Introduction. This topic has been done to death. Melancholy isnt about humors. Its about neurochemical events.

Was it ever not false? Falseness aesthetic matter of pass sensibility, insincerity, unverifiability or bad science? What happens when we encounter the emotions of another? Someone was having a panic attack during one of the conventions in Philadelphia. Upon hearing that persons voice, the author of the text was affected by both sympathy and disgust. He considers helping this person, but rejects the possibility. He wants to interact with her, but at the same time hes ashamed of his eavesdropping and wishes to hide somewhere. Caring and not caring at the same time. A classic example of ambivalence if Ive ever seen one. Narcissism urges him to look back maybe shes another academic, someone like him? He tries to distance himself and stereotypes her as a member of a random stress-prone group of people. Such an approach seem irrelevant to her human condition, however. What has just happened between them? What does she owe him? What does he owe her? Upon noticing her freak-out, he established an emotional connection with her, a loose perceptual community. Yet when he tries to analyze this bond, epistemological problems appear and erode the bond. This can be seen as a historical vector of melancholy. When we encounter the emotions of another, we experience both a feeling of perceptual unity and an epistemological problem of access to the emotional experience of others. Its not about sympathy and skepticism forming arcs that we can follow. We can register a strong emotion and have no sympathy for it. The opposite is also true. The question of whether a given emotion is true or not also poses a problem. Since the humor theory has been blown to bits, the distinctions between real and fake melancholy seem to fall outside of modern jurisdiction. All cases of melancholy illness may seem dubious now because of scientific reasons. He intends to argue that melancholy was already in question during the period of its wildest circulation. Melancholy joins its sufferers and observers into perceptual communities. Of course these links can be undone from within. Melancholy an object of fascination, quasi-belief and skepticism. These factors guarantee it a sort of afterlife long even after its been physiologically debunked. The interpretive dynamic occasioned by melancholy persists in psychoanalysis, affect theory and philosophy. Melancholy might be seen as a problem of lack and loss but also as a discursive surplus. Not the disappearance of meaning but its manic overproduction. Melancholy both a form of madness and a sign of genius, available to all social strata of early modern England. Its gained a lot of prestige and medical coverage, as well as a hefty amount of loose ends. There were many types of melancholy, but such categorizations were kinda pointless. In the end it was all about originality, at least for Jaques who had a melancholy of his own, compounded from many samples and focused on many objects. OF HIS OWN interiority, the inability of an onlooker to relate, at least not completely. By connecting specific types of melancholy to specific professions, Jaques undermines them a bit. He presents them as emotional name tags. This isnt true for his personal melancholy, though. Melancholics greet those who know them with a curious mixture of solicitude and resilience. They require and exceed explanation, they need no introduction but cannot stop introducing themselves. He doesnt list the melancholic as one of the four types, nor does he mention black bile. Instead he looks at it from a social perspective. Even at an individual level melancholy is already plural formed from different elements. A mixture of elements and postures distributed along the social surroundings. Melancholy as an assemblage. Assemblance appearance, show, the tension between our spiritual and surface halves. Also a gathering of parts, people Assembly political connotations, a gathering of people, the creation of a concept. Physical objects and physiological elements. Assemblages are formed out of multiplicity, they represent the world as inherently plural and capacious and have multiple forms. An expansive vision of bodies and signs a dialectical

manifold. Horizontal opposition and a vertical line of stability/instability, subject to spatial drift and temporal change. Stability territorialization. Dissolution deterritorialization. Everything is an assemblage, but they all differ. There is no unified foundation, everyone has a personalized one. They are kept together by something but that something differs from one individual to the next. The various elements arent permanent, but some recurring patterns may appear. Starting elements might get reassembled as something different. Melancholy assemblage a site of theoretical crosstalk where two signals modulate each other. Treating it as an assemblage instead of some sort of fluid breaks melancholys conceptual unity. Ones personal melancholy assemblage can be is part of an even larger assemblage. Melancholy is an assemblage both on an intrasubjective and an intersubjective level. A tension between the Aristotelian/Theophrastan accounts of genial melancholy and the Galenic account of pathological ambiance. Patient Zero Empedocles Air, Earth, Water, Fire the building blocks of the universe, every object contains a mixture of these elements. The objects also transform and intermingle, creating further differentiations. Love fuses the structures together. Strife makes them dissolve/deteriorate. These two forces are dynamic and at odds with one another. Because of them, the world is under constant (re)construction. Anatomy can replicate cosmology the human body seen as a distinct universe, either balance or imbalanced. Melancholy as a disease, passed from one philosopher to the next, constantly evolving, mutating, creating new strains of mutually exclusive definitions. Theophrastus text got mistaken for that of his masters and entered philosophical canon, throwing a dark shadow over melancholys intellectual history for years to come. Ts melancholy a temperamental trait associated with exceptional excellence in a dazzling range of activities. It gathers various mythical and historical figures into the most enviable melancholy assemblage of them all. Its something that should be closely monitored, so that it doesnt reach dangerous levels, but at the same time it should be cultivated as great genius is likely to follow in its wake. If a person happens to lack it, she wont be able to attain the heights of human excellence. Galen opposed this theory, claiming that it was just a humoral imbalance, and not a signifier of greatness. He drew distinctions between the one originating in the body and the one that had its origins in the brain and proposed interesting treatments for both versions. Colorful and exotic delusions, as well as a set of emotional and mental symptoms the traits of a melancholic patient. Galens individual is mundane and down to earth, and so hes able to effortlessly find a place for himself in the bloodstream of the entire early medical profession. Galens theory reached the most people, while T-As reached the best ones. The infection of Ficino and Petrarch lead to an outbreak at the Florentine Academy and other centers of Renaissance. The consequence of/evidence for the scholarly ego ideal. Petrarch portrayed it as the signature effect of distracted, sorrowful romantic passion. Both scholarly and romantic in its affection. London is the next to get infected. The outcome is overproduction a surplus of melancholy self-representation. Melancholy a viral machine caught in a loop of auto-replication. Asking for a stool upon which to be melancholy (close stool) comparing melancholic creativity to defecation (Every Man in his Humour). Jonson wasnt attacking the humor system itself he was targeting people who use them as an excuse to behave erratically/aggressively. Oh, and also people who use them as means for furthering their political agenda. How should we know whether our condition is true or false? Melancholy was (is) an epistemological monster. Can Galen and Aristotle both be correct? Babb claims that Englishmen were not troubled by the differences between these definitions they accepted both of them. Yet England was leaning more towards the more noble definition. Newer works claim that it was actually the other way around. Galen had an advantage when it came to everyday situations, during which people consulted with their physicians.

The book argues that Babb was right about the conflict but wrong about its result. English people were troubled by the opposing definitions. They tried to work out the consequences. Melancholy volatile, up-for-grabs, the stuff of which art and argument assemblages are made. And so, it seems that this conflict has been going on for a very long time. Which one of them was right? That depends on which one you want to be right. Which aspects do you appoint as the most important? By the dawning of the 17th century the problem was not fear and sadness but the overproduction of their own interpretation. You are melancholic if someone recognizes that you are melancholic (yourself included). I dont have to think that Im melancholic, its enough for someone else to think so. To be M without knowing that you are M. At least one person has to acknowledge it, though. The more witnesses, the stronger the assemblage. You do not need others to accept that you are M if you believe it to be the case. But it has to be knowledge, it has to be learned, so its never completely private. Is it the result of judgment? Its product? M as a medical diagnosis one symptom might not be enough. From an accumulation of grains, the heap emerges. M as an epistemological-affective assemblage. Richly various diversity the only constant thing about melancholy. Assemblage it has the status of a unique, singular individual unique cities, societies, organizations etc. An authors approach also creates one (as do his followers/critics/misinterpreters). In each of the chapters the phrase MA undergoes a transformation.

Deleuze and Gwattarris critique of the effects of dissemination of Freudian theory check it out.