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Kritika Kultura

Author ORCID Identifier

0000-0003-0648-9073

Abstract

“Why me?” When illness strikes, this visceral cry is not merely a psychological plea for comfort, but also an ontological rupture that shatters the modern myth of the atomistic, closed body. This paper argues that depression, particularly “depression without cause,” functions as a catalyst for a radical existential shift. Unlike clinical models that seek a discrete etiology, the experience of causeless suffering bypasses linear causality, exposing the limitations of a substance-based ontology. Grounded in a critique of the “bounded ego,” this study rethinks the discourse of the body by approaching illness and failed mourning through a relational and ecological perspective. Drawing upon Arthur Frank’s pathography and Freud’s psychoanalytic model, the author contends that illness is not a mechanical malfunction but a “burden of truth”—a truth that reveals the inherent porosity of the human body. The onset of illness triggers a radical questioning that dismantles Cartesian dualism, reconfiguring the skin from a rigid barrier into a porous contact zone attuned to the world’s atmosphere. Furthermore, by examining Freud’s Mourning and Melancholia, the author suggests that the “failure” of mourning is not a negative pathology to be repaired. Instead, it is an evidence of intra-actional materiality, attesting to the body’s inextricable entwinement with the ecological world. Ultimately, the paper contends that the radical “Why me?”—instigated by the inexplicable weight of melancholy—leads the subject away from a “narcissistic ego” toward a transcorporeal solidarity, disclosing existence as the “flesh of the world.”

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