Late Modern Subjectivity And Its Discontents

This book analyses three of the most prevalent illnesses of late modernity: anxiety, depression and Alzheimer’s disease, in terms of their relation to cultural pathologies of the social body. Usually these conditions are interpreted clinically in terms of individualized symptoms and responded to discretely, as though for the most part unrelated to each other. However, these diseases also have a social and cultural profile that transcends their particular symptomologies and etiologies. Anxiety, depression and Alzheimer’s are diseases related to disorders of the collective esprit de corps of contemporary society. Multidisciplinary in approach, the book addresses questions of how these conditions are manifest at both the individual and collective levels in relation to hegemonic biomedical and psychologistic understandings. Rejecting such reductive diagnoses, the authors argue that anxiety, depression and Alzheimer’s disease, as well as other contemporary epidemics, are to be analysed in the light of individual and collective experiences of profound and radical changes in our civilization. A diagnosis of our times, Late Modern Subjectivity and its Discontents will appeal to a broad range of scholars with interests in health and illness, the sociology of medicine and contemporary life.

What are we exactly, when we are said to be our brain? This question leads Jan De Vos to examine the different metamorphoses of the brain: the educated brain, the material brain, the iconographic brain, the sexual brain, the celebrated brain and, finally, the political brain. This first, protracted and sustained argument on neurologisation, which lays bare its lineage with psychologisation, should be taken seriously by psychologists, educationalists, sociologists, students of cultural studies, policy makers and, above all, neuroscientists themselves.

"Late style" is a critical term routinely deployed to characterise the work of selected authors, composers, and creative artists as they enter their last phase of production--often, but not only, in old age. Taken at face value, this terminology merely points to a chronological division in the artist's oeuvre, "late" being the antonym of "early" or the third term in the triad "early-middle-late." However, almost from its inception, the idea of late style or late work has been freighted with aesthetic associations and expectations that promote it as a special episode in the artist's creative life. Late style is often characterized as the imaginative response made by exceptional talents to the imminence of their death. In their confrontation with death creative artists, critics claim, produce work that is by turns a determination to continue while strength remains, a summation of their life's work and a radical vision of the essence of their craft. And because this creative phenomenon is understood as primarily an existential response to a common fate, so late style is understood as something that transcends the particularities of place, time and medium. Critics seeking to understand late work regularly invoke the examples of Titian, Goethe, and Beethoven as exemplars of what constitutes late work, proposing that something unites the late style of authors, composers, and creative artists who otherwise would not be bracketed together and that lateness per se is a special order of creative work. The essays in this collection resist this position. Ranging across literature, the visual arts, music, and scientific work, the material assembled here looks closely at the material, biographical and other contexts in which the work was produced and seeks both to question the assumptions surrounding late style and to prompt a more critical understanding of the last works of writers, artists and composers.

As modern society’s routine sequestration of death and grief is increasingly replaced by late-modern society’s growing concern with existential issues and emotionality, this book explores grief as a social emotion, bringing together contributions from scholars across the social sciences and humanities to examine its social and cultural aspects. Thematically organised in order to consider the historical changes in our understanding of grief, literary treatments of grief, contemporary forms of grief and grief as a perspective from which to engage in critique of society, it provides insights into the sociality of grief and will appeal to scholars of sociology, social theory and cultural studies with interests in the emotions and social pathologies.

Dark Emotions is a book about a range of emotional experiences that are often regarded or characterized as ‘negative’, ‘disturbing’ or ‘dark’ as contrasted with emotions that are ‘positive’, ‘pleasant’ or ‘light’. Each chapter in the book is devoted to introducing different ‘dark emotions’ such as disappointment, betrayal, worry, regret, resentment and alienation and seeks to show – through conceptual, theoretical and empirical examples – how these emotions influence peoples’ lives and their relations to self, others and society. The book thus provides an overview of some dark emotions that are recognizable in our everyday lives and culture. It contains accessible introductions and relevant theoretical and empirical research on 12 different kinds of ‘dark emotions’. The chapters are highly useful for teaching sessions and research contexts. Additionally, they provide extensive lists of references for further reading. The book will be particularly useful for students or scholars with an interest in emotion research or related areas, and the book may inspire further investigation of the often- overlooked emotions presented in this volume.

Interdisciplinary in approach, this book combines philosophy, sociology, history and psychology in the analysis of contemporary forms of suffering. With attention to depression, anxiety, chronic pain and addiction, it examines both particular forms of suffering and takes a broad view of their common features, so as to offer a comprehensive and parallel view both of the various forms of suffering and the treatments commonly applied to them. Highlighting the challenges and distortions of the available treatments and identifying these as contributory factors to the overall problem of contemporary suffering, Empty Suffering promises to widen the horizon of therapeutic interventions and social policies. As such, it will appeal to scholars across the social sciences and humanities with interests in mental health and disorder, social theory and social pathologies.

This book addresses the topic of 'being bound' from a philosophical and a sociological perspective. It examines several ways in which we are bound. We are bound to acknowledge the truth and to follow laws; we are bound to others and to the world. Who we are is partly defined by those bonds, regardless of whether we live up to them – or even of whether we acknowledge them. Puzzling questions arise from the fact that we are bound, such as: How are those bonds binding? Wherein lies their normative character? A venerable philosophical tradition, particularly since Kant, has provided an account of normativity that crucially appeals to such notions as “self-legislation.” But can our normative bonds be properly understood in these essentially first-personal terms? Many argue that our social condition resists any account of those bonds that fails to acknowledge the perspectives of the second and the third person. The first part of the book explores these themes from a historical perspective in the tradition of transcendental philosophy (Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger); it examines the phenomenon of “being bound”, i.e., why and how we are bound. The second part of the book offers a sociological analysis of social bonds that is both historical and systematic. Based on sociological approaches to “solidarity” and “reflexivity”, it explores the way in which the phenomenon of “being bound” manifests through the concept of a “social relation”.

This volume describes and analyses a series of emotions prevalent in everyday life and culture, with each chapter exploring the main facets of a particular emotion and considering the ways in which it manifests itself in and informs our culture and lives. Considering our expression, conception, management and sanctioning of emotions, and the ways in which these have changed over time, as well as the ways in which we can theorise particular emotional states, authors ask how certain emotions are linked to culture and society and what roles they play in politics and contemporary life. With examples and case studies taken from research into media, culture and social life, Emotions in Culture and Everyday Life will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology, psychology, media and cultural studies and philosophy with interests in the emotions.