The Outer Life of Prozac
Depression and Technoscience
Keywords:
depression, antidepressants, serotonin, psychopharmaceuticals, technoscienceAbstract
Over the second half of the 20th century, our experience and understanding of the affective domain have changed profoundly. Regarding negative feelings, a key point has been the rise of the category of depression. This article examines part of this history to argue for an understanding of depression as a category of technoscience, thus exploring some of epistemological and political problems that this implies. In order to analyze the role played by the development, commodification and consumption of antidepressants in the expansion of the diagnostic category of depression, the article works with the idea of an “outer life” of pills. This notion seeks to bring together, on the one hand, a consideration of the commodified and sociocultural circulation of antidepressants and, on the other hand, an emphasis on their material effects, understood however as inseparable from such circulation. With a critical and interdisciplinary approach, and drawing on insights and debates from new materialisms and science studies, this article aims to intervene in complex current controversies about depression and antidepressants, highlighting the inseparability of biology and politics in contemporary discussions about distress and its treatments.
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