Organised loneliness and its discontents

Abstract

This review paper offers a critique of the discourse of loneliness both in the popular and academic imagination. It questions the stance and approach of much loneliness research and the headlines that have been extracted from it. These position loneliness as an epidemic, framing it as a global public health problem, its aetiology and management located in the individual. The paper draws attention to overlooked alternative framings of loneliness as well as to the risks of maintaining our current levels of alarm regarding it. Finally, the work of Hannah Arendt is turned to, as part of a wider academic reappreciation of her work on loneliness. The paper ends by suggesting what can be learned by loneliness researchers in the medical humanities from such political analyses.