The Failed Politician

Ondertitel:Melancholia, Crisis and Political Agency

The question at stake in this article is: does melancholia – defined as a
structure of feeling, as valid in a given regime of historicity – bridge the
gap between individual agency and societal determinism, specifically in
the field of politics? The applicability of the very notion of melancholia is
a first issue, and leads to an assessment of the impact, in the 17th century
and afterwards, of Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy and to
an analysis of Émile Durkheim’s notion of ‘anomy/anomie’ as a societal
variation on the theme of melancholia. Modern political history has put
forward famous cases of ‘politic spleen’: the French revolutionary feminist
Théroigne de Méricourt, the American President Abraham Lincoln
are among the most instructive. In the 20th century, when melancholia has
become medicalized as a form of psychic of neural trauma, cases such
as President John F. Kennedy show both this evolution and the limits of
medicalization. In a last chapter, contemporary examples demonstrate a
closer relationship between melancholia as a personal condition and a –
provisionally re-defined – notion of political sense of loss: the fatal political
career of French Prime Minister Pierre Bérégovoy, who committed
suicide after an electoral defeat, the hardship of British Prime Minister
Gordon Brown, losing crucial elections, and the political career of Belgian
Prime Minister Wilfried Martens. Martens didn’t fail in his career, but his
decisive political shifts reveal remarkable connections between personal
loss and ideological degeneration. In a conclusion these intertwinements
between personal life and political doubt are put in the context of
Durkheim’s notion of anomy and the typically modern idea of ‘crisis’ as a
societal condition of existence.

Jaar van publicatie:2016

Trefwoorden:Political Theory, Melancholia, Political History, 20th Century, Anomy, Crisis

Toegankelijkheid:Open