How to fight while healing? Hannah Proctor spells out this, and other core questions of Burnout clearly as she engages with literature, historical examples, and her personal experiences. From the Paris Commune to Jeremy Corbyn, Proctor brings out illustrative examples of emotional experiences in left politics and revolutionary activity. In a well-written sequence of chapters, she interprets the concepts of melancholia, nostalgia, depression, burnout, exhaustion, bitterness, trauma, and mourning: all are contextualised in historical episodes and relevant readings from the classics of psychology, feminism, left political thought, literature and history. The wealth of such sources referenced and interpreted in Burnout helps the reader discover more and continue their journey beyond the pages of this book.
In the introduction, Proctor lists all the books this book is not: not a history of Marxism and psychology, not a history of radical psychiatry, not a history from below, not an application of methods from psychology to historical events. It is also not on the mission of convincing people on the left that psychology and therapy are not bourgeois-individualist self-indulgence. Proctor, of course, recognises that this perspective exists in left circles and understands the origins of it. To be fair, all the books that this book is not would be important contributions to the field, but Proctor’s would probably be the most accessible read of them all.
Organising circles speak of mental health more and more, consciousness of looming burnout is built into practice at a certain level: Proctor cites this as the starting point for her treatise, the baseline for her audience. “Organising WhatsApp groups buzz with mutual concern for the ‘capacity’ of others, an ambiguous term that seems to encompass the quantitative register of time and the qualitative register of emotions.” This line both acknowledges a tendency towards understanding mental health and good practices, but also the long way around that organising circles need to take in this regard.
This time last year, in my review of Kohei Saito’s Slow Down[1], I encouraged the reader to read Vincent Bevins’ If We Burn for an insight into social movements and attempts thereof in the past decade. Once again, I recommend If We Burn as a companion read to further situate this book in its time. Early in the book, Proctor lays out her personal context and political development in the first two decades of the 21st century. Bevins’ critical perspective on the events that were formative experience for Proctor (and many of her readers) adds another dimension to thinking of our personal, intimate experiences of social movements, revolutions, and regime changes. In the same vein, and closer to home, David Landy and Oisín Gilmore’s Fragments of Victory (also reviewed in this issue) come to mind as a contextual backdrop to read Burnout against.
Finally, there is a sidenote I would like to make, and the readership of Socialist Voice might find it amusing. In the introduction, Proctor writes:
“I discuss anti-imperialist, anti-racist, anti-war, feminist, environmentalist and queer movements alongside workers’ movements that emphasised class struggle, but I am well aware that many of the motley array of anarchists, social democrats, socialist feminists, Maoists, Communist Party apparatchiks, black nationalists, ultraleft militants and libertarians that populate these pages would have vehemently disagreed with one another on many issues.”
While being a very good summary of what is to be found in the historical examples the book offers, it also reclaims the term apparatchik as a non-pejorative (clearly, as no other political demographics mentioned were labelled pejoratively). Long may the reclamation of the term continue.
Burnout: The Emotional Experience of Political Defeat by Hannah Proctor (Verso Books, 2024) is available from Connolly Books, Temple Bar, Dublin
A Burnout book event in Connolly Books with Hannah Proctor is taking place on 25th February 2025.
[1]Mullen, R. (2024) “Book Review – Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto by Kohei Saito” Socialist Voice March 2024 issue: https://socialistvoice.ie/2024/03/book-review-slow-down-the-degrowth-manifesto-by-kohei-saito/
