Contemporary Capitalism and Mental Health - by Conor Heaney (Paperback)

About the Book

What is the relationship between contemporary capitalism and mental health?

Book Synopsis

Rather than individualising mental health, Conor Heaney takes seriously the notion of a shared mental environment and the importance of theorising everyday life in our endeavours to grasp and transform our everyday experience. Drawing particularly on the work of Félix Guattari, Gilles Deleuze, Bernard Stiegler and Henri Lefebvre, Heaney develops the idea of rhythmanalysis as an original and interdisciplinary approach to the politics of mental health. He offers both a renewed methodological and philosophical approach to rhythmanalysis (scaping) and deploys it with respect to the relationship between contemporary capitalism and mental health.

Review Quotes

Contemporary Capitalism and Mental Health provides a thorough discussion of Rhythmanalysis and the continental philosophy which illuminates the concept. Socio-Legal scholars working at the intersection with Critical Legal Studies and looking to develop a theoretically grounded understanding of everyday life would likely find the discussion useful.--Dr Jess Connolly-Smith "Frontiers in Socio-Legal Studies"

Heaney's book is innovative, timely, interdisciplinary, and thorough. It is grounded in the most prominent French thinkers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, but carries their analyses into the contemporary milieu of late capitalism. It is a work of staggering originality, extensively researched and meticulously argued. It will likely stand as a lasting intervention into the uncircumventable crises of mental health in the frenetic morass of global capital.--Vernon Cisney "Gettysburg College"

This book is an outstanding contribution to interdisciplinary social philosophy, Conor Heaney's reinvention of Lefebvre through Deleuze, Guattari, Stiegler and others moves effortlessly and energetically between mental health, ecology, the ontological security of capitalism and revolutionary experimentation. In the hands of a less skillful writer, the scope and unconventional nature of this highly original and ambitious project could have been overwhelming. Perhaps Heaney's greatest achievement, then, is to have made the reading experience both fun and impressively accessible.--Gerald Moore "Durham University"