Calls for Papers:

“…Have individuals’ feelings of hope and

possibility been diminished by the ‘triumph’ of capitalism, economic

downturns (no longer referred to as ‘depressions’), corporate and

political scandals, the rise of the security state and increasing

threats to civil liberties, the apparent inevitability of certain

social problems, the limited successes (failures?) of the Left and

progressives? How might focusing on depression help us to understand

phenomena like political nonparticipation, the rise of

fundamentalisms, growing consumerism, and the retreat to the private

sphere? More hopefully, we wonder: might depression have a future in

politics?

Ultimately, the conference will work to dispel the notion that

disempowerment is the only prognosis for the depressed or that the

goal ought to lie in ‘getting happy.’ Instead, we will ask how

depression might be used politically. In particular, a guiding

question will concern the historical specificity of our own moment:

in a time when certain narratives no longer inspire optimism and when

a culture-wide sense of a totalizing despair has started to seem

natural, how might we see the political horizon opening up in new

ways? “