A Deferential Diagnosis of Fatigue: A Performative Lecture by Rouzbeh Shadpey 

A Deferential Diagnosis of Fatigue: A Performative Lecture by Rouzbeh Shadpey

Tuesday March 4 // 5:30pm // Pink Parlor, East Duke Building

Response by Nima Bassiri, Program in Literature

Description: The Patient was tired-this was his only symptom. His chief complaint, barely audible: "to be led back to a region where it might be possible to be weary." During grand rounds, all were present. All weighed in: the Clinician, the Psychiatrist, the Psychoanalyst, the Standardized Patient, the Forensic Expert (on behalf of the Insurer), the Phenomenologist. Even the Poet, weary himself, was in attendance. Since he could not speak-since he was also a patient-he listened. Besides, he had misheard the brief: his diagnosis was deferential.

Bio: Rouzbeh Shadpey is an artist, writer, and musician with a doctorate in medicine and indefatigable fatigue. His work explores the aesthetics and poetics of weariness, alongside anticolonial modes of the clinic. Rouzbeh has exhibited and performed at TULCA (Ireland), documenta fifteen (Germany), the Mosaic Rooms (UK). His writing appears in Parapraxis, Decolonial Hacker, Weird Economies. He currently lives in the Netherlands, where he is a member of the 2025 cohort of Jan van Eyck Academie.

Sponsored by Department of Cultural Anthropology; co-sponsors: Department of Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies; Revaluing Care Lab; Program in Literature; Department of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies