Analyses the current wave of depression, or “desertion”, that is causing more and more people to abandon hope and desire in a world where social, political and environment collapse seems inevitable. According to psychiatrists, depression is spreading among the young generation, in a recent survey published by the New York Times, 54% of people aged 16-25 show symptoms of an impending clinical depression. In Quit Everything, Franco Berardi argues that there is something wrong with these figures. What today is often called “depression”, in Berardi’s view, is in fact something different entirely, a conscious or unconscious withdrawal of psychological energy and a dis-investment of desire that he defines instead as “desertion”. Examples of this desertion are everywhere, the deceleration of social rhythms and psycho-deflation provoked by the traumatic experience of the pandemic; the multiplication of environmental collapse which has reinforced the perception of political impotence; the explosion of war at the eastern border of Europe; and the “great resignation” from work taking place in the US. In this book, Berardi analyses why this desertion from political participation is on the rise and why more people are quitting everything in our age of political impotence, the rise of the far-right and nationalist aggression, and the brutal reality of climate collapse.
