Against Critiques of Toxic Positivity

Today’s critiques of “toxic positivity,” currently in vogue among internet philosophers, have achieved their dignity as a cultural dominant. Perhaps this strange moment demonstrates that the critique of toxic positivity is also its continuation through the conduit of philosophical cynicism.

It functions through the circulation of an assortment of “false negatives” (faux-negs or fawnings) designed to fashionably elevate. Yet, in doing so, it only further secures the certainty which had already taken hold: depression is reality seen more clearly, and our failures should be stated openly.

What is positive? What is negative? Perhaps we can say that what is positive is that which cannot be negated, and that which persists or even repeats. There is a question of non-negativizable jouissance.

It is in this sense that I have provocatively claimed that depression is perhaps what one could expect when one speaks of toxic positivity.

Hence, depression is one mode of rejection of unconscious knowledge.

What we can call “negative psychoanalysis” is precisely that: the negation of psychoanalysis.