"The man must work". Stress as a category of the spirit in the age of linguistic capitalism

  • Marco Mazzeo
Keywords: Benjamin, Marx, Operaism, Resilience, Selye

Abstract

The article will attempt to better understand an everyday but mysterious phenomenon, stress. To this end, the article will analyze the most relevant works of Hans Selye, the endocrinologist who coined the concept with the aim of proposing a precise thesis. Stress is so difficult to define because it is both a physiological mechanism and a category of experience typical of the contemporary world. Stress is the experience in the world in which work and life are indistinct, which is why it is a category analogous to what W. Benjamin in the early 20th century called ‘shock’.

References

Aldwin, Carolyn M. (2007), Stress, coping, and development: an integrative perspective, New York-London, The Guilford Press.

Benjamin, Walter (1935-39), Charles Baudelaire. Un poeta lirico nell’età del capitalismo avanzato, Neri Pozza, Vicenza.

Benjamin, Walter (1936), Der Erzähler. Betrachtungen zum Werk Nikolai Lesskows (Il narratore. Considerazioni sull’opera di Nicola Leskov, trad. di, R. Solmi, in W. Benjamin, Angelus Novus. Saggi e frammenti, Einaudi, Torino 1995, pp. 247-274).

Benjamin, Walter (1940), Über den Begriff der Geschichte (Tesi di filosofia della storia, trad. di R. Solmi, in W. Benjamin, Angelus Novus. Saggi e frammenti, Einaudi, Torino 1995, pp. 75-86).

Comunità Europea (2021), Regolamento (UE) 2021/241 del Parlamento Europeo e del Consiglio, 12 febbraio 2021.

De Carolis, Massimo (2004), La vita nell’epoca della sua riproducibilità tecnica, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino.

De Carolis, Massimo (2017), Il rovescio della libertà. Tramonto del neoliberalismo e disagio della civiltà, Quodlibet, Macerata.

Debord, Guy (1967-1992), La Société du Spectacle, Gallimard, Paris 1992 (La società dello spettacolo, trad. di P. Salvadori, Baldini Castoldi Dalai, Milano 2004).

Dressler, William W. (2016), Indigenous Societies, in Fink 2016: 429-434.

Fink, George (2016), Stress: Concepts, Cognition, Emotion, and Behavior. Handbook of Stress, Vol. 1, Elsevier, London-Boston.

Farné, Mario (1999), Lo stress, il Mulino, Bologna.

Hutmacher, Fabian (2021), «Putting Stress in Historical Context: Why It Is Important That Being Stressed Out Was Not a Way to Be a Person 2,000 Years Ago», in Frontiers in Psychology, 12:539799, pp. 1-9.

Jackson, Mark (2012), «The pursuit of happiness: The social and scientific origins of Hans Selye’s natural philosophy of life», in History of the Human Sciences, 25 (5), pp. 13-29.

Jackson, Mark (2013), The Age of Stress. Science and the Search for Stability, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Kidd, Stephen P. (2011), ed. by, Stress Response in Pathogenic Bacteria, CABI, Cambridge.

Lundberg Ulf, Cooper Cary L. (2011), The Science of Occupational Health: Stress, Psychobiology and the New World of Work, Wiley-Balckwell, London.

Maercker, Andreas et al. (2013), «Diagnosis and classification of disorders specifically associated with stress: proposals for ICD-11», in World Psychiatry, 12 (3), pp. 198-206.

Marazzi, Christian (2002), Capitale e linguaggio. Ciclo e crisi nella New Economy, Rubettino, Soveria Mannelli (CZ).

Marx, Karl (1867), Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Oekonomie, III Bd. (Il capitale. Critica dell’economia politica, trad. di D. Cantimori, 3 voll., Editori Riuniti, Roma 1989).

Mazzeo, Marco (2019), Capitalismo linguistico e natura umana. Per una storia naturale, DeriveApprodi, Roma.

Mazzeo, Marco (2023a), Tre abiti del presente. Stress, disattenzione, complotto, in AAVV, Sentimenti dell’aldiqua. Opportunismo, paura, cinismo nell’età del disincanto, DeriveApprodi, Bologna, pp. 153-171.

Mazzeo, Marco (2023b), «La voce della violenza. Linguaggio e tortura nella Grecia antica», in Versus, 136, pp. 83-98.

Mazzeo, Marco, Bertollini, Adriano (2023), a cura di, Sintomi. Per un’antropologia linguistica del mondo contemporaneo, DeriveApprodi, Roma.

McCarty, Richard (2016), The Alarm Phase and the General Adaptation Syndrome: Two Aspects of Selye’s Inconsistent Legacy, in Fink 2016: 13-20.

OED, Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1884-2015.

Pollock, Kristian (1988), «On the nature of social stress: production of a modern mythology», in Social Science & Medicine, 26 (3), pp. 381-92.

Rocci, Lorenzo (1943), Vocabolario greco-italiano, Dante Alighieri, Roma 1985.

Rochette Luc, Dogon Geoffrey, Vergely Catherine (2023), «Stress: Eight Decades after Its Definition by Hans Selye: “Stress Is the Spice of Life”», in Brain Sciences, 13 (2), 310, pp. 1-3.

Rosch, Paul (1998), «Reminiscences of Hans Selye, and the Birth of “Stress”», in Stress Medicine, 14 (1), pp. 1-6.

Seed Scientific (2023), «How Much Data Is Created Every Day?», https://seedscientific.com/how-much-data-is-created-every-day/, consultato il 10 giugno 2023.

Selye, Hans (1955), La sindrome di adattamento, Istituto Sieroterapico Milanese & Belfanti, Milano.

Selye, Hans (1956), The Stress of Life, McGraw-Hill, New York-Toronto-London.

Selye, Hans (1974), Stress Without Distress, Corgi Books, London.

Siegrist, Johannes (2016), Industrialized Societies, in Fink 2016: 423-427.

Sloterdijk, Peter (2011), Stress und Freiheit, Suhrkamp, Berlin (Stress e libertà, trad. di P. Perticari, Raffaello Cortina, Milano).

Sohn-Rethel, Alfred (1970), Geistige und körperliche Arbeit. Zur Theorie der gesellschaften Synthesis, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main (Lavoro intellettuale e lavoro manuale. Per la teoria della sintesi sociale, trad. di F. Coppellotti, Feltrinelli, Milano 1977).

Sunkar, Ramanjulu (2010), ed. by, Plant Stress Tolerance. Methods and Protocols, Humana Press-Springer, New York.

Virno, Paolo (2001), Grammatica della moltitudine. Per un’analisi delle forme di vita contemporanee, DeriveApprodi, Bologna 2023.

Virno, Paolo (2021), Negli anni del nostro scontento. Diario della controrivoluzione, DeriveApprodi, Roma.

Werner, Emmy E. (1984), «Resilient Children», in Young Children, 40 (1), pp. 68-72.

Werner, Emmy E. (1992), «The children of Kauai: Resiliency and recovery in adolescence and adulthood», in Journal of Adolescent Health, 13 (4), pp. 262-268.

Werner, Emmy E. (2005), Resilience Research: Past, Present, and Future, in De V. Peters Ray, Leadbeater Bonnie, McMahon Robert J., ed. by, Children, Families, and Communities Linking Context to Practice and Policy, Kluwer/Plenum, New York-Dordrecht, pp. 3-11.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1953), Philosophische Untersuchungen, Basil Blackwell, Oxford (Ricerche filosofiche, trad. di M. Trinchero, Torino, Einaudi 1983).

Published
2023-12-31
How to Cite
Mazzeo, M. (2023) “"The man must work". Stress as a category of the spirit in the age of linguistic capitalism”, Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio, 17(2). doi: 10.4396/202312013.

Most read articles by the same author(s)