Cold World : The Aesthetics of Dejection and the Politics of Militant Dysphoria

To live well in the world one must be able to enjoy it: to love, Freud says, and work. Dejection is the state of being in which such enjoyment is no longer possible. There is an aesthetic dimension to dejection, in which the world appears in a new light. This book examines the dark serenity of dejection through a study of the poetry.