We are in an explosive cultural moment. Whatever explanation for this is offered鈥攊nequalities, disaffection of political institutions, traumatic memory, woke culture, the rise of populism, the dominance of technology鈥攊t is the inescapable fact that we are in a period of palpable malaise. In Explosive Emotions, sociologist Eva Illouz explores the source of our discontent through a number of key emotions. Hope, disappointment, envy, resentment, jealousy, anger, fear, anxiety, shame, nostalgia, jealousy, and love are all embedded in the institutions of social life. These institutions鈥攃orporations, the consumer market, the university, the nation-state, marriage, and sexuality鈥攕hape our emotional lives.
Illouz argues that hope was the emotional foundation of modernity鈥攕haping ambition and promising improvement. But today, this hope has morphed into disappointment, envy, anger, or nostalgia鈥攂ecause, she contends, advanced techno-capitalism has overseen both a series of transformations in modern democracies and the decay of nationalism. Drawing on the insights of literature and philosophy, Illouz outlines the psychological structure of these emotions; mobilizing data from sociology and political science, she examines how and why they are deployed in society. Unbeknownst to us, she explains, emotions contain and enact the key ingredients of society. Norms, rules, social structures, and cultural guidelines are the invisible yet burning magma of emotions, the heart of their energy. Emotions continue the work of society inside the self. Mapping our epochal malaise, Illouz shows how and why all our previously established structures are unraveling.
Eva Illouz is directrice d'etudes at the 脡cole des Hautes 脡tudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, and the author of eighteen books translated into twenty-five languages. She is the recipient of numerous international awards.
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“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.”—Mich猫le 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, Santa Barbara
“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.”—Phiilip 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
