Anxiety as a Weapon
From Public Secret to Collective Solidarity
AU Press, Edmonton, AB
Forthcoming Spring 2026
My forthcoming book examines what I term the ‘paradox of dis/empowerment’ within the political economy of mental health, highlighting the public secret of widespread anxiety.
While the pandemic’s acute phase has passed in the Global North, pre-existing inequalities continue to exacerbate a mental health crisis, overlooked by systemic negligence and focused instead on personal responsibility for health. Drawing from the work of the ‘Socialist Patients Collective’ (SPK), I develop a dialectical understanding of anxiety, connecting personal experiences with broader social and systemic structures, and suggesting the potential for a collective response — ‘anxious solidarity’ — to challenge and redefine what we consider ‘normal.’
“The ‘weapon’ the SPK speaks of is not a physical or harmful instrument, but the potential of mental health challenges to function as rallying points, sites of shared identification, unifying factors for social and political transformation.”
Introduction to ‘Anxiety as a Weapon’ (p.3).
Integrating a focus on anti-psychiatry with patient-focused praxis, my 2022 article in Asylum Magazine seeds a core argument of the SPK and Anxiety as a Weapon: ‘healing the system’ requires fashioning a political therapy that re-frames many forms of mental health challenges as produced by a basic contradiction created by modern capitalism, which could, under certain circumstances, be used to transform the social structures that gave it life.
The Political Life of Anxiety
Market Psychopathologies and the Production of Subjectivity
York University, Toronto
2023-10-26
My PhD dissertation explores the rise of anxiety in capitalist societies, a condition I terms ‘anxio-capitalism.’
It examines how modern economic and technological systems alongside the biomedical industry contribute to widespread anxiety, transforming mental health into a marketable commodity that alienates sufferers. The research proposes a collective approach to mental health, advocating for solidarity and social responses to the mental health crisis.
“To solve political problems becomes difficult for those who allow anxiety alone to pose them. It is necessary for anxiety to pose them. But their solution demands at a certain point the removal of this anxiety.”
Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy (NY: Zone Books, 1988, p. 14).
Essays & Articles
A Schizo-Stroll
Anxious Reflections on Late Capitalism
Permanent Sleep Press, Toronto, ON
ISBN: 9781544802275
February 2017
My first monograph explores the pervasive rise of anxiety within modern society, linking it to the socio-economic structures and control mechanisms that govern urban spaces, social strata, and other domains.
Utilizing concepts from thinkers like Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, it delves into the political geography of fear, control, and alienation under late capitalism. The work challenges readers to consider the relationship between everyday anxieties and broader political structures, advocating for a schizoanalytical approach to disrupt and transform these oppressive systems through revolutionary activity.
“To embark on a schizo-stroll is to leave the furrow, to go ‘off the rails, ‘ to wander in imagination and thought-meanings, images, and so on float in a dream of dis-logic rather than calmly following from one to another along the familiar lines or tracks of cold reason.”
Introduction to ‘A Schizo-Stroll’ (p. 3).
A.T. Kingsmith, Ph.D. 