#ann cvetkovich

[pefkaes]

“…it is also the case that constructing the history of the United States from the vantage point of trauma produces a critical American studies, one that revises a celebratory account of the nation and instead illuminates its emergence from a history that includes capitalism and economic exploitation, war, colonialism and the genocide of native peoples, and slavery, diaspora, and migration.”

— Cvetkovich, A. (2003). An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian public Cultures. Duke University Press.

[femmeillfated]

“The category of the archive came somewhat belatedly to that project as I thought about how we collect feelings or store them or save them. Sometimes we want to get rid of feelings of loss or sadness, but we also hang on to them, and I think that’s why we also hang on to stuff.”

[mercifullymad]

The goal is to depathologize negative feelings so that they can be seen as a possible resource for political action rather than as its antithesis. This is not, however, to suggest that depression is thereby converted into a positive experience; it retains its associations with inertia and despair, if not apathy and indifference, but these feelings, moods, and sensibilities become sites of publicity and community formation. One of the larger goals for Public Feelings is to generate the affective foundation of hope that is necessary for political action; hence the turn to utopia in much recent work related to its projects, but a utopia, borrowing from Avery Gordon’s analysis of Toni Cade Bambara, for example, that is grounded in the here and now, in the recognition of the possibilities and powers that we have at our immediate disposal. It’s a search for utopia that doesn’t make a simple distinction between good and bad feelings or assume that good politics can only emerge from good feelings; feeling bad might, in fact, be the ground for transformation. Thus, although this book is about depression, it’s also about hope and even happiness, about how to live a better life by embracing rather than glossing over bad feelings.

From "Depression: A Public Feeling" by Ann Cvetkovich

[meltingarchive]

The category of the archive came somewhat belatedly to that project as I thought about how we collect feelings or store them or save them. Sometimes we want to get rid of feelings of loss or sadness, but we also hang on to them, and I think that’s why we also hang on to stuff.

[archivodemargenes]

a-archivo

empezamosss

[juliakristeva]

I saw longlegs because of your posting and loved it!! You mention trauma theory and it, do you have reading recommendations? If you don’t mind, of course.

im so glad you enjoyed it and very honoured my posts convinced you to go!

some of these are not explicitly trauma theory books- a lot of them focus on mental illness- but i learned trauma theory from psychoanalysts, in classes intended to train psychoanalysts and therapists, so i've pulled these books from there as well as my own research.

the body keeps score by bessel van der kolk is a classic for a reason

trauma: explorations in memory edited by cathy caruth is one of my go-to collections: i especially like the essay by laura brown

the divided self by r.d. laing is one of the most profoundly beautiful books i have ever read

medusa's hair by gananath obeyesekere is another very beautiful book

trauma and the destructive-transformative estruggle: clinical perspectives edited by terrence mcbride and maureen murphy: susan berger's article in this is very good

beyond the pleasure principle by freud is invaluable; the strachey edition is best if you can find it

"studies on hysteria" by joseph breuer and sigmund freud (in volume 2 of the strachey editions)- i did a close study on the anna o case over the winter term and as uncomfortable as a lot of their work is from a modern perspective it is still incredibly valuable

psychological healing: a historical and clinical studdy by pierre janet (a good accompaniment to freud in general)

betrayal trauma: the logic of forgetting childhood abuse by jennifer freyd

two vaguely off the cuff recommendations:

virginia woolf: the impact of childhood sexual abuse on her life and work by louise de salvo

spirit and trauma: a theology of remaining by shelley rambo; also resurrecting wounds: living in the afterlife of trauma by the same author. rambo is a theologian, so these might not take if you're not religious, but in terms of longlegs (which i regard as highly theological in a lot of ways anyway) and its relationship with God and theology, i think there's a lot of fruitful stuff here. as well her essay on the haemorrhaging woman is very good.

books i have not personally read but feel comfortable vouching for:

against the unspeakable: complicity, the holocaust, and slavery in america by naomi mandel

an archive of feelings: trauma, sexuality, and lesbian public cultures by ann cvetkovich

trauma and recovery: the aftermath of violence from domestic abuse to political terror by judith herman

shattered subjects: trauma and testimony in women's life-writing by suzette henken

[swedesinstockholm]

21 mai

hier à l'église c. donnait des petites explications sur la genèse de ses textes et à un moment il a mentionné sa "dépression" en la mettant entre guillemets. il a dit "ce que vous appelez ici dépression" et il en parlait comme quelque chose de bénéfique, comme d'une brève période noire de sa vie pendant laquelle il a touché le fond mais qui lui a permis de la changer complètement et de se décider à se consacrer entièrement à ce qu'il voulait vraiment faire. comme ces gens qui ont eu une illumination pendant la période du covid. il a vu la lumière. la dépression lui a apporté quelque chose, lui a montré quelque chose, c'était un chemin nécessaire, comme virgile qui descend aux enfers, ou dante, je sais plus. c'est comme ann cvetkovich qui parle de la dépression comme d'un savoir caché, d'une expérience qui a du sens, c'est une exploration. mais moi je pense que ça c'est une version très privilégiée de la dépression et que ça concerne pas les gens qui ont grandi avec. la dépression c'est une exploration de rien du tout pour moi, à part de moi-même peut être, et encore je suis tellement dissociée que j'ai l'impression que tout ce que je sais de moi est faussé. peut être que la dépression a permis à c. de se trouver et de changer radicalement sa vie mais moi elle m'empêche juste de la vivre. elle fait que ça. ou alors je suis trop débile pour comprendre son message.

on a aussi assisté à une lecture de jean portante, un poète luxembourgeois que j'avais découvert dans la bibliothèque de raffaella, c. s'était mis sur le premier banc et on était juste devant lui comme des groupies littéraires mais j'ai passé la moitié de sa lecture enfouie dans des réflexions sur mon livre en me disant que je devais mettre plus de poésie dedans. j'y travaille tous les jours. je reste disciplinée. dans heroines kate zambreno se demande si y a une différence entre être dépressive et être totalement immergée dans l'écriture d'un livre. passer ses journées à écrire ou à non écrire sans sortir de chez soi. c. m'a dit que c'était en entendant jean portante dire que quand on écrivait il fallait le faire à fond ou pas du tout qu'il avait eu un déclic et qu'il avait décidé de faire plus que ça. je lui ai dit que moi je pouvais pas, que ça me rendait folle et que ça finissait par m'en dégoûter. qu'il me fallait autre chose pour contrebalancer. mais quoi?

à la chorale samedi on m'a posé la question fatidique avant que j'aie réussi à échapper à la conversation (j'avais déjà commencé à mettre ma veste pendant qu'elles parlaient du stage à la cour européenne de justice de tonia la fille qui finit première de tout ce qu'elle entreprend, mais j'ai pas été assez rapide) et quand j'ai dit que j'écrivais elle m'ont parlé d'un type de la chorale qui a non seulement déjà publié plusieurs livres mais en plus il travaille au putain de parlement européen et il fait partie d'un ensemble de jazz. elle m'a dit que ça devait sûrement être dur d'en faire son métier et j'ai dit que c'était pas mon métier et que je donnais des cours de luxembourgeois en mentant sur mon nombre d'élèves, ce qui m'a amenée à mentir sur les attentes de mes élèves fictifs, l'adaptation de mes méthodes d'enseignement, etc, alors qu'en vrai ma méthode d'enseignement c'est de demander à mon élève de me raconter toute la biographie de taylor swift et puis de débattre sur quel est son meilleur album (1989 obvs). c'était son dernier cours hier matin, j'étais presque un peu triste en lui disant au revoir. je me demande si je lui ai vraiment appris quelque chose.

hier matin la conversation a tourné vers son copain et les dynamiques déprimantes du couple hétérosexuel et je l'écoutais avec horreur me raconter son quotidien de cuisine ménage rangement lessives courses etc pendant que son copain laisse trainer ses chaussettes sales partout (ce n'est donc pas qu'un cliché?) et qu'il sait même pas faire cuire des pâtes. des PÂTES. elle m'a dit qu'elle leur préparait des repas pour la semaine le weekend et qu'une fois elle avait fait des pâtes sans sauce et que quand il avait ouvert le couvercle de son tupperware il avait dit et la sauce? je lui ai dit qu'à sa place je le laisserais dans sa merde et elle a dit non mais c'est pas sympa, et puis toutes ses copines c'est pareil. je savais plus quoi dire pour rester polie. et en même temps je suis une sale hypocrite parce que j'ai zéro tolérance pour les rôles de genre mais dans mon couple avec maman c'est moi l'enfant roi et c'est elle qui fait les courses et qui repasse mes pantalons. mais j'estime que c'est pas pareil. moi je fais la cuisine et parfois je fais même des machines.

28 mai

j'ai essayé de m'enregistrer en lisant mes nouveaux poèmes-radio mais j'aime pas et je sais pas quoi envoyer à r. je fais une crise existentielle de la poésie. je suis pas poète, j'ai rien à lui proposer, il me prend pour une poétesse que je ne suis pas. dans sa tête j'avais plein de textes qui trainaient dans mon ordi prêts à l'emploi et moi aussi je croyais que j'avais plein de textes mais en fait non, j'en ai pas. tout ce que j'écris c'est mon journal. et encore. j'ai rien à dire. pourquoi il existe des papillons quand il existe des mouches? pourquoi les papillons ont des ailes immenses et colorées avec des motifs sophistiqués alors qu'il existe déjà les mouches, compactes basiques et fonctionnelles? elles me semblent beaucoup plus économiques. est-ce que j'écrirais de la poésie si c'était pas pour être publiée derrière ou faire des lectures? en cherchant dans mes archives je suis tombée sur mes tout premiers poèmes en anglais que j'avais écrit pendant le workshop de poésie de minerva en isande. je me suis filmée en train de les lire à voix haute et ça m'a donné envie d'écrire en anglais de nouveau, rien que pour le plaisir de les lire.

bon j'ai quand même passé l'après-midi sur la terrasse avec mon ordi sur les genoux pour essayer d'écrire un truc avec des bouts de phrases qui trainaient dans mes fichiers, même si ma nouvelle méthode préférée maintenant pour écrire des poèmes c'est d'écouter la radio ou la télé et de noter des mots et j'ai pas le droit d'utiliser d'autres mots que ceux que j'ai notés. c'est comme un jeu de construction. mais comme c'est un peu arbitraire, j'ai l'impression que c'est moins vrai, que c'est de la triche, et donc j'y tiens moins. c'est moins personnel, et donc moins important. j'arrête pas de voir des citations qui disent que la poésie c'est la vérité, mais j'ai pas l'impression que ma prose soit moins vraie, au contraire. c'est pour ça que je veux pas publier de recueil de poèmes mais un roman.

[pefkaes]

“I want to think about trauma as part of the affective language that describes life under capitalism.”

– Cvetkovich, A. (2003). An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures. Duke University Press.

[amy-howard]

Ann Cvetkovich writes: “What if depression, in the Americas, at least, could be traced to histories of colonialism, genocide, slavery, legal exclusion, and everyday segregation and isolation that haunt all of our lives, rather than to be biochemical imbalances?” https://topicalcream.org/features/sick-woman-theory/

[mercifullymad]

[The Public Feelings project] rethinks distinctions between positive and negative feelings so as not to presume that they are separate from one another or that happiness or pleasure constitutes the absence or elimination of negative feeling. Depression, for example, can take antisocial forms such as withdrawal or inertia, but it can also create new forms of sociality, whether in public cultures that give it expression or because, as has been suggested about melancholy, it serves as the foundation for new kinds of attachment or affiliation. Binary divisions between positive and negative affects don’t do justice to the qualitative nuances of feeling that are only crudely captured by such designations.

From "Depression: A Public Feeling" by Ann Cvetkovich

[arwainian]

Reading This Week 2023 #42

Finished:

Vanishing Rooms by Melvin Dixon

this may be a new favorite book of mine

Started and Finished:

41 fatt fics for the marathon

"Dante's Sympathy for the Other, or the Non-Stereotyping Imagination: Sexual and Racialized Others in the Commedia" from Dante's Multitudes by Teodolinda Barolini

"Achille Mbembe and the Postcolony: Going beyond the Text" by Jeremy Weate

"''Provisional notes on the postcolony'' in Congo Studies: an overview of themes and debates" by Katrien Pype

Depression: A Public Feeling by Ann Cvetkovich

Introduction Reflections: Memoir as Public Feelings Research Method Epilogue

Side Affects: On Being Trans and Feeling Bad by Hil Malatino

Introduction Chapter 3 - Found Wanting: On Envy

"Do the Media Make Sexual Violence 'Congolese'? Phallo- and Ethnocentrism in the International Coverage of Dr Mukwege's Story" by Caroline Williamson Sinalo

"Rape Without Bodies? Reimagining the Phenomenon We Call ''Rape''" by Holly Porter

What It Feels Like: Visceral Rhetoric and the Politics of Rape Culture by Stephanie R. Larson

Introduction: Bodies Feelings, And the Rhetoric of Rape Culture Taking It All In: #MeToo, Feminist Megethos, And List Making Conclusion: "I Was Trapped in My Body": Writing and Living After Rape

Started and Ongoing:

Inferno by Dante Alighieri, translated by Allen Mandelbaum, read via Digital Dante

read so far: canti 1-5

[musicandphilosophy]

CFP: AMS 2023

CFP: Archives

AMS 2023, Denver, Music and Philosophy Study Group

Archives and archival work hold a contested position within music studies, especially given recent attempts to redress the forms of exclusion that have traditionally structured the field’s intellectual commitments. As much as they have functioned as the guarantors of scholarly legitimacy and objectivity, archives present a fruitful site to reflect on the larger historiographic, epistemological, and political aporias that accompany their existence. To this end, a growing body of literature has theorized “the archive” to better account for the ways that minoritized lives and practices have been obscured, rendered unruly, or simply forgotten within hegemonic narratives. Scholars such as Saidiya Hartman, Diana Taylor, Ann Laura Stoler, Ann Cvetkovich, and Robin Gray have thus articulated new critical perspectives on and from within the archive that productively sit alongside previous accounts from the likes of Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida.

The Music and Philosophy Study Group seeks to continue these efforts and invites proposals for projects that conceptualize, critique, or generally reflect on archives or archival theory. Given the multiple “archival turns” that have been staged across the humanities, we encourage submissions from any critical tradition and welcome contributions that engage both the theory and praxis involved in archival work. We ask that proposals be no more than 250 words and indicate the intended form of the presentation, as we are amenable to projects outside of the standard 15-minute paper.

Possible topics include:

-Acts of reclamation, rematriation, repatriation

-Critical fabulation and speculative approaches

-Materialist perspectives and theories of conservation

-Archives related to theory and philosophy   

-Colonial, corporate, and/or institutional archives

-Politics and/or economics of archival labor

-Archives as community engagement

-Psychoanalytic approaches to loss, damage, and impermanence 

-Historical conceptions of archives

-Philosophy of memory

-Digitization and its ethics

Submission details:  Proposals (of less that 250 words) are due by 10 March 2023, 11:59pm PST. Please upload proposals through this submission form.

Any and all further inquiries can be sent to mpsgsubmissions@gmail.com.

[endlessandrea]

[certainwoman]

“I’d like to be able to write about depression in a way that simultaneously captures how it feels and provides an analysis of why and how its feelings are produced by social forces. I’m interested in how, for many of us (an “us” that includes a range of social positions and identities in need of specification), everyday life produces feelings of despair and anxiety, sometimes extreme, sometimes throbbing along at a low level, and hence barely discernible from just the way things are, feelings that get internalized and named, for better or for worse, as depression. It is customary, within our therapeutic culture, to attribute these feelings to bad things that happened to us when we were children, to primal scenes that have not yet been fully remembered or articulated or worked through. It’s also common to explain them as the result of a biochemical disorder, a genetic mishap for which we shouldn’t blame ourselves. I tend to see such master narratives as problematic displacements that cast a social problem as a personal problem in one case and as a medical problem in the other, but moving to an even larger master narrative of depression as socially produced often provides little specific illumination and even less comfort because it’s an analysis that frequently admits of no solution. Saying that capitalism (or colonialism or racism) is the problem does not help me get up in the morning.”

Ann Cvetkovich, Depression - A Public Feeling

This is the same issue I am dealing with in my thesis and reading anti-psychiatry literature (which is good, but offers no solution), there is a sense of dejection in recognising reports of mental illnesses (or rather said emotional and mental issues) is in correlation to larger systematic issues which fundamentally can only be resolved in grand reforms of institutions, and ultimately revolutionary action. The narrative of having to work to live, leaves us suffering from mental issues in a conondrum, will this or that drug make me feel at least a little bit better? And when the medicine stops working, when therapy no longer does the trick, anxiety ironically increases with the realization that we might be unable to work, with society sending us to our demise. In a world where most careers tend to be on the precarious side, what hope is there for those of us otherwise suffering?

[citeyourfeelings]

Feeling bad might, in fact, be the ground for transformation

Ann Cvetkovich, Depression: a public feeling (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012), p. 3.

[aeide-thea]

[ID: Screenshots of text that read:

My dissertation reminded me of one of my favorite fairy tales from a beautifully illustrated volume I cherished as a child, one of the first books I was able to read on my own. In Hans Christian Andersen’s story “The Wild Swans,” a young girl is sent away by her stepmother, who also turns her eleven brothers into swans. In search of her brothers, the girl discovers them when the swans turn back into men at night. A woman comes to her in a dream to tell her that she can free her brothers from the spell by using nettles to make coats that will turn them back into men, but only if she remains silent during the entire process. She works in secret all night long, gathering the nettles that prick her fingers, spinning them into thread, and then knitting the coats. Running out of time, she is unable to complete the sleeve of the last coat, and one of her brothers has to live with a wing instead of an arm. So too with my ugly, scraggly, unfinished dissertation. In The Golden Book of Fairy Tales’ lavish illustrations by the French artist Adrienne Ségur, the blonde maiden delicately holds a strand from the spindle of woven nettles in the fingers of her white hand, watched over by a bird perched on her shoulder. One of her swan brothers sits in her lap, his humanity symbolized by his jeweled crown and the single tear he sheds, which is matched by the tear that rolls down her pale cheek. Although heartbroken and silent, the girl has the company of the animals with whom she can communicate in ways other than words. As problematic as the image of the mute and pale white maiden might be from my adult feminist perspective, she was an icon of the melodrama of silent suffering that was part of my dissertation and the process of writing it. The story of lonely labor and unarticulated feelings was also a poignant reminder for me of the terror of being unable to make a deadline despite working as hard as you can. But the girl also represented the creative and reparative impulses of witchcraft, of being able to spin the pain of stinging prickles into something that, even if unfinished, could be powerful enough to transform swans into brothers. Sometimes I tell this story to my own students, and I remind them that it's possible to live with a wing in place of an arm.

/end ID]

from ann cvetkovich’s depression: a public feeling