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lizawall's review
5.0
A queer academic self-help book! That is what Ann Cvetkovich said she "kind of jokingly" called this project, but I think it's for real. My boss lent me this along with Lynda Barry's Cruddy and Beth Ditto's memoir, which I think make good companion pieces. By the time I was about a third of the way through, I had forcibly recommended this book to almost everyone I know, but two thirds of the way in I got completely bogged down. Maybe that's fitting?
ddillon154's review
5.0
The memoir of Part 1 was deeply affecting, as I find myself poised at the very career juncture that starts the whole thing. But the essay(s) of Part 2 were no less potently insightful, and have given me some clarity on parts of my own research.
courtneyfalling's review against another edition
informative
fast-paced
4.0
I have mixed feelings about the cross-genre nature of this as an overall project, but it's a formative addition to the field of Public Feelings and Affect Theory, and it synthesizes some interesting other scholarship on public feelings. I can't stop thinking about the rumination on craftivism during the Iraq War.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness
jasonvpurcell's review
3.0
I wasn't persuaded by the memoir section of this book, but there were a handful of interesting ideas that I'll take with me.
docz's review
3.75
I loved the first half of this book, but the second part I found less compelling. Some of the moves in the second half didn’t feel nuanced enough for my taste (the chapter on race and indigeneity felt rushed and underwritten in multiple areas), and I wasn’t quite sure that the connection between the parts was. I get the attempt to span genres, but it felt a bit clunky and disparate most of the time. The epilogue, too, while I enjoyed most of it, seemed to miss the point for me a bit. Instead of making a “we all have it hard” argument, I think I would have preferred to read more about depression as everyday affect (and then how that animates social institutions like the academy). That said, I did find the notion of political depression quite helpful, and will be picking through parts of this book from time to time for my future work and thinking.
touchingfeeling's review
5.0
Cvetkovich experiments with writing form and includes a memoir in the first section of the book in which she details the last years of her PhD and the first years of her working. She de-pathologizes depression (which she also names bad feelings for its banal connotations), and instead, demonstrates the ways in which it can open up new forms of sociality and serve as foundations for new forms of attachment. She later makes these claims theoretically (is this a kind of grounded theory? j/k!) For her experience, observation, and theory are wound up in each other -- and although she doesn't mention Merleau-Ponty, her queer theory is more phenomenology than psychoanalysis, unlike her interlocutors (Berlant, Panofsky Sedgwick).
She, astutely, argues against big pharma drugs to claim that anxiety and bad feelings are enmeshed in the conditions that patriarchal, white supremacist capitalism gives rise to. She uses the memoir as a way to extrapolate meaning from experience, but to also not obfuscate experience with 'simply' and immediately asking what it means. It's crucial we learn how to describe our embodied lived experience and the environment in detail. Then we can do the interpretative theoretical work. But many of us skip that step.
Her way of integrating feminist art (Allyson Mitchell! Le Tigre!) is also sharp and useful for those writing with and about feminist art.
tl;dr: If Ann Cvetkovich can have paralyzing anxieties and troubles with work, finishing, etc. then we're all doing ok! Keep on livin!
She, astutely, argues against big pharma drugs to claim that anxiety and bad feelings are enmeshed in the conditions that patriarchal, white supremacist capitalism gives rise to. She uses the memoir as a way to extrapolate meaning from experience, but to also not obfuscate experience with 'simply' and immediately asking what it means. It's crucial we learn how to describe our embodied lived experience and the environment in detail. Then we can do the interpretative theoretical work. But many of us skip that step.
Her way of integrating feminist art (Allyson Mitchell! Le Tigre!) is also sharp and useful for those writing with and about feminist art.
tl;dr: If Ann Cvetkovich can have paralyzing anxieties and troubles with work, finishing, etc. then we're all doing ok! Keep on livin!
garberdog's review
4.0
I am deeply conflicted about this book. On the one hand, Cvetkovich's analysis is insightful, fulfilling, and came to me at precisely the right time in my life. On the other hand, at several points throughout the text Cvetkovich minimizes the very real world-historical force of white supremacy. Even when she directly discusses racism as a form of everyday trauma, she equates white/settle guilt with the lived and historical experiences of racism. She also basically dismisses the idea of cultural appropriation because, if I read her correctly, some white folks feel better after doing yoga and meditating. While this may be true, it disregards the impact this has on subordinated communities having their cultural traditions commodified and appropriated by white elites.
That said, Cvetkovich use of a queer, feminist archive and location depression as a queer academic were both very personally relevant, and made reading this book for the most part quite rewarding. I had to play Peter Elbow's "Believing Game" at times to get through her white ignorance (as a white person I recognize I am also subject to this critique, but that doesn't justify Cvetkovich on this). However, formulating a concept of "political depression" to be lived with via "the utopia of everyday habit" gave me new hope that, even if depression is to be a regular feature of my life, that doesn't mean I have nothing to live for. There are paths through it.
In sum, Cvetkovich's book will likely speak to white, middle class, queer, feminist aspiring academics (like me), with other folks feeling skeptical at best. Take it for what it's worth, and let it help you through the despair.
That said, Cvetkovich use of a queer, feminist archive and location depression as a queer academic were both very personally relevant, and made reading this book for the most part quite rewarding. I had to play Peter Elbow's "Believing Game" at times to get through her white ignorance (as a white person I recognize I am also subject to this critique, but that doesn't justify Cvetkovich on this). However, formulating a concept of "political depression" to be lived with via "the utopia of everyday habit" gave me new hope that, even if depression is to be a regular feature of my life, that doesn't mean I have nothing to live for. There are paths through it.
In sum, Cvetkovich's book will likely speak to white, middle class, queer, feminist aspiring academics (like me), with other folks feeling skeptical at best. Take it for what it's worth, and let it help you through the despair.
alittlecloud's review
i've only just started but damn.......this affect theory is hitting different
puyple's review
1.0
I’m going to start by saying that I was very excited to read this book, as I loved An Archive of Feeling. I used Cvetkovich’s work in my own research when I was in school. This book was ultimately a disappointment, though, and I did not finish it.
While the premise of the argument sounds great in theory, it fails in practice. This is less of a scholarly interrogation of depression under capitalism and more of a polemic against pharmaceuticals (“the demon Prozac,” pg. 59). The author’s dissatisfaction with psychiatric care seems to be the undercurrent that fueled this entire project.
This part is really what angered me:
“There really was a solution to my problem, and it made my despair seem like it had an understandable cause. I am convinced that depression is like this - that there are real and possible solutions for the problems that ail us. There is nothing wrong with our biology or our intelligence; sometimes we are just stuck.” This frames depression as a personal failing and something that one can “solve” if one works hard enough. This is incredibly harmful rhetoric, especially for someone in her position to be touting. This is why I did not finish the book (but Goodreads made me mark it as finished in order to leave a review).
There is also little to no attention to her own whiteness throughout the book. She adopts culturally appropriative practices (the entirety of page 52 - “Then came hints of voodoo,” and the whole section on the Virgen de Guadalupe, as well as pages 70 and 71 about her “ancestral home”) and assumes authority on topics (“I gave the paper on Madonna, race, and voguing,” pg.63), centering her queerness as her excuse. She is even conscious of it (“Although I felt self-conscious about being yet another white girl appropriating other cultures,” pg. 52), but is not self-critical. Not a great look.
Not so much a critique of the book, but an observation: As someone who has been manic, I personally was put off by her romanticization of manic behavior in the memoir section. What a privilege it is that mania did not destroy her life, as it so often does for others (and, as she noted, her father). Incredible.
As I said, I am quite disappointed in a scholar I had so much respect for previously. If I was still in academia I would not cite her again. How upsetting.
While the premise of the argument sounds great in theory, it fails in practice. This is less of a scholarly interrogation of depression under capitalism and more of a polemic against pharmaceuticals (“the demon Prozac,” pg. 59). The author’s dissatisfaction with psychiatric care seems to be the undercurrent that fueled this entire project.
This part is really what angered me:
“There really was a solution to my problem, and it made my despair seem like it had an understandable cause. I am convinced that depression is like this - that there are real and possible solutions for the problems that ail us. There is nothing wrong with our biology or our intelligence; sometimes we are just stuck.” This frames depression as a personal failing and something that one can “solve” if one works hard enough. This is incredibly harmful rhetoric, especially for someone in her position to be touting. This is why I did not finish the book (but Goodreads made me mark it as finished in order to leave a review).
There is also little to no attention to her own whiteness throughout the book. She adopts culturally appropriative practices (the entirety of page 52 - “Then came hints of voodoo,” and the whole section on the Virgen de Guadalupe, as well as pages 70 and 71 about her “ancestral home”) and assumes authority on topics (“I gave the paper on Madonna, race, and voguing,” pg.63), centering her queerness as her excuse. She is even conscious of it (“Although I felt self-conscious about being yet another white girl appropriating other cultures,” pg. 52), but is not self-critical. Not a great look.
Not so much a critique of the book, but an observation: As someone who has been manic, I personally was put off by her romanticization of manic behavior in the memoir section. What a privilege it is that mania did not destroy her life, as it so often does for others (and, as she noted, her father). Incredible.
As I said, I am quite disappointed in a scholar I had so much respect for previously. If I was still in academia I would not cite her again. How upsetting.