Depression diaries: Performative writing and navel-gazing as anti-capitalistic modes of creative practice

Where Lauren Berlant’s crisis ordinariness asks us to step away from trauma theory and recognise how we are mostly treading water in an increasingly problematic world, Ann Cvetkovich presents depression as a sociopolitical response to structural inequality. Responding to Cvetkovich’s call for performative writing which combines embodied subjectivity with intellectual inquiry – and Lauren Elkin’s ode to the art monster, “with her diaristic indulgence and her personal clutter” – this autotheoretical investigation follows a feminist, queer imperative to write through symptoms of depression and systemic brokenness, embracing resistant modes of navel-gazing (Febos), ventriloquism (Poletti), autotheory (Fournier), autoforms (King) and diaristic indulgence through creative practice research. A series of mini-manifestoes invites an interleaving of diaries with theory.