The Great Health Of Melancholy

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The Great Health of MelancholyA Study of the Pathologies of PerformativityJohnsen, RasmusDocument VersionFinal published versionPublication date:2009Creative Commons LicenseUnspecifiedCitation for published version (APA):Johnsen, R. (2009). The Great Health of Melancholy: A Study of the Pathologies of Performativity. CopenhagenBusiness School [Phd]. PhD series No. 25.2009Link to publication in CBS Research PortalGeneral rightsCopyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright ownersand it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.Take down policyIf you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us (research.lib@cbs.dk) providing details, and we will remove access tothe work immediately and investigate your claim.Download date: 03. May. 2021

The Great Health of Melancholycopenhagen business schoolhandelshøjskolensolbjerg plads 3dk-2000 frederiksbergdanmarkwww.cbs.dkCBS PhD nr 25-2009 Rasmus Johnsen A5 OMSLAG.indd 1PhD Series 25.2009ISSN 0906-6934ISBN 978-87-593-8404-6The Great Health of MelancholyA Study of the Pathologies of PerformativityRasmus JohnsenDoctoral School of Organisationand Management StudiesPhD Series 25.200922/10/09 14.47

The Great Health of MelancholyA Study of the Pathologies of PerformativityRasmus JohnsenPhD FellowDoctoral School of Organization and Management StudiesDepartment for Management, Politics and PhilosophyCopenhagen Business School2009

PREFACE . 5CHAPTER ONE. 7PROLOGUE . 71. STRESS AS A FORMAL INDICATION . 132. MICHEL FOUCAULT’S HISTORICAL PROBLEMATIZATION ANALYSIS. 213. MICHEL SERRES AND THE THEORY OF THE QUASI‐OBJECT . 314. HISTORIOGRAPHY: ONE OR SEVERAL MELANCHOLIES? . 36CHAPTER TWO . 47PROLOGUE . 471. THE EMOTIONAL HYPERBOLE OF HEROIC INDIVIDUALITY . 502. ERŌS AND THE ANTINOMY OF MADNESS IN PLATO’S DIALOGUES. 573. ABNORMAL BY NATURE: MELANCHOLY IN PROBLEMS XXX, 1 . 644. SATURNINE MEN: THE DIETETICS OF MELANCHOLY IN FICINO . 725. PATHOLOGIES OF PERFORMATIVITY: MELANCHOLY. 80CHAPTER THREE . 87PROLOGUE . 871. ACEDIA AMONG THE ANCHORITE MONKS . 892. THE VIRTUE OF WORK AND THE MELANCHOLY OF THE SOCIAL BODY . 983. THOMAS HOBBES AND THE MELANCHOLIC OF THE LEVIATHAN . 1044. THE PATHOLOGIES OF PERFORMATIVITY: ACEDIA . 109CHAPTER FOUR . 117PROLOGUE . 1171. GEORGE M. BEARD’S PHILOSOPHY OF NERVOUSNESS . 1202. THE CULTURE OF SENSIBILITY AND THE MALADIES OF THE WILL . 1243. THE HUMAN MOTOR: NERVES AND LABOUR POWER . 1314. THE MECHANICS OF MELANCHOLY: FREUD AND NEURASTHENIA . 1385. THE PATHOLOGIES OF PERFORMATIVITY: NEURASTHENIA . 145CHAPTER FIVE . 1531. A RECAPITULATION OF THE HISTORICAL DIMENSIONS . 1542. STRESS AND THE POPULARIZATION OF THE EXTRAORDINARY . 1593. DEPRESSION AND THE ARTICULATION OF THE SELF. 1624. DEPRESSION AND SUBJECTIVITY AS A RESOURCE . 167DANSK RESUMÉ . 173REFERENCES . 177ENDNOTES . 1873

PrefaceThis thesis is a study of three philosophical formations in the long and colourful history of melancholy as a cultural notion. For nearly two millenniathe notion of melancholy helped to shape, organize, explain, focus and render manageable the encounter between individual and collective in theWestern world. In terms of its implications for social, ethical, epistemological and medical norms, the multiplicity and diversity of this history is without comparison in the Occident. Yet, the work presented here is not somuch an attempt to unravel its historical complexities. Rather, it is an effortto show that the history of melancholy can provide an unequalled and vitalbackground to a philosophical study of the relations between the contemporary modes of organizing work and the individual pathos of work-relatedillness like stress and depression, which today has assumed a central role inthe way we understand the partaking in a socioeconomic reality. In thissense, what the thesis provides is philosophical groundwork. It offers alooking glass through which the fascinating history of great achievementand personal failure that is central to the category of melancholy can berepresented in all its foreignness, and yet, at the same time, can be said toreflect and illuminate the present. The philosophical formations exploredhere, it is my hope, can lead to a better and more complex understanding ofthe association in the contemporary between work-related illness and theinjunction to participate and contribute as a self in the modern organization. What they provide is an attempt to inform and speak into the presentfrom the point of view of history; not in order to reach the sublation of nowand then, but in order to illustrate how philosophy, and the reflexivehermeneutic space that it opens, persist in making us the contemporaries ofa past that remains negotiable and precarious.In this sense, the work on this thesis which I began on CopenhagenBusiness School in 2006, has also been a most important test piece for mein my attempt to find, maintain and use a personal voice on the thresholdbetween classical philosophical studies, and the aspects of management andorganization studies that were new to me at the time. It is my hope that thediversity 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 thesisbegan with an interest into the contemporary association between the spectacle of the experience economy and the social phenomenon of depression.It has ended as a philosophical exploration of the historical sources thatmay be said to constitute a background to an association like this. It is myhope that this work may offer a philosophical ‘toolbox’ to both my own further engagement in LAS, the research programme on management of selfmanagement, which has provided me with an opportunity to continue mystudy of pathology and work today, and to those who work on the boundaries between philosophy, management and organization studies, and whoare interested in the relation between tropes of work, illness and performativity today.I want to thank first my supervisor Prof. Sverre Raffnsøe, Asmund Bornand my good friend and colleague Marius Gudmand-Høyer sine qua non.Also Michael Pedersen and Anders Raastrup Kristensen, with whom I haveenjoyed the privilege of sharing my time at CBS until now, along withBirgitte Gorm Hansen and Pia Bramming, deserve special thanks. The advice, expert assistance and corrections by Campbell Jones and André Spiceris something I have valued a lot and which has made my complex text muchbetter. Also the opportunity given to me by Peter Case to speak in on thesubject on the Bristol Centre for Leadership and Organisational Ethics(BCLOE) is something for which I am grateful. I want thank all of my colleagues at MPP for valuable comments, suggestions and cheers and forbacking me when things got a little rough. Also all of my friends and myfamily, my father and Eva, mother, sister, Rune, Storm and Viggo deservethanks for putting up with me.Rasmus Johnsen, Frederiksberg, July 20096

Chapter OneIntroducing the ‘Thing’ in the BodyPrologue1. Stress as a Pathology of Performativity2. Michel Foucault’s Historical Problematization Analysis3. The ‘Thing’ in the Body and the ‘Quasi-Object’4. Historiography: One or Several Melancholies?Prologue‘An old man who himself was extremely melancholy’, Søren Kierkegaardwrites in a journal entry from 1846, ‘gets a son in his old age who inheritsall this melancholy – but also has a mental-spiritual elasticity enabling himto hide his melancholy.’ (Kierkegaard 1978: 343) This little piece of selfobservation, apart from representing something which to Kierkegaard wasmore like a condensed autobiography judging from his numerous reflections on the nature and cause of what he called his ‘thorn in the flesh’, presents an eminent motif for the present thesis. Through an inquiry into threevery different periods in the broad and colourful history of melancholy, thisthesis provides a philosophical and theoretical background for the study ofa relation between pathology and the ability to perform in a social contexttoday. The assertion of such a relation – represented by the burgeoning societal interest into the association between stress-related illness, depressionand the way a contemporary workplace is organized (e.g. Iacovides et al.2003) – has a socioeconomic impact on society like never before in history.In the wake of the debates, which were sparked in the 1990s as a result ofthe approval in December 1989 of Prozac for the American markets (e.g.Healy 1997, Kramer 1993), the societal debates about stress and depressionhave become linked to the question of the productivity of the ‘human resource’ and the potential humanization of work engaged within this perspective. In both fields of critical theory (e.g. Honneth 2005, Honneth2004), sociology (e.g. Ehrenberg 1999, Petersen 2007, Willig & Østergaard2005), work-environment studies (e.g. Marchand, Demers & Durand 2005,Levi 2001), popular management literature (e.g. Williams, Cooper 2002,

Loehr, McCormack 1997), psychiatric discourse (e.g. Bech et al. 2005,Schultz 2001) and philosophically inspired studies (e.g. Pedersen 2009) onstress and depression have been addressed as pathologies related to howcontemporary work is organized. More often than not, work and mentaldisorder emerge in a cause-effect relation, where pathology is viewed as adirect result of the social role that the workplace has acquired as a place forthe individual realization of the self.Yet the assumption itself of a relation between illness and the way individuals perform in a social context is not new. Although it was not alwaysassociated with the way work is organized, the association between illnessand performativity, between individual health and a productive life, has along and complicated history. This thesis explores this history and the assertion in it of individual agency. Sharing with Kierkegaard’s selfobservation the inherent distinction between a psychosomatic state of suffering and the assertion of something like a ‘mental-spiritual elasticity’ ofthe individual will regulating it, the three historical formations with whichit engages, each represent pathologies that possess connotations of healthas an individual appropriation and of illness as the signal of a failure ofagency. As maladies of the will – or pathologies of performativity – themelancholy of the extraordinary in character in Antiquity, the acedia of thereligious man in the Middle Ages, and the neurasthenia of the laboriousbusinessman around the turn of the 19th century, all represent privilegedand important aspects of a long tradition of illnesses associated with the reflective ability of the individual to articulate the ‘self’ as an object for regulation and management. It is the task of this thesis to rediscover and explorethis tradition and to illustrate how it may assist and inform an inquiry intothe contemporary age in order to provide a better understanding of the wayillness is associated with the organization of work and performativity today.Yet instead of focusing exclusively on this historical association as acause-effect relation, designating a pattern of suffering in the individualbody as the result of an external pressure, the thesis develops an alternativeperspective, which seeks instead to ask the pertinent question about howsuch associations are structured and come about. Providing a philosophical perspective on the history of the pathologies of performativity, it attempts to illustrate how the reflective assertion of an individual agency8Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body

navigating on the precarious threshold between soma and psyche can inform the present in a way that transcends a traditional perception on psychosomatic illness (e.g. Greco 1998, Greco 1993). To Kierkegaard the profound depressive suffering that he believed was passed down to him by hisfather, the inexplicable and inarticulate burden that threatened to crushhim, was thematized as a hereditary sin; but it was also associated withwhat he paradoxically described as an ‘uncommon resiliency’, an eminenthealth of mind and spirit in spite of it (Kierkegaard 1978: 334). Kierkegaardviewed his ‘thorn in the flesh’ as the gift of Governance, something to whichhe, from the first to the last written page of his life, was riveted and committed. The seeming contradictio in adjecto of this intimate and passionaterelationship with suffering provides a central theme to the following. Illustrating a relationship to an indeterminate relation between soma and psyche – a ‘thing’ in the body – around which not only a psychosomatic pattern of suffering is structured, but also the different ways in which the individual can present the self as a performing subject within a social setting,the reflective relation between self and self – in Kierkegaard’s case represented as the difference between a state of depression and an activity of despair (Marino 2008: 125) – designates a sway in which the possibility ofself-regulation and self-differentiation emerges as a problematic space ofself-articulation. Establishing a fundamental relationship between the dimension of pathology and the dimension of performance, it is the unfoldingand distribution of this space in the historical formations that constitutethem as pathologies of performativity, which occupies the present thesis.An excellent example illustrating the notion of the ‘thing’ in the body isfound in Plato’s fantastic theory of the ‘wandering uterus’ taken from hisgreat cosmological dialogue, the Timaeus (Tim. 91c) i. Describing a patternof symptoms associated with the sexual frustration of women who remainchildless too long after puberty, Plato’s theory assumes the existence in thefemale body of an unruly organ which, endowed like an animal with spontaneous sensation and emotion, desires to produce children. The frustrationof this ill-tempered animal causes it to migrate through the body of the unfortunate, resulting in a host of physiological and psychological disturbances, until she becomes pregnant.9Chapter One: Introducing the ‘Thing’ in the Body

Albeit an anachronism of medical Antiquity, Plato’s theory much later isassumed by Freud, along with his psychoanalytic colleagues, to be the first,rudimentary theory of psychosexual frustration and is thus associated withthe diagnosis of hysteria that was fashionable at the time. (e.g. Freud 2004,Freud 1920, see also: Guttman 2006) As a proof of the scientific validity ofsymptoms related to the female generative systems, this theory of a ‘thing’in the body typical of women to Freud illustrated an age-old awareness ofthe malign psychosomatic effects of disordered sexual activity. Structuringnot only a pattern of psychosomatic suffering in the body of the hysteric,which it was up to the individual to articulate in a socially understandablemanner, but also the pattern of authorities, institutions and technologiespointing it out, this ‘thing’ emerges as a precarious threshold between theindividual and the collective in which the individual finds itself to exist.Indicative of the philosophical perspective on the history of pathologiesdeveloped in this thesis, the Freudian use of Plato’s theory illustrates howthe regulative space opened in the bodies of hysterics was more than just anindividual matter. Designating a precarious threshold between soma andpsyche, between nature and culture, Plato’s assumption of a ‘thing’ in thebody of frustrated women, in the hands of Freud emerges as a social bond,a precarious and problematic space for psychoanalytic self-articulation,where the delimitations between individual and collective become blurredand indistinct. It is the historical unfolding of social bonds like this one inthe history of the pathologies of performativity with which this thesis engages.But before engaging

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 diversit

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