Katariina Kottonen’s Reviews > Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization without Political Consequences > Status Update

‘…The state draws countless matters, questions and decisions into the realm of politics that have no place there. Private matters and specialist questions that ultimately have nothing to do with the state.’ (2/2)

György Konrád, as cited in Jäger:

'In Eastern Europe, we are not primarily concerned with the question of whether politics is good or bad, but with the fact that we are surrounded everywhere by too much, all too much politics...’ (1/2)

‘The right has historically been content to defend existing property relations. Apathy and resignation are its greatest assets, not militancy. It thus remains unclear whether social capital is actually growing on the right or whether it is simply eroding more slowly.’

‘Instead, they suggest that we may be witnessing a process of asymmetric reinstitutionalization and civic renaissance, at least on the right — seen from this angle, hyperpolitics itself may soon be history.’ (2/2)

'Such findings [between intact associational and community life and support of the politics of the right] present a challenge to a thesis arguing that the hyperpolitical era is characterized by repoliticization in an institutional void.‘ (1/2)

‘We find ourselves in a world unkind to nostalgists and futurists alike.’

So far, the book has been a pleasure to read simply in terms of its beat, scope of references, the ease of inferring from prominent works in several languages, the observational and analytical (as opposed to conclusion-led) nature of the text.

‘Instant analysis is always perilous. Like a high-speed camera, histories of the present risk falling prey to the fluidity and indeterminacy of the situation they seek to capture, wedged between impressionistic detail and grand abstraction. It is all the more difficult when the present itself has become so diffuse.’

It is retrospectively heart-warming to learn that there has been some attempt at Remain propaganda, that the argument contra was not treated entirely as self-evident. Yet, those slogans, when approached from a nationalist, local, divorced perspective, could only convincу such reader to maintain a pro-Brexit position. (2/2)

"Tillmans even became involved in mainstream politics, designing a series of posters in 2016 for the campaign to safeguard the United Kingdom's membership in the European Union. 'No man is an island. No country by itself.' 'What is lost is lost forever.' 'It's a question of where you feel you belong. We are the European family.'" (1/2)