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The Great Health of Melancholy a Study of the Pathologies of Performativity Johnsen, Rasmus

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The Great Health of Melancholy a Study of the Pathologies of Performativity Johnsen, Rasmus The Great Health of Melancholy A Study of the Pathologies of Performativity Johnsen, Rasmus Document Version Final published version Publication date: 2009 License Unspecified Citation for published version (APA): Johnsen, R. (2009). The Great Health of Melancholy: A Study of the Pathologies of Performativity. Copenhagen Business School [Phd]. PhD series No. 25.2009 Link to publication in CBS Research Portal General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us ([email protected]) providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 30. Sep. 2021 The Great Health of Melancholy The Great copenhagen business school handelshøjskolen solbjerg plads 3 dk-2000 frederiksberg danmark www.cbs.dk The Great Health of Melancholy A Study of the Pathologies of Performativity Rasmus Johnsen PhD Series 25.2009 ISSN 0906-6934 ISBN 978-87-593-8404-6 Doctoral School of Organisation and Management Studies PhD Series 25.2009 CBS PhD nr 25-2009 Rasmus Johnsen • A5 OMSLAG.indd 1 22/10/09 14.47 The Great Health of Melancholy A Study of the Pathologies of Performativity Rasmus Johnsen PhD Fellow Doctoral School of Organization and Management Studies Department for Management, Politics and Philosophy Copenhagen Business School 2009 PREFACE ................................................................................................................................................................... 5 CHAPTER ONE......................................................................................................................................................... 7 PROLOGUE ................................................................................................................................................................................. 7 1. STRESS AS A FORMAL INDICATION ................................................................................................................................ 13 2. MICHEL FOUCAULT’S HISTORICAL PROBLEMATIZATION ANALYSIS ........................................................................ 21 3. MICHEL SERRES AND THE THEORY OF THE QUASI‐OBJECT ...................................................................................... 31 4. HISTORIOGRAPHY: ONE OR SEVERAL MELANCHOLIES? ............................................................................................ 36 CHAPTER TWO ..................................................................................................................................................... 47 PROLOGUE .............................................................................................................................................................................. 47 1. THE EMOTIONAL HYPERBOLE OF HEROIC INDIVIDUALITY ....................................................................................... 50 2. ERŌS AND THE ANTINOMY OF MADNESS IN PLATO’S DIALOGUES........................................................................... 57 3. ABNORMAL BY NATURE: MELANCHOLY IN PROBLEMS XXX, 1 ................................................................................. 64 4. SATURNINE MEN: THE DIETETICS OF MELANCHOLY IN FICINO .............................................................................. 72 5. PATHOLOGIES OF PERFORMATIVITY: MELANCHOLY .................................................................................................. 80 CHAPTER THREE ................................................................................................................................................. 87 PROLOGUE .............................................................................................................................................................................. 87 1. ACEDIA AMONG THE ANCHORITE MONKS .................................................................................................................... 89 2. THE VIRTUE OF WORK AND THE MELANCHOLY OF THE SOCIAL BODY .......................................................... 98 3. THOMAS HOBBES AND THE MELANCHOLIC OF THE LEVIATHAN ........................................................................... 104 4. THE PATHOLOGIES OF PERFORMATIVITY: ACEDIA .................................................................................................. 109 CHAPTER FOUR ................................................................................................................................................. 117 PROLOGUE ........................................................................................................................................................................... 117 1. GEORGE M. BEARD’S PHILOSOPHY OF NERVOUSNESS ............................................................................................ 120 2. THE CULTURE OF SENSIBILITY AND THE MALADIES OF THE WILL ...................................................................... 124 3. THE HUMAN MOTOR: NERVES AND LABOUR POWER ............................................................................................ 131 4. THE MECHANICS OF MELANCHOLY: FREUD AND NEURASTHENIA ....................................................................... 138 5. THE PATHOLOGIES OF PERFORMATIVITY: NEURASTHENIA .................................................................................. 145 CHAPTER FIVE ................................................................................................................................................... 153 1. A RECAPITULATION OF THE HISTORICAL DIMENSIONS .......................................................................................... 154 2. STRESS AND THE POPULARIZATION OF THE EXTRAORDINARY ............................................................................. 159 3. DEPRESSION AND THE ARTICULATION OF THE SELF ............................................................................................... 162 4. DEPRESSION AND SUBJECTIVITY AS A RESOURCE .................................................................................................... 167 DANSK RESUMÉ .................................................................................................................................................................. 173 REFERENCES ....................................................................................................................................................................... 177 ENDNOTES ........................................................................................................................................................................... 187 3 Preface This thesis is a study of three philosophical formations in the long and col- ourful history of melancholy as a cultural notion. For nearly two millennia the notion of melancholy helped to shape, organize, explain, focus and ren- der manageable the encounter between individual and collective in the Western world. In terms of its implications for social, ethical, epistemologi- cal and medical norms, the multiplicity and diversity of this history is with- out comparison in the Occident. Yet, the work presented here is not so much an attempt to unravel its historical complexities. Rather, it is an effort to show that the history of melancholy can provide an unequalled and vital background to a philosophical study of the relations between the contempo- rary modes of organizing work and the individual pathos of work-related illness like stress and depression, which today has assumed a central role in the way we understand the partaking in a socioeconomic reality. In this sense, what the thesis provides is philosophical groundwork. It offers a looking glass through which the fascinating history of great achievement and personal failure that is central to the category of melancholy can be represented in all its foreignness, and yet, at the same time, can be said to reflect and illuminate the present. The philosophical formations explored here, it is my hope, can lead to a better and more complex understanding of the association in the contemporary between work-related illness and the injunction to participate and contribute as a self in the modern organiza- tion. What they provide is an attempt to inform and speak into the present from the point of view of history; not in order to reach the sublation of now and then, but in order to illustrate how philosophy, and the reflexive- hermeneutic space that it opens, persist in making us the contemporaries of a past that remains negotiable and precarious. In this sense, the work on this thesis which I began on Copenhagen Business School in 2006, has also been a most important test piece for me in my attempt to find, maintain and use a personal voice on the threshold between classical philosophical studies, and the aspects of management and organization studies that were new to me at the time. It is my hope that the diversity of these fields, rather than being reduced to each other, are al- lowed a space in which to grow and flourish in their diversity. The thesis began with an interest into the contemporary association between the spec- tacle of the experience economy and the social phenomenon
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