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Zbwleibniz-Informationszentrum A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Johnsen, Rasmus Doctoral Thesis The great health of melancholy: A study of the pathologies of performativity PhD Series, No. 25.2009 Provided in Cooperation with: Copenhagen Business School (CBS) Suggested Citation: Johnsen, Rasmus (2009) : The great health of melancholy: A study of the pathologies of performativity, PhD Series, No. 25.2009, ISBN 9788759384046, Copenhagen Business School (CBS), Frederiksberg, http://hdl.handle.net/10398/7929 This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/208733 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ www.econstor.eu 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
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