Jacques and the politics of melancholia

Abstract

Melancholia as a manner of political thinking defuses the power of established social roles, as well as denies the possibility of being inscribed under any of the adjectives commonly used to render the activities characteristic of these roles. But while claiming its “own” position, it also compromises it since what is referred to as “mine” is a mosaic of elements borrowed from what is definitely not my “own.” Politics of melancholia can be practicable only from such an unmappable and indescribable place from which we can try to modify the ways of community.