Modern society is based on positive expectations towards the future, above all within the framework of an imperative of progress. Losses disappoint this narrative of progress, though: losses of status, of meaning, of control, or of the belief in the future itself. The result is a paradoxical constellation of losses which is typical of modernity: This society wants to reduce losses and increase them at the same time. It systematically seeks to make experiences of losses invisible and at the same time develops certain forms of ’doing loss‘ like nostalgia and risk calculation. Not least in connection with climate change, but also with a general more catastrophic outlook on societal development, in late-modern society, the problem of losses gains extraordinary prominence. The aim of the presentation is to develop an outline of the sociology of loss.

Paul Kottman, Professor of Comparative Literature and chair of Liberal Studies at The New School for Social Research, will introduce Prof. Reckwitz and moderate a discussion.

Andreas Reckwitz was born in Witten in 1970. He studied sociology, political science, and philosophy at the universities of Bonn, Hamburg, and Cambridge. After professorships at the University of Konstanz and the European University Viadrina, he is a Professor of General Sociology and Cultural Sociology at the Humboldt University Berlin. He has held numerous fellowships and visiting professorships in Germany and abroad, including at the University of Berkeley, the London School of Economics, the Universities of Freiburg, Heidelberg, Witten/ Herdecke, and Bielefeld, the Institute for Advanced Studies Vienna, and the University of St. Gallen. He currently holds a fellowship at the Thomas Mann House.

Paul Kottman is a Professor of Comparative Literature and chair of Liberal Studies at The New School for Social Research. He is the author of Love as Human Freedom (Stanford University Press, 2017); Tragic Conditions in Shakespeare (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009); A Politics of the Scene (Stanford University Press, 2008). He is also the editor of The Art of Hegel’s Aesthetics: Hegelian Philosophy and the Perspectives of Art History (Fink, 2017); The Insistence of Art: Aesthetic Philosophy After Early Modernity (Fordham, 2017); and Philosophers on Shakespeare (Stanford University Press, 2009). Paul edits the book series, Square One: First-Order Questions in the Humanities (Stanford University Press).

Presented in cooperation with the DFG German Research Foundation, 1014: Space for Ideas and Thomas Mann House.

Time: 6:30 PM EDT

Free!

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