Drawing on recent theories of affect and affectivity, this essay argues that depression is an “affect” that connects the individual and the social. In particular, depression serves as both a response to, and a cause of, economic fears and uncertainties–a “quasi-cause” that opens up negative feelings into political potentials. In examination of two NEW YORK TIMES feature articles from the mid-1970s, the essay suggests that depression and economic crisis have been ineluctably linked in the recent period of neoliberalism.
