On Thursday, October 2 from 5:00-6:30 pm in the Green College Coach House, Professor Elizabeth A. Wilson of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emory University, will give a Science & Society Series talk.
Wilson’s talk is titled “Bitter Melancholy: Feminism, Aggression, and the Biology of Depression.”
Abstract
Feminists usually think of depression as aggression turned inwards. The indignation or rage that
ought to be expressed towards others is stifled and turned back on to the self. This has been a particularly popular explanation for the high levels of depression reported in women. What would change (conceptually; politically) if we thought of depression as an act of aggression directed outwards—to the objects that we love? This paper is interested in the bitterness of depression, rather than its pathos; and it explores how this bitterness could be thought biologically (especially the biology of the gut). My ambition is not to find a “biological basis”
for aggression and depression, but rather–through hostility and bitterness–to make biology strange. Strange enough that feminism could use biology rather than simply oppose it, or acquiesce to it. The paper will use the example merycism (rumination disorder) to engage the acid satisfaction of depressive aggression.
