This Is Hell!

Thinking about the relationship between political economy and the psychopathologies of the present is not a matter of epistemology - that might be a bit philosophical, but what I mean by that is I don't think you get depressed because you suddenly see the world as it is. You get depressed because you are indebted, or because you have a shitty job, or three jobs, or because you see the planetary situation is totally bad - but that's not just a matter of perception, it's a matter of materialism - of money, of your bank account, and your waking hours, and your life and your family.

Writer Mikkel Krause Frantzen explores depression and social suffering under late capitalism - as extreme alienation and political powerlessness dominate our lives, we lose track of the ways our deep unhappiness with our lives is collective, and at times realistic, and inflicted by a system that thrives on isolated subjects, en masse.

Mikkel is author of the book Going Nowhere, Slow: The Aesthetics and Politics of Depression from Zero Books.