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Today our fatigue feels chronic; our anxieties, amplified. Proliferating technologies command our attention. Many people complain of burnout, and economic instability and the threat of ecological catastrophe fill us with dread. We look to the past, imagining life to have once been simpler and slower, but extreme mental and physical stress is not a modern syndrome. Beginning in classical antiquity, this book demonstrates how exhaustion has always been with us and helps us evaluate more critically the narratives we tell ourselves about the phenomenon.
Medical, cultural, literary, and biographical sources have cast exhaustion as a biochemical imbalance, a somatic ailment, a viral disease, and a spiritual failing. It has been linked to loss, the alignment of the planets, a perverse desire for death, and social and economic disruption. Pathologized, demonized, sexualized, and even weaponized, exhaustion unites the mind with the body and society in such a way that we attach larger questions of agency, willpower, and well-being to its symptoms. Mapping these political, ideological, and creative currents across centuries of human development, Exhaustion finds in our struggle to overcome weariness a more significant effort to master ourselves.
— Thomas Dixon
When Exhaustion does bring theory and experience together, it becomes engrossing—which makes it all the more regrettable that for so many centuries, our exhausted ancestors remained silent.
— Hanna Rosefield
A fascinating study of the ways in which doctors and philosophers have understood the limits of the human mind, body – and energy.
— David Robson
Exhaustion is fluently written and brilliantly argued, and it will provoke thoughtful minds with the suggestion that exhaustion has a history.
— Edward Shorter, author of How Everyone Became Depressed: The Rise and Fall of the Nervous Breakdown
Exhaustion is an impressive, accomplished, and original book, one that promises to command a wide cross-disciplinary readership. A formidable amount of reading and research has gone into this work, which stretches from classical antiquity to the present day, yet Anna Katharina Schaffner marshals her material confidently and carries her learning lightly. Her book is a pleasure to read.
— Michael Greaney, author of Conrad, Language, and Narrative
A timely contribution to a neglected field of study.
Ambitious, provocative, and original.
— Social History of Medicine
Exhaustion offers an ambitious grand narrative account of the condition, from classical antiquity to the present day.
[An] enlightening, elegantly written study of exhaustion as a phenomenon firmly rooted in the confluence of medical knowledge, cultural beliefs, and social critique.
An engaging reading of the history, evolution, and multiple connotations of its key term, reaching the conclusion that the individual and the community are closely intertwined not only in detecting exhaustion and seeking plausible and helpful solutions to combat its symptoms, but also in giving meaning to those symptoms by attaching them to the cultural and social perceptions dominant at a specific time and place.
An impressive and important contribution to the growing field of medical humanities.
Highly informative, excellently researched, well-written and enjoyable book.
A vigorous review of the various lenses through which exhaustion has been viewed throughout human history.
— Erin Elizabeth McConnell
The strength of Exhaustion: A History is its ambition: it is both comprehensive in scope and highly focused, investigating an overwhelming—or, if you’ll forgive the pun, exhaustive—catalog of synonyms for exhaustion, presented via analyses of pertinent literary references that ensure all theoretical analysis is grounded in historical examples.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Humors
2. Sin
3. Saturn
4. Sexuality
5. Nerves
6. Capitalism
7. Rest
8. The Death Drive
9. Depression
10. Mystery Viruses
11. Burnout
Epilogue: The Future
Notes
Bibliography
Index