"Emotions are often regarded as the products of unique experiences and our biological and psychological makeup. Nonetheless, Eva Illouz points out, as they externalize our inner world, emotions also reflect an internalization of the outer world."
"Explosive motions, she argues, respond to key features of modernity, individualism, equality, meritocracy, democracy, capitalism, consumer culture, nationalism, and immigration, which often conflict with each other, and to an assumption that we 'are entitled to an emotionally pain-free life.' Located at 'the seamline between the collective and personal,' they enact and illustrate 'the distinct malaise' of our times."
"By replacing Christian ideas of original sin and innate depravity with notions of progress and perfectibility, Illouz indicates, the Enlightenment institutionalized hope for individual happiness and a better world 'on a vast scale.' Aspiration, ambition, and achievement became its vocabulary."
Eva Illouz examines how emotions are not merely personal or biological phenomena but products of modern society's structural conditions. Drawing on psychology, philosophy, sociology, and literary classics, she analyzes twelve emotions shaped by modernity's key features including individualism, equality, meritocracy, democracy, capitalism, consumer culture, nationalism, and immigration. These emotions operate at the intersection of collective and personal experience, revealing the distinct malaise of contemporary life. Illouz critiques how psychological and self-improvement industries have obscured the ways modern life creates emotional turmoil. She argues that contemporary society's assumption of entitlement to an emotionally pain-free life, combined with conflicting structural demands, generates explosive emotional responses that illuminate broader social contradictions.
#emotions-and-modernity #social-structure-and-psychology #contemporary-malaise #capitalism-and-consumer-culture #individual-versus-collective-experience
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