Verlust

Glaciers are melting, working environments are disappearing, orders are disintegrating. Losses are afflicting contemporary Western societies in great numbers and diversity. They are driving people onto the streets, into therapists' surgeries and into the arms of populists. They set the tone of our time. While the forms of dealing with them are changing profoundly, experiences of loss and fears of loss seem to be escalating more and more. How can this be explained? And what does it mean for the future?
Andreas Reckwitz does pioneering work and presents the first comprehensive analysis of the social and cultural structures that characterise our relationship to loss. Under the banner of progress, he explains, Western modernity has always been driven by a paradox of loss: it wants to (and can) reduce experiences of loss - and at the same time potentiate them. This fragile arrangement endured for a long time, but in the vulnerable late modern age it is collapsing. The narrative of progress is losing a great deal of credibility, losses can no longer be made invisible. This leads to one of the existential questions of the 21st century:
Can societies remain modern and at the same time deal productively with loss? A groundbreaking book.