Buch, Englisch, 336 Seiten
A Modern Predicament
Buch, Englisch, 336 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-5095-7341-7
Verlag: Polity Press
Experiences of loss shape and trouble contemporary societies in many different ways: from the devastating consequences of climate change to the protests of those who have lost out in the process of modernisation, and from the regression of liberal democracy to the loss of loved ones and the vulnerabilities of an aging society. But what is behind these diverse phenomena?
In a landmark study, Andreas Reckwitz demonstrates that the roots of this current explosion in the economy of loss can be traced back to the dawn of modern societies and to a key predicament of Western modernity: namely, the antagonism between the future-oriented promises of a society organised around progress and the painful, negative experiences of loss that accompanied these developments. He shows that modern society is, at heart, driven by a paradoxical relationship to loss: modernity seeks to contain losses while, at the same time, intensifying them. It makes losses systematically invisible while also actively cultivating and managing them: from nostalgia to risk calculations, from religion to psychotherapy and the politics of victimhood. In the vulnerable era of late modernity, however, the fragile relationship between loss and progress has been thrown out of balance. The key existential question of the 21st century is thus the following: how can Western modernity come to grips with loss if its promise of progress has been stripped of its credibility?
A pathbreaking work of major significance, Loss will appeal to anyone interested in the fundamental developments shaping modern societies and it will be essential reading for students and scholars sociology, politics and across the social sciences and humanities.
Fachgebiete
Weitere Infos & Material
Introduction: Loss as a Fundamental Problem of Modernity
Part I: What Are Losses and How Do They Function?
Chapter 1
1.1 The Transience of Social Practice
1.2 Negativity and Positive Attachment
Disappearance and Loss
Emotional Attachments
Irreversibility and Uncontrollability
Loss of Self and Loss of World
1.3 Loss and Social Practice
Practices of Loss
Discourses and Narratives of Loss
1.4 Types of Loss
The Loss of People, Things, and Spaces
Losses of Status
Cultural Losses
Losses of Stability
Panoramic Losses
Failure, Defeat, Trauma
Chapter 2: Temporal Structures, Emotions, Arenas
2.1 Practices of Loss as Temporal Practices
Remembrance and Memory
Anticipating Loss and Losing the Future
Rhythms of Loss
2.2 The Emotions of Loss
Grief and Fear
Anger and Indignation
Shame and Embitterment
Ambivalent Emotions
2.3 Arenas of Loss and Third Parties
Struggles Over Loss
Guilty Parties, Winners, Observers
Part II: The Paradox of Loss in Modernity
Chapter 3: The Progress Imperative and Its Consequences
3.1 Progress and Modernization
3.2 A Radical Future Orientation: Progress as a Promise
3.3 The Progress Discourse and the Philosophy of History
3.4 The Progress Imperative and Its Embeddedness in Society
3.5 Features of the Progress Narrative
3.6 How Experiences of Loss Contradict the Progress Imperative
3.7 The Suppression of Death
Chapter 4: Between the Reduction and Increase of Loss
4.1 The Four Effects and the Dual Paradox of Loss
4.2 How Modernity Reduces Losses
4.3 How Modernity Increases Losses
4.4 Structural Mechanisms: How the Occasions for Experiencing Loss Have Increased
The Regime of Obsolescence
The Biographical Effects of Social Change
The Marketization of the Social
Cascade Effects of Social Complexity
State Violence
4.5 Cultural Mechanisms: Becoming Sensitive to Loss
Expanding Expectations
Emotional Sensitivity
Processes of Singularization
Historical Culture
The Paradox of Freedom and the Elimination of Possibilities
Chapter 5: How Modernity Conceals Loss
5.1 Concealing Loss as “Undoing Loss”
5.2 Narrative Relativizations
The Illegitimate Loss
Loss as the Price of Progress
The Temporary Loss
Loss as a Deviation
5.3 Social Inhibition: Transformation, Exclusion, Discursive Purging
The Structural Preference for Forgetting
The Differentiation of the Private Sphere
The Social Logic of Replaceability
The Social Exclusion of Those "Unworthy of Loss"
Stigmatizing Losers and Victims
Sanctioning Negative Emotions
The Erosion of Non-Modern Narratives of Loss: Cosmology, Tragedy, Epic
The Vocabulary of the Emotionally Unattached Self
Chapter 6: How Modernity Processes Loss
6.1 Nostalgia: Aestheticizing Loss
6.2 Risk: Economizing Loss
6.3 Conservatism, Risk Politics, Victim Politics: Politicizing Loss
6.4 Complicated Grief: The Therapeutization of Loss
6.5 Diaspora: The Loss of Home and Community Building
6.6 Religion: The Consolation of Transcendence
Part III: The Escalation of Loss in Late Modernity
Chapter 7: The Loss of Progress
7.1 After the Boom
7.2 Skepticism About the Future: A New Regime of Time
7.3 The Future as Catastrophe
Dystopias
Scientific Disaster Scenarios
Tipping Points, Normal Accidents, Scenarios
7.4 Skepticism About Technology, the Economy, and the State
7.5 The Reversal: A Positive Space of Experience, a Negative Horizon of Expectation
7.6 The Regime of Prevention
7.7 The Subjectivation of Progress
Chapter 8: Surges in Loss
8.1 Industrial Modernity and the Phantasm of Loss-Free Progress
8.2 Six Late-Modern Surges in Loss
Surge I: The Losers of Liberal Post-Industrialism
Surge II: Losses from Climate Change
Surge III: Political Regressions
Surge IV: The Articulation of Historical Wounds
Surge V: The Emotional Self and Sensitivity to Loss
Surge VI: An Aging Society
8.3 The New Quality of Losses
The Amplification of Negativity
The Irrelevance of Political Boundaries
Patchy Loss Reduction
The Subjectivation of Progress: Disappointment or Decoupling?
From the Invisibilization to the Revelation of Losses
Losses Caused by Depletion
Chapter 9: "Doing Loss"
9.1 Vulnerability and Loss-Based Identities
9.2 Cultural Heritage: Protecting Things of Value from Destruction
9.3 Restorative Justice: The Recognition of Victims
9.4 Resilience: Bracing Oneself for Negativity
9.5 Populism: Loss Entrepreneurship and Revenge Against the Winners
9.6 Renunciation: Neo-Asceticism and “Less Is More”
9.7 A New Culture of Mourning: Saying Goodbye and Integrating Loss
9.8 Loss-Related Controversies
Outlook: Repairing Modernity?
Acknowledgments
Works Cited
Notes
Index
