Academy of Social Sciences in Australia

The paradox of melancholia; paralysis and agency

This proposal is generated against a backdrop of research, new concepts, debates and tensions in the social sciences concerning the role of the emotions in social life. In the 1996 Zaharoff lecture, Naomi Schor suggested that this turn to emotion, and in particular to melancholia, signified the end of the post-modern paradigm. Our objective in this workshop is to tease out some of the key tensions emerging in this new paradigm.

  June 2012