Burnout: The Emotional Experience of Political Defeat

by Hannah Proctor

A moving exploration of political activism and its mental toll, with the raw emotion of Maggie Nelson’s Argonauts and the daring theoretical analysis of Lauren Berlant's Cruel Optimism

Hannah Proctor prescribes a healthy dose of criticism for psychoanalytic or psychiatric approaches that fail to grasp how it feels to struggle for a better world — especially struggles that end in defeat, disillusionment, and exhaustion.

Meditating on trauma, anxiety, mourning, and rage, Proctor draws from the diverse ways that activists and revolutionaries have confronted the emotional impacts of their political experiences to offer an alternative that asks, 'should we have to choose between Freud's couch or a march in the streets?'

Burnout deftly situates self-care and wellness in a long historical perspective, visiting and

Jettisoning 'therapy talk' and its stranglehold on our language and visions of the good life, Proctor offers a different way forward. Her cogent exploration of the ways militants make sense of their own burnout demonstrates that it is possible to mourn and organize, altogether and at once.

272 pages, Paperback

Published April 9, 2024

Reviews

[Inem · Rating 3 out of 5]

My political divergences and critiques aside, my disappointment lies in the fact that this book doesn’t really do what it promises to. It reads more like literary criticism than anything with any tangible graspable applications. And I was SO looking forward to this read.

[Viv · Rating 4 out of 5]

thought provoking material, but quite dense writing and required alot of mental effort to read.