Exhaustion and Idleness in Literature an

“I’m exhausted.”  That refrain has rung out repeatedly during the last two years.  It has been both a cry for help and a rallying cry.  Exhaustion is a state of being characterized by extreme fatigue, torpor and lassitude.  It can be a response to the unbearable weight of personal experience or a more extensive cultural formation.  It is also a medical symptom (eg anemia and heart failure) and a diagnosis in its own right (chronic fatigue syndrome), though one whose status is uncertain.  Exhaustion can be spiritual, intellectual, emotional, sexual, or political.  Whether as medical symptom, disease, individual experience or response to impossible expectations, the feelings and causes of exhaustion dominate our conversations.

Exhaustion is often reframed as idleness, especially under economic systems that prioritize productivity, efficiency and work.  Idleness carries a negative connotation and the exhausted are stigmatized as lazy or unwilling to work.  But idleness itself can be recast as a source of play, freedom and plenitude.  Wool-gathering and day dreaming provide the kernels for creative endeavors and alternate possibilities, while slowdowns and strikes position idleness as a form of resistance to hegemonic and exploitative forces that want to “work us to the bone”.  Far from an indignity, idleness might be the very balm to an exhausted and weary world.          

In this class, we will explore some literary, philosophic and scientific frames for both exhaustion and idleness. We will read novels, plays and short stories by Ottessa Moshfegh, Samuel Beckett and Herman Melville among others as well as illness narratives, case histories, and medical heuristics and theory.