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Burnout:The Emotional Experience of Political Defeat
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How to maintain hope in the face of despair
In the struggle for a better world, setbacks are inevitable. Defeat can feel overwhelming at times, but it has to be endured. How then do the people on the front line keep going? To answer that question, Hannah Proctor draws on historical resources to find out how revolutionaries and activists of the past kept a grip on hope.
Burnout considers despairing former Communards exiled to a penal colony in the South Pacific; exhausted Bolsheviks recuperating in sanatoria in the aftermath of the October Revolution; an ex-militant on the analyst’s couch relating dreams of ruined landscapes; Chinese peasants engaging in self-criticism sessions; a political organiser seeking advice from a spiritual healer; civil rights movement activists battling weariness; and a group of feminists padding a room with mattresses to scream about the patriarchy. Jettisoning self-help narratives and individualizing therapy talk, Proctor offers a different way forward - neither denial nor despair. Her cogent exploration of the ways militants have made sense of their own burnout demonstrates that it is possible to mourn and organise at once, and to do both without compromise.
Reviews
Hannah Proctor is one of the best writers on the left today, and this is an extraordinary and extremely timely book – a kaleidoscopic work of revolutionary history on what happens when our day doesn’t come and we have to cope with the consequences. Refusing both the easy temptations of left melancholia and forced ‘just another push, comrades!’ optimism, this is a book full of unromantic communist longing, deadpan humour and hard-won wisdom.
Not since Freud first described war neurosis have we been treated to such an astonishing taxonomy of the human mind. In Burnout, Hannah Proctor takes that feeling we all have, and names it again and again, helping us to resee the past and present of revolutionary struggle. A must-read.
Achieves commendable synthesis between its argument and sources ... The more people are writing books like Burnout, the better we might overcome our pains, and remain in the struggle.
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Brilliant ... an invigorating reader experience. Activists will find strange comfort in knowing that burnout is a collective affliction that has loomed large over our social movements for centuries ... While its effects can be profoundly personal, it can unite us too.
, Unison Magazine -
Proctor deftly dismantles contemporary 'self-care' edicts that aim to 'streamline' our participation in capitalism.
, New Internationalist -
A joy to read ... deeply thoughtful and intelligent.
, Asylum Magazine -
Elegantly and forensically investigates the historic suffering of revolutionaries and the pain of living in the gap between communist dreams and capitalist reality.
, Morning Star -
Essential
, Tribune -
Proctor wishes to depart from the usual left use of history, which is to find present-day inspiration in past victories or revolutionary moments….Instead, she asks, what can we learn from the emotional experience of defeat?
, Jacobin -
Provocative...Burnout is a book about the psychic life of radical movements; it is also a book about defeat—because that is the primary psychic experience of the radical life.
, Nation -
We need that emotional energy to drive and motivate us. As Proctor shows ... an awareness of that emotional dimension of the struggle has the potential to strengthen our movement.
, International Socialism -
Magisterial ... in a year coloured by electoral horrors and apathy, offer[s] a way of thinking through despair.
, ArtReview, Best Books of 2024