Issues of our Time: Eva Illouz - Explosive modernity

Saturday, October 19 2024, 7 – 9 p.m.
Kunstmuseum Basel | Eventfoyer Neubau

Costs: CHF 25/20, Tickets via Literaturhaus

Politics of fear, spirals of disappointment, people in rage. In her new book, Eva Illouz looks at our troubled times from the perspective of the feelings that shape them. Fear, disappointment and anger, but also shame and love, are firmly embedded in the social arrangements of Western modernity - and are intensively cultivated by its economy, politics and culture.

They are psychologically relevant, morally significant, politically effective - and highly ambivalent. This is what makes the present in which we live so volatile, even explosive.

Illouz illuminates these phenomena in a masterful composition of sociological analyses, historical miniatures and readings of iconic works of world literature. In precise portraits of the emotions that put society under high tension, she illuminates the mechanisms of their effect and the reason for their powerful presence.

The fading of the American dream and the fragility of liberal democracy, the hamster wheel of capitalism and the conflicts surrounding identity, but also anti-Semitism, racism and misogyny: without reference to the key emotions of the explosive modern age, they can neither be understood nor contained or combated.

EVA ILLOUZ (*1961 in Fès, Morocco) is Professor of Sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Director of Studies at the Centre européen de sociologie et de science politique, CSE-EHESS in Paris. She has received many awards for her work, including the Frank Schirmacher Prize (2024). Her books have been translated into numerous languages. Most recently published: Was ist sexuelles Kapital? (together with Dana Kaplan, 2021) and Undemokratische Emotionen. The example of Israel (2023).