Exhaustion: A History by Anna Katharina Schaffner (review)

Exhaustion: A History by Anna Katharina Schaffner is a vigorous review of the various lenses through which exhaustion has been viewed throughout human history. Throughout this review, Schaffner is making the case that exhaustion, though treated as something new by each successive generation, is better understood as the same snake shedding different types of skin. She suggests that although exhaustion is considered a more modern phenomenon, it has actually manifested under various guises over the centuries. Schaffner poses the following questions regarding exhaustion and the specter with which it shadows humanity:

"Is not ours the most exhausted age in history? And does the current epidemic of exhaustion not threaten the very future of the human animal? There are many who believe this to be the case. Yet before simply assenting to this assessment of our times, there is another question that needs to be asked: What do we really mean when we speak of exhaustion?" (4)

Schaffner offers the following persuasive answers: ours is not the most exhausted age, just the latest one to think it is; and exhaustion defies a specific definition but there is a recognizable phenomenon that recurs across history—a feeling of deep depletion, of having used up all of one's energy. Exhaustion is a slippery concept that defies a specific definition but speaks much more to the cultural mores and overlying themes that continue to shape history at various points. As opposed to other discussions of exhaustion, for example, such as Galen's On the Affected Parts, which are limited in their temporal scope, Schaffner's is valuable precisely because of its historical sweep.

In her introduction, Schaffner lays out her key assumption, which she then substantiates even as she explores its consequences: "exhaustion can be understood not only as an individual … state but also as a broader cultural phenomenon" (5). She also elaborates on what this term encompasses for her, noting that it can apply to physical, mental, or spiritual states and that it has a temporal dimension—it can be brief, intermittent, long lasting, or permanent (5).

In making the case for this view of exhaustion, she relies on the following strategies of analysis: etymology, rooting her observations in reverberations seen in historical primary texts specific to each epoch, and numerous references to works of literature.

Schaffner separates the chapters into sections based on the predominant school of thought governing exhaustion theory during specific periods. Chapter titles include "Humors," "Sin," "Saturn," "Sexuality," "Nerves," "Capitalism," "Rest," "The Death Drive," "Depression," "Mystery Viruses," and "Burnout" and they serve as touchstones from which these different theories spring. Her subject matter ranges from Galen's writings dating back to fifth century BCE. to the more recent work of Naomi Klein.

Schaffner's background in linguistics shines throughout the text as she makes clever use of word origins and definitions, which pave the path for the introductions of new concepts and theories. In "Sin" she notes the term acedia is "derived from the ancient Greek word for indifference, listlessness, or apathy … [l]iterally, it denotes a 'state of noncaring' (specifically about divine matters) and has been described as 'weariness of the heart'" (32). In this same section, she provides an impressive back and forth between the Italian and English translations of Dante's Inferno, underscoring the importance of etymology in its application to literary texts and her theories (44–51). In "Burnout," she traces the origin of the term to "the 1970s in the United States as a popular metaphor for mental exhaustion among social sector workers" (213).

Within each section, she also traces the reverberations of the dominant concept beyond its own cultural heyday. For example, in "Humors" she references the current and widely accepted theory of depression as a source of neurochemical imbalance, then reaches further back to tie this concept of imbalance of specific substances in the body to the ancient humoral theory (15). Also in "Humors," she extensively analyzes the primary text of Galen's humoral theory. In "Sin...