precious to understand the phenomenon (Descartes, Marx, Kierkegaard, Simone de Beauvoir). We will learn from contemporary phenomenological (Matthew Ratcliffe), sociological (Alain Ehrenberg), and cultural-critical (Mark Fisher) perspectives. We will also have the chance to discuss excerpts from novels (Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, Emmanuel Carrere’s Yoga) and poems (Shelley’s, Claudia Rankine’s Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric). The economic, gender and race aspects of pathologies of depression will also be objects of critical inquiry.
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Additional appointments
Tue, 2023-10-17 16:00 - 18:00 Tue, 2023-10-24 16:00 - 18:00 Tue, 2023-10-31 16:00 - 18:00 Tue, 2023-11-07 16:00 - 18:00 Tue, 2023-11-14 16:00 - 18:00 Tue, 2023-11-21 16:00 - 18:00 Tue, 2023-11-28 16:00 - 18:00 Tue, 2023-12-05 16:00 - 18:00 Tue, 2023-12-12 16:00 - 18:00 Tue, 2023-12-19 16:00 - 18:00 Tue, 2024-01-09 16:00 - 18:00 Tue, 2024-01-16 16:00 - 18:00 Tue, 2024-01-23 16:00 - 18:00 Tue, 2024-01-30 16:00 - 18:00 Tue, 2024-02-06 16:00 - 18:00 Tue, 2024-02-13 16:00 - 18:00