Exhaustion as a political feeling with history stuck under its nails.

Moving through left movements, anti-psychiatry, melancholy, defeat, militant memory and the afterlife of failed revolutions, Proctor asks what happens when political commitment collides with the body’s limits — when the cause survives, but the people carrying it are wrecked, numbed, grieving, disoriented or simply very, very tired.

The book is doing something more interesting than the usual “capitalism makes us tired” diagnosis, though obviously, yes, the machine has been busy. Proctor is interested in the emotional texture of political defeat: bitterness, nostalgia, shame, attachment, solidarity, disappointment, and the difficulty of continuing after history has not gone the way it was meant to. It is theory with a pulse, but not a wellness manual. No scented candle redemption arc. Just the harder question of how people keep faith with collective struggle without pretending damage is noble.

A sharp contemporary read for anyone thinking about activism, mental health, political memory, burnout culture, the left’s haunted relationship with failure, and why exhaustion is never as individual as it is sold to us.

Verso paperback, first published 2024; number line indicates first printing. Light handling wear only; pages appear clean and bright. Solid near-new copy.