Loss

Contemporary society is marked by forms of loss in manifold ways: from the effects of climate change to the protest movements of those who have lost out in the process of modernisation, from the regression of liberal democracy to ways of dealing with grief and death in self-help discourses, from compensation for victims of violence to the vulnerabilities of an aging society. But what is behind these diverse phenomena?

In his new book, Andreas Reckwitz demonstrates that the roots of this current explosion in the economy of loss can be traced all the way back to the dawn of modernity, 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. In this landmark sociological study, Reckwitz demonstrates how 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 burning question for contemporary society is thus: How can Western modernity come to grips with loss if its promise of progress has been stripped of its credibility?