by Hannah Proctor
Verso
4/9/2024, paperback
SKU: 9781839766053
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 and to help readers roll with the punches, Hannah Proctor draws on historical resources to find out how revolutionaries and activists of the past kept a grip on hope.
Burnout considers former Communards exiled to a penal colony in the South Pacific; a young Bolshevik fleeing the city in despair; an ex-militant on the analyst's couch relating dreams of ruined landscapes; a trade union organiser seeking advice from a spiritual healer; and a group of feminists padding a room with mattresses to scream about the patriarchy. Jettisoning therapy talk and its stranglehold on our language, Proctor offers a different way forward - neither denial nor despair. Her cogent exploration of the ways militants make sense of their own burnout demonstrates that it is possible to mourn and organise at once, and to do both without compromise.
Reviews:
"Proctor deftly dismantles contemporary 'self-care' edicts that aim to 'streamline' our participation in capitalism." -- Decca Muldowney, New Internationalist
"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." -- Iain Ferguson, International Socialism
"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?" -- Liza Featherstone, Jacobin
About the Author:
Hannah Proctor is a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, interested in histories and theories of radical psychiatry. She is a member of the editorial collective behind Radical Philosophy, and has been published in Jacobin, Tribune, The New Inquiry and elsewhere.