Many of the teenage students I encountered

seemed to be in a state of what I would call depressive hedonia. Depression is usually characterized

as a state of anhedonia, but the condition

I’m referring to is constituted not by an inability

to get pleasure so much as it is by an inability

to do anything else except pursue pleasure. 

There is a sense that ‘something is missing’ –

but no appreciation that this mysterious,

missing enjoyment can only be accessed

beyond the pleasure principle.

​

Mark Fisher,

Capitalist realism