Explosive Emotions

In her new book, sociologist Eva Illouz takes a look at our highly charged present from the perspective of the emotions that forge it. Envy and rage, jealousy and shame, disappointment and love are not just deeply embedded in the social configurations of Western modernity, they are also actively cultivated by its economics, politics, and cultural formations. They are psychologically significant, morally meaningful, and politically powerful. And they are highly ambivalent. Which is what makes the present we live in so explosive. The smouldering crises of late-modern society cannot be untangled from the texture of its emotions.

In ten masterfully composed chapters, each of which are dedicated to a particular emotion, Illouz teases out these connections, shedding light on developments such as the demise of American democracy, the Sisyphean struggle of life under capitalism, and conflicts around notions of identity. But Illouz’s sociological analyses, historical miniatures, and philosophical reflections always stick close to the forces at the heart of this book: captivating accounts of narratives from world literature, spanning from antiquity to the present day, from Sappho to Ernaux. Figures like Emma Bovary, Michael Kohlhaas, and William Stoner bring the central emotions of our explosive modernity to life, embodying its tragic contradictions. A sparkling intellectual mosaic.

»[The book contains] numerous enlightening detailed observations on the genesis of today’s ideological battlefields around identity, racism, and the trivialisation of terrorism, all from the perspective of a theory of the emotions.« Marianna Lieder, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»As so often in [Illouz’s] books, we are not just provided with a theoretical overview, but also kept entertained on a foray through literature and Netflix series. All of which contributes to an improved understanding of global conflicts.« Hannah Krug, SRF

»Surprising, beautifully written, and erudite, Eva Illouz’s latest book will deftly lure you into the complex world of emotions. You will come out of it with a renewed appreciation for all that this crucial part of life offers. This is why I give this terrific book my highest recommendation.« Michèle Lamont, author of Seeing Others: How Recognition Works and How It Can Heal a Divided World

»Jealousy, hope, disappointment, love, envy, and more. Eva Illouz takes us on a brilliant and beautifully sad journey through the emotional stations of the cross of modernity, offering a remarkable phenomenology of their institutional constitution. It is a journey to the heart of our darkness and our light, chock full of mystery, contradiction, and flashes of unexpected illumination.« Roger Friedland, University of California

»In this sweeping and compelling work, Illouz provides her most ambitious contribution to the sociology of emotions, building new alliances between social sciences and literary studies to illuminate our shared world, in the face of its apparent fragmentation.« William Davies, author of Nervous States and The Happiness Industry

»Freud argued that modern civilization is built on repressed emotions. Illouz counters that late modernity is being collapsed by emotional explosions. A tour de force by the foremost sociologist of emotion at work today.« Philip Gorski, Yale University

»In this compelling and revealing work, Eva Illouz draws on social science and literature to diagnose our present discontents. Compelling because it focuses on contemporary political developments and social movements and ranges from public life to the private and intimate. Revealing because it shows how our feelings are socially shaped and in ways we often fail to see.« Steven Lukes, New York University

»In a sweeping analysis that spans Marx and Freud, Eva Illouz uses her deeply sociological insight to address how notions such as capitalism and the internet have sowed the seeds of desire, fear, and resentment in a way that stands to undermine modern democracy. Very rarely does a book with this scope feel so present and relevant. There is nothing like it in the field.« Kathryn Lively, Dartmouth College

»Original and eye-opening.« DIE ZEIT

»With this book, [Illouz] encourages engaged thought. In a time in which emotions are increasingly taking on the status of argument, the enlightening studies of this sociologist help to defuse the detonators of our Explosive Modernity.« Guido Kalberer, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

»Explosive Modernity delivers a profound analysis of our contemporary emotional world.« Viorica Engelhardt, stern

»Thinking is doing, Adorno once said, to which Illouz has fittingly added  ›feeling‹. … We need to comprehend that feelings are not merely our own private affair.« Marlene Knobloch, Süddeutsche Zeitung

»A new book by Eva Illouz is always a remarkable experience. Like nobody else in the field of social diagnostics, she aims simultaneously at the heart and the head.« DER SPIEGEL

»Her analysis of our explosive modernity is an intelligent and insightful explanation for the rampant feeling that so shapes our era and our democracy.« ttt – titel thesen temperamente