International conference: Melancholic States

The concept of melancholia has assumed widespread and varied currency across numerous fields. Sometimes used to refer to a state of mind or to an affective state; sometimes used to speak of racialised, gendered, or queer subjectivity; other times used as a tool of analysis of political states or as a mobilising tool to convene constituencies of solidarity; yet other times, melancholia founds collective memory and associated artefactual practices, or describes the conditions of professional practice organised around a public service ethic. Positioned as a condition to be claimed, transcended, or negotiated, ‘melancholic states’ seemingly speaks to the contemporary zeitgeist – the post/neo-colonial era.

The provenance of the concept of melancholia in psychoanalysis and the proliferation of its use elsewhere, offer grounds for revisiting the potential and limits of the concept – this conference aims to explore the ways in which the idea of ‘melancholic states’ speaks to the complexity of the present.