Explosive modernité

by Eva Illouz

Comment comprendre le malaise indéniable dans lequel notre civilisation est plongée ? Il y a un siècle, Freud se posait la même question. Mais là où, en psychanalyste, il dressait le tableau d’un conflit entre pulsions et répression, ce qui se joue aujourd’hui est à la lisière entre émotions et monde social. Nos affects les plus intimes — espoir, déception, colère, envie, honte, fierté, amour même — sont désormais pris dans les tensions et dynamiques de nos sociétés.
L’espoir, fondement émotionnel de la modernité, a promis le progrès et l’amélioration du sort de chacun. C’était avant que les inégalités, la montée du populisme, démocratie extrême, la domination de la technologie ne le transforment en déception, envie, colère ou nostalgie. La conjonction de toutes ces émotions nous a fait entrer dans une ère explosive.
Ce livre est l’exact opposé d’un manuel de développement personnel : il ne nous invite pas à ausculter sans fin notre "moi", mais à ouvrir notre intériorité à l’analyse sociale pour y découvrir que ce qui nous hante est avant tout l’écho des forces à l’œuvre dans notre vie collective.
Sociologue des émotions, Eva Illouz mobilise ici la littérature et la philosophie autant que les sciences politiques pour explorer comment et pourquoi ces émotions sont déployées dans la société.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics

423 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 15, 2025

About the author

Eva Illouz (Hebrew: אווה אילוז‎‎) is a professor of sociology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Since October 2012 she has been President of Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. She is Bezalel's first woman president. Since 2015, Illouz has been a professor at Paris's School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (École des hautes études en sciences sociales).

The research developed by Illouz from her dissertation onward focuses on a number of themes at the junction of the study of emotions, culture and communication:

The ways in which capitalism has transformed emotional patterns
One dominant theme concerns the ways in which capitalism has transformed emotional patterns, in the realms of both consumption and production.

Consuming the Romantic Utopia
Illouz's first book addresses a dual process: the commodification of romance and the romanticization of commodities. Looking at a wide sample of movies and advertising images in women’s magazines of the 1930s, Illouz finds that advertising and cinematic culture presented commodities as the vector for emotional experiences and particularly the experience of romance. Commodities of many kinds – soaps, refrigerators, vacation packages, watches, diamonds, cereals, cosmetics, and many others – were presented as enabling the experience of love and romance. The second process was that of the commodification of romance, the process by which the 19th-century practice of calling on a woman, that is going to her home, was replaced by dating: going out and consuming the increasingly powerful industries of leisure. Romantic encounters moved from the home to the sphere of consumer leisure with the result that the search for romantic love was made into a vector for the consumption of leisure goods produced by expanding industries of leisure.

Cold Intimacies and Saving the Modern Soul
In Cold Intimacies and Saving the Modern Soul Illouz examines how emotions figure in the realm of economic production: in the American corporation, from the 1920s onward emotions became a conscious object of knowledge and construction and became closely connected to the language and techniques of economic efficiency. Psychologists were hired by American corporations to help increase productivity and better manage the workforce and bridged the emotional and the economic realms, intertwining emotions with the realm of economic action in the form of a radically new way of conceiving of the production process. So whether in the realm of production or that of consumption, emotions have been actively mobilized, solicited and shaped by economic forces, thus making modern people simultaneously emotional and economic actors.

The role of popular clinical psychology in shaping modern identity
Illouz argues that psychology is absolutely central to the constitution of modern identity and to modern emotional life: from the 1920s to the 1960s clinical psychologists became an extraordinarily dominant social group as they entered the army, the corporation, the school, the state, social services, the media, child rearing, sexuality, marriage, church pastoral care. In all of these realms, psychology established itself as the ultimate authority in matters of human distress by offering techniques to transform and overcome that distress. Psychologists of all persuasions have provided the main narrative of self-development for the 20th century. The psychological persuasion has transformed what was classified as a moral problem into a disease and may thus be understood as part and parcel of the broader phenomenon of the medicalization of social life. What is common to theme 1 and theme 2 is that both love and psychological health constitute utopias of happiness for the modern self, that both are mediated through consumption and that both constitute horizons to which the modern self aspires. In that sense, one overarching theme of her work can be called

Reviews

[Steffi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like all of us, I loved French-Israeli sociologist Eva Illouz's 2012 book "Why Love Hurts" and her other reflections on romantic love in capitalism (my area of self-proclaimed expertise too) so was very curious about this latest book (October 2024) "Explosive Modernity".

Obviously, this is a very timely read, given that we're living in an age of populism and the crucial role that emotions play in our general political life and the specific role these play for the populisms of the 21st century (Illouz published an English language book on the emotions of populism in 2023 so I assume this is a somewhat recycled German version).

I struggled a little with grasping the overall idea, not sure if it was the book or my lack of focus this week, possibly both.

What I liked overall was that she reconstructed how these emotions (emotions are political, socially constructed) are represented in literature, novels (themselves a product of modernity) mainly so this gave me quite a list of follow-up reads for my ongoing and upcoming beach holidays 🏖️ 📚

So the book looks at how modernity is playing out in our emotional lives and how this opens a window into the 'malaise' of the 21st century.

In particular this is linked to neoliberalism capitalism and consumerism and the dominant sentiment of hope, expectation and inevitable disappointment as well as new forms of envy, resentment and anger within a context of liberal democracy and its (broken) promise of (formal) equality. Then there's also the struggle over patriarchy and heteronormativity and sentiments/ reaction of shame, pride, jealousy and love.

This sounds somewhat disjointed as this is how I've read it. Maybe, in summary the point is as follows: modernity was driven by a sentiment of of hope, to liberate humanity from the chains of tradition and oppression. Now, a few centuries of nightmarish (and increasingly authoritarian) capitalism later, the dominant sentiment is fear, anger and nostalgia to some imagine white privilege island of happiness, before the evils of globalization (migration, terrorism, economic crises, pandemics, climate change etc) and cultural modernity's attack on established gender and sexuality norms. Nothing really ground shifting here but I really wasn't focused enough.

Off to some non-fiction now, there was enough real-life 21st century populism this week 🫣

[Simon Wiebe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fand Illouz Prämisse interessant, anhand von gesellschaftlichen Entwicklungen die Herausbildung von Gefühlen zu untersuchen. Auch der Ansatz mit westlicher bekannter Literatur als Fundgrube von Gefühlen zu arbeiten. Dennoch gibt sie selbst zu, dass diese Literatur teils willkürlich gewählt ist - so liest sich dann auch ihr Buch. Dort mal eine Geschichte, hier mal ein Roman und das wird mit soziologischen, psychologischen oder philosophischen Werken verknüpft. An manchen Stellen sehr erhellend, aber an vielen wirkte es mir zu konstruiert. Manche Kapitel schienen mir auch etwas unfertig. ZB hat mir eine genaue Verhältnisbestimmung zwischen Nostalgie und Heimatlosigkeit gefehlt. Zuerst versucht sie zwischen beiden Begriffen zu unterscheiden, ordnet dann aber im weiteren Verlauf des Kapitels die Heimatlosigkeit der Nostalgie unter.

[Anomalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spannend, auch wenn ich generell Schwierigkeiten mit der Strukturierung bzw. der fehlenden konzeptuellen Eingrenzung habe von Illouz Werken habe. Diese Schwächen werden durch die angenehme Verständlichkeit und die zugleich entspannte, aber trotzdem intensive Analyse ausgeglichen. Empfehlung.

[Maximilian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am going to annoy all my friends by constantly pressuring them to read this book once it’s out in English. This is truly an amazing sociological exploration of key emotions in modern Western societies. While laying out the inherent contradictions of modernity and their consequences on how emotions are experienced - in a scholarly, non-judgmental manner - Illouz offers, en passant, some of the most insightful explanations of many societal ills and problems we face today: widespread anger and fear and their effects on democracy, widespread disappointment with socio-economic structures, the fixation on identity on both the left and the right, why love and romantic relationships are so messed up, and much, much more.

Sure, there must be some criticism of Illouz’s rather peculiar methodology. I understand why people might not be convinced by it. I also agree that some chapters (especially towards the end) feel rushed and not thoroughly thought through. However, I regard this book more as a collection of well-reasoned, essayistic reflections on modernity and the sociology of emotions. When I judge the book by its explanatory power and the intellectual space it creates for further contemplation and reflection, I can’t help but give it five stars. Plus, if you love literature, you might also enjoy her methodology ;)

That doesn’t mean I don’t have some issues with the book. For one, I think Illouz could have been more explicit and „materialistic“ in her analysis of the negative emotional and societal consequences brought about by the decline of the middle class in many Western democracies. Sure, she points out that many of these consequences - societal disappointment, fear, and anger - are already inherent to modernity’s contradictions and are now more prevalent (or seem to be) due to reduced upward mobility. But she could have expanded on this further. I suspect this is because she is more at home in cultural sociology than in economic sociology.
Furthermore, I felt there was too little reflection on how technologies affect our emotions (and societies). She mentions that fear and anger are algorithmically exacerbated, but this point was underdeveloped. Perhaps it’s too big of a topic for this book and deserves its own dedicated work. I had the fortune of hearing her reflect on this at the Stuttgart Future Speech in early February and was absolutely ecstatic while attending (yes, I’m a bit of a fanboy). I really hope her future work will focus on this topic. Here’s a link to a (mediocre at best) report on her speech in German:
https://www.swr.de/swrkultur/leben-un...

One thing that continues to occupy my thoughts is her argument that hope is the constitutive emotion of modernity. I follow that reasoning. In times when it often feels easy to become hopeless, I wonder whether we are living through the end of modernity. But that’s a question for another day and place.

To conclude, I would say that one shouldn’t look for definitive answers or hyper-precise analysis in this book but rather for a deep well of reflections. Again, I believe there is immense explanatory power in Illouz’s arguments, regardless of her methodology.

[Boudewijn Hogeboom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Een heel helder en overtuigend geschreven boek over hoe emoties ons leven en onze samenleving sturen. En hoe problematisch het niet herkennen van je emoties is.

[f · Rating 2 out of 5]

In dem Buch tritt Illouz mit den Anspruch an, mit Rückgriff auf Emotionen die zentralen Probleme der Gegenwart zu erklären. Dafür geht sie assoziativ und mit einem eigenwilligem Bezug zur Empirie vor: Selektiv werden Studien aus ganz unterschiedlichen Zeiten und geografischen Räumen zitiert und immer wieder veranschaulicht sie ihre Einsichten anhand von fiktionaler Literatur. Dass Menschen mit Hilfe von Romanen ihr eigenes und das Gefühlsleben anderer zu navigieren lernen, scheint mir zunächst einmal schlüssig und manche literarischen Interpretationen fand ich interessant. Aber immer wieder werden bei Illouz aus fiktionalen Gefühlen plötzlich Einsichten über das Gefühlsempfinden abgeleitet und damit Literatur zum Abbild von Wirklichkeit. Die These des Buchs, die weniger entwickelt als immer wieder hervorscheint, ist, dass Menschen in der Moderne (insbesondere im Neoliberalismus) von Emotionen zerrissen werden, weil sie entweder selbst ambivalente Wirkungen haben und/oder in konflikthafter Beziehung zu anderen Gefühlen stehen. Das ist ziemlich unhistorisch und oft auch wenig trennscharf. Da wird z.B. aus Zorn plötzlich Wut und dann Beleidigt Sein. Menschen seien - ohne dass dafür Belege angeführt werden, heute so zornig wie nie (wie soll so etwas überhaupt gemessen werden?). Manchmal interessant, aber im Ganzen wenig überzeugend.