A review by docz
Depression: A Public Feeling by Ann Cvetkovich

3.75

I loved the first half of this book, but the second part I found less compelling. Some of the moves in the second half didn’t feel nuanced enough for my taste (the chapter on race and indigeneity felt rushed and underwritten in multiple areas), and I wasn’t quite sure that the connection between the parts was. I get the attempt to span genres, but it felt a bit clunky and disparate most of the time. The epilogue, too, while I enjoyed most of it, seemed to miss the point for me a bit. Instead of making a “we all have it hard” argument, I think I would have preferred to read more about depression as everyday affect (and then how that animates social institutions like the academy). That said, I did find the notion of political depression quite helpful, and will be picking through parts of this book from time to time for my future work and thinking.