Book Review

摘要

Exhaustion is an individual phenomenon of global concern, manifest in the elevated number of people affected by related syndromes. According to the World Health Organisation, depression – of which fatigue is a cardinal symptom – is the leading cause of disability worldwide, affecting over 300 million people of all ages. Incidence rates of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), and burn-out are also on the rise. Exhaustion is also a broader socio-cultural phenomenon, evident in discourses about the current political climate and ecological sustainability. It is present in the distrust of grand narratives and the disenchantment with capitalism in its current, neo-liberal form. In the words of the editors of , ‘[o]ur age, it seems, is the age of exhaustion’ (p. 1). The extent to which this is true, and the way in which exhaustion theories and discourses have proliferated in all of its forms in multiple disciplines, are the questions that this book sets out to explore.