6. Melancholia and the Public

In these preliminary reflections, I propose a re-reading of left-leaning political projects’ attachment to the liberal idea of the “public.” I will argue that this attachment is a wounded one that forces nostalgia for the past and prevents dealing with present realities. I want us to attend to this notion of the public by attending to some ideas in psychoanalysis, particularly Sigmund Freud’s and specifically those of mourning and melancholia. This reading does not purport expertise in psychoanalysis and does not offer any kind of psychological diagnosis. I intend on reading psychoanalysis as allegory, as offering us imaginative devices for thinking about the present.