Anxiety and Lucidity: Reflections on Culture in Times of Unrest 9780429561306, 042956130X

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Angor animi.
Or, on the culture of anxiety
2 Identity as a nuisance.
Two genealogies of modern hamartia
3 A gladioli postcard.
Memory and communication
4 The memories of childhood in
a spectral world
5 Post-communism
and culture wars
6 The anxiety of intimacy. Or, on telling the truth in the
age of the Internet
7 The anxiety of politics
8 The magical power of art. The subject, the public sphere,
and emancipation
9 Anxieties of community
10 "Please, don't be angry, happiness, that I take you as my due. "Happiness in the age of
democratization
11 "Mortal generations". On two phenomenologies
of ageing - Cicero and Amery
12 The anxiety of clairvoyance. Terminal lucidity and the
end of culture
Index

Citation preview

"Anxiety may well be a hard-wired feature of the human condition, but there are certain periods that can be justly called, with a nod to W.H. Au den, a heightened 'age of anxiety.' ln this remarkable book, the distinguished Polish cultural and social theorist Leszek Koczanowicz draws on both his personal experiences and wide-ranging erudition to examine our own highly fraught era with a lucidity that, let us hope, won't turn out to be terminal." - Martin Jay, U. of California, Berkeley "A deeply inspiring collection of culturally-rooted essays which , besides offering the pleasure of reading, produce an impression of patiently pushing the limits of darkness and mustering courage to face up to the unobvious." - Olga Tokarczuk, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2018, and Winner of the Man Booker International Prize in 2018 "That our modem society is one of risk and endemic anxiety has become evident in recent years, as we strain our minds to fathom a social order which appears to be both fixed and fragile, governed by immutable power structures yet liable to be instantly undone by virus disease, migration, climate change, terrorism or unknown hostile forces. With Leszek Koczanowicz's brilliant book we finally have a diagnosis to match and understand these constitutive cultural contradictions. In a suite of compelling chapters that boldly traverse history, psychology, sociology and philosophy, Koczanowicz charts a labyrinth of modernity, which the quixotic Western subject has tried to intensively penetrate and desperately escape." - Stefan Jonsson, author ofA Brief History of the Masses, Crowds and Democracy and Eurafrica

Anxiety and Lucidity

This book explores the nature of modern culture as a culture of anxiety, analyzing the modes in which such anxiety presents itself. Drawing on sociological and philosophical concepts of modernity, the author builds on the work of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud to offer an understanding of modern anxiety culture as the reverse side of risk culture, which stabilizes itself by concealing or making familiar the social phenomena of risk society. Through explorations of memory, politics, art, clairvoyance, notions of national community, and identity, this volume sheds light on the fissures in our culture where anxiety appears, thus revealing its underlying volatility. A study of the ruptures in our modern culture, Anxiety and Lucidity will appeal to scholars of sociology, social theory, anthropology, and philosophy with interests in late modern culture. Leszek Koczanowicz is Professor of Philosophy and Political Science at the Faculty of Psychology, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Poland. He is the author of Politics ofDialogue: Non-Consensual Democracy and Critical Community and Politics of Time: Dynamics ofidentity in Post-Communist Poland and the co-editor of Democracy, Dialogue, Memory: Express ion and Affect Beyond Consensus and Democracy in Dialogue, Dialogue in Democracy: The Politics of Dialogue in Theory and Practice.

Classical and Contemporary Social Theory Series Editor Stjepan G. Mestrovic Texas A&M University, USA

Classical and Contemporary Social Theory publishes rigorous scholarly work that re-discovers the relevance of social theory for contemporary times, demonstrating the enduring importance of theory for modern social issues. The series covers social theory in a broad sense, inviting contributions on both ' classical' and modern theory, thus encompassing sociology, without being confined to a single discipline. As such, work from across the social sciences is welcome, provided that volumes address the social context of particular issues, subjects, or figures and offer new understandings of social reality and the contribution of a theorist or school to our understanding of it. The series considers significant new appraisals of established thinkers or schools, comparative works or contributions that discuss a particular social issue or phenomenon in relation to the work of specific theorists or theoretical approaches. Contributions are welcome that assess broad strands of thought within certain schools or across the work of a number of thinkers, but always with an eye toward contributing to contemporary understandjngs of social issues and contexts.

Titles in this series: The Appeal of Art in Modernity Michael Symonds Politics and Recognition Towards a New Political Aesthetics Adam Chmielewski The Ultimate Sacrifice Martyrdom , Sovereignty, and Secularization in the West Clayton Fordahl Anxiety and Lucidity Reflections on Culture in Times ofUnrest Leszek Koczanowicz For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/ sociology/series/ASHSER13 83

Anxiety and Lucidity Reflections on Culture in Times ofUnrest

Leszek Koczanowicz

~l Routledge ~~

Taylor & Francis Group

.ON DON AND NEW YORK

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OXI4 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2020 Leszek Koczanowicz The right of Leszek Koczanowicz to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part oflhis book may be reprinted or reproduced or uti Iised in any fom1 or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any infom1ation storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used on ly for identifi cation and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for tl1is book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN : 978-0-367-21823-2 (hbk) ISBN : 978-0-429-26633-l (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex Co Vantage, LLC

NATIONAL PROGRAMME FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF HUMANITIES

Contents

Acknowledgments

IX

Introduction 1 Angor animi: or, on the culture of anxiety

3

2 Identity as a nuisance: two genealogies of modern hamartia

16

3 A gladioli postcard: memory and communication

31

4 The memories of childhood in a spectral world

37

5 Post-communism and culture wars

57

6 The anxiety of intimacy: or, on telling the truth in the age of the Internet

69

7 The anxiety of politics

81

8 The magical power of art: the subject, the public sphere, and emancipation 9 Anxieties of community

96

110

10 "Please, don't be angry, happiness, that I take you as my due": happiness in the age of democratization

120

viii

Contents

11 "Mortal generations": on two phenomenologies of ageing - Cicero and Amery

130

12 The anxiety of clairvoyance: tenninallucidity and the end of culture

143

Index

179

Acknowledgments

This book has grown out of my research project which I conducted from 2016 to 2019 under the National Program for the Development of the Humanities, funded by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education (No 2bH 15 0151 83). Two chapters of this volume have already appeared in English in the Polish journal Teksty Drugie, specifically: "Post-Communism and Cultural Wars," translated by Jan Szel