Table Of Content‘This book is a much welcome contribution to the study of contemporary
social pathologies. Based on analyses of late modern subjectivity, the authors
present original and thought-provoking cultural readings of anxiety, depression
and Alzheimer’s disease. The book will challenge every reader to think anew
about these phenomena.’
Svend Brinkmann, University of Aalborg, Denmark
‘This fantastic collection of essays takes seriously Freud’s observation that
malaise in civilization affects malaise of the individuals. The authors show how
neoliberal society today contributes to people’s psychological and physical suf-
fering. In a groundbreaking way, they link the rise of anxiety, depression and
Alzheimer’s disease to social changes that we are experiencing in today’s capi-
talism. For anyone wanting to understand why people are suffering so much in
the developed world, these essays are an essential read!’
Renata Salecl, Birkbeck, University of London, UK
Late Modern Subjectivity and its
Discontents
This book analyses three of the most prevalent illnesses of late modernity:
anxiety, depression and Alzheimer’s disease, in terms of their relation to cultural
pathologies of the social body. Usually these conditions are interpreted clini-
cally in terms of individualized symptoms and responded to discretely, as
though for the most part unrelated to each other. However, these diseases also
have a social and cultural profile that transcends their particular symptomolo-
gies and etiologies. Anxiety, depression and Alzheimer’s are diseases related to
disorders of the collective esprit de corps of contemporary society.
Multidisciplinary in approach, the book addresses questions of how these
conditions are manifest at both the individual and collective levels in relation
to hegemonic biomedical and psychologistic understandings. Rejecting such
reductive diagnoses, the authors argue that anxiety, depression and Alzheimer’s
disease, as well as other contemporary epidemics, are to be analysed in the light
of individual and collective experiences of profound and radical changes in our
civilization. A diagnosis of our times, Late Modern Subjectivity and its Discontents
will appeal to a broad range of scholars with interests in health and illness, the
sociology of medicine and contemporary life.
Kieran Keohane, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the School of Sociology
and Philosophy, University College Cork, Ireland.
Anders Petersen, Associate Professor of Sociology at Aalborg University,
Denmark.
Bert van den Bergh, PhD candidate at the Faculty of Philosophy of Erasmus
University Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
The Social Pathologies of Contemporary Civilization
Series editors:
Anders Petersen, Kieran Keohane and Bert van den Bergh
Breaking decisively with the often ideological and moralistic approach of treat-
ing problems of health and well-being as discrete and individual problems to
be addressed in isolation both from one another and their broader social
contexts, this series pursues the investigation of the ways in which contempo-
rary malaises, diseases, illnesses and psychosomatic syndromes are related to
cultural pathologies of the social body and disorders of the collective ésprit de
corps of contemporary society.
It avoids reductive psychological and biomedical understandings of
pathologies – including depression, stress-related illnesses, eating disorders,
suicide and deliberate self-harm – to focus instead on the socio-cultural
contexts in which they occur, examining the radical changes to social struc-
tures and institutions, and the deep crises in our civilization as a whole to
which such conditions are connected.
The Social Pathologies of Contemporary Civilization thus welcomes manu-
scripts from a broad range of disciplinary perspectives across the humanities
and social sciences – sociology, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, politics,
economics and cultural studies, as well as from the fields of medicine social
care, therapeutic practice and the healing arts – that explore the fruitfulness
locating health and well-being not simply in the individual body or soul, but
within a trans-disciplinary imagination that takes into account the integral
human person’s situatedness within collective social bodies, particular commu-
nities, entire societies, or even whole civilizations.
Late Modern Subjectivity and
its Discontents
Anxiety, Depression and Alzheimer’s Disease
Kieran Keohane, Anders Petersen and
Bert van den Bergh
First published 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2017 Kieran Keohane, Anders Petersen and Bert van den Bergh
The right of Kieran Keohane, Anders Petersen and Bert van den
Bergh to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by
them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or
other means, now known or hereafter invented, including ph otocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Keohane, Kieran, author. | Petersen, Anders, 1973- author. |
Bergh, Bert van den, author.
Title: Late modern subjectivity and its discontents: anxiety, depression
and Alzheimer’s disease / Kieran Keohane, Anders Petersen and
Bert van den Bergh.
Other titles: Social pathologies of contemporary civilization.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY : Routledge, 2017. |
Series: Social pathologies of contemporary civilization | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016041016| ISBN 9781138213937 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781315447209 (ebook)
Subjects: | MESH: Sociology, Medical | Health Knowledge, Attitudes,
Practice | Depression | Anxiety | Alzheimer Disease
Classification: LCC RC455 | NLM WA 31 | DDC 362.19689–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016041016
ISBN: 978-1-138-21393-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-44720-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Cenveo Publisher Services
Contents
Notes on contributors ix
1 Introduction to a series 1
KIERAN KEOHANE, ANDERS PETERSEN AND BERT VAN DEN BERGH
2 Modern subjectivity/post-modern subjectivity 8
DANY-ROBERT DUFOUR
3 Return of the age of anxiety: the embedding of a late
modern social pathology 24
ANDERS PETERSEN
4 Sadean depression and the work of culture 41
BERT VAN DEN BERGH
5 Alzheimer’s disease: a social pathology of contemporary
civilization 69
KIERAN KEOHANE
6 A research prospective 88
KIERAN KEOHANE, ANDERS PETERSEN AND
BERT VAN DEN BERGH
Index 109
Notes on contributors
Anders Petersen, Associate Professor of Sociology at Aalborg University,
Denmark, is author/editor of six books and numerous articles. His main
areas of research are: social theory; social pathologies of contemporary civi-
lization; creative methods; sociological perspectives of the self; the sociology
of diagnosis. His current research project can be followed at www.dc.aau.dk
Kieran Keohane, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the School of Sociology
and Philosophy, University College Cork, Ireland, is author/editor of six
books and numerous journal articles. Research and teaching interests
include social pathologies of contemporary civilization; the symbolic disor-
ders and socio-psychopathologies associated with accelerated moderniza-
tion, globalization and risk, including: ennui, anomie, melancholia, affective
disorders, psychoses and the hysterical conditions of the twenty-first cen-
tury; and as a consequence of this work, he is also interested in epidemiol-
ogy, public health and social policy.
Bert van den Bergh, PhD candidate at the Faculty of Philosophy of Erasmus
University Rotterdam, The Netherlands, with the support of Netherlands
Organisation of Scientific Research. Since the late 1990s he has been teaching
Cultural Philosophy at the Department of European Studies of The Hague
University of Applied Sciences. His interest is in themes that are to be found
on the interface of both philosophy and psychology – for instance, the theme
of the contemporary ‘depression epidemic’ and the genealogy of emerging
forms of subjectivity under the auspices of the ‘neoliberal revolution’.
Dany-Robert Dufour is Professor of Philosophy and Education at University
of Paris VIII. He teaches regularly in Brazil and Mexico, and is also fre-
quently involved in various artistic activities. A key theme in his work is
what he terms the ‘liberal cultural revolution’, a theme on which he has
published several volumes. One of these is The Art of Shrinking Heads: The
New Servitude of the Liberated in the Era of Total Capitalism (Polity 2008). His
latest works are Le Délire Occidental (Les Liens Qui Libèrent 2014) and
Pléonexie (Le Bord de L’Eau 2015).
