the Female Body GOVERNING

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kristin a. swenson
orientations” (p. 75) is congruent with the process whereby social relations
are intergraded into the sphere of work.
As workplaces increasingly operate on a more feminized model of
flexibility, multitasking, and the necessity of productive social relationships,
the increase of depression is likely and documented in studies
such as those discussed earlier. Depressed people still blame themselves
for their depression, but in the age of pharmacology and advanced
biology, the depressed person can also blame his or her biological
makeup and take antidepressants to “regulate” this chemical aberration.
As depression becomes more pervasive, advertisements for depression
become less obviously gendered, although still definitely gendered. In
the Zoloft advertisement described earlier, the image presented is not
a human image, but rather an egg shaped blob that has a tear escaping
from an eye. A rain cloud follows the depressed egg. The text informs
us that depression “affects over 20 million Americans” and that “while
the cause is not known, depression may be related to an imbalance of
natural chemicals between nerve cells in the brain.” The ad presents
depression as sexless and locates the cause of depression in the physical
body. While the egg itself appears sexless, eggs connote femaleness
in their relation to reproduction. Perhaps this sexless egg is the apt
expression of depression today. First it demonstrates that depression
is biological and that it is primarily centered in the femaleness of the
body. Second, because female eggs are necessary for the reproduction
of the species, we can begin to see that depression is now necessary
for the “reproduction of the conditions of production,” to appropriate
Althusser’s (1971) phraseology (p. 127). 12 That is to say, as work has
appropriated feminine affectivity and its attendant depression, the egg
aptly expresses that the ability to reproduce symptoms of depression
are now necessary for the reproduction of the conditions of production:
the reproduction of the conditions of depression make us all productive
for capital because we are now encouraged to medicate ourselves for
the sake of productivity.
In the DSM-IV (2000) a work-related example of depression is
presented: “a Realtor may become preoccupied with self-blame for
failing to make sales even when the market has collapsed generally
and other Realtors are equally unable to makes sales” (p. 350). While
this example focuses on an objective condition, the inability to reach a
goal, the model presented can be extended to understand the affective
condition of the depressed worker today. That is to say, that while a
depressed person may blame oneself for the objective conditions such as
the lack of making sales, this essay argues that the process of self-blame