Verlust. Ein Grundproblem der Moderne

In the organizer's words:

Can societies remain modern and at the same time deal productively with losses? Andreas Reckwitz in conversation with Jens Bisky.

Andreas Reckwitz and Jens Bisky

Andreas Reckwitz is doing pioneering work and has published "Verlust. Ein Grundproblem der Moderne" (Suhrkamp 2024), the first comprehensive analysis of the social and cultural structures that shape our relationship to loss. Under the banner of progress, he shows, Western modernity has always been driven by a paradox of loss: it wants to (and can) reduce experiences of loss - and at the same time increase them.

This fragile arrangement has lasted a long time, but in the fragile late modern age it is collapsing. The narrative of progress is losing a great deal of credibility, losses can no longer be made invisible. This leads to one of the existential questions of the 21st century: can societies remain modern and at the same time deal productively with losses? A groundbreaking book presented by Andreas Reckwitz in conversation with Jens Bisky.

Andreas Reckwitz, born in 1970, is Professor of General Sociology and Cultural Sociology at Humboldt University in Berlin. His book The Society of Singularities was awarded the Bavarian Book Prize in 2017 and was shortlisted for the Leipzig Book Fair Non-Fiction Prize in 2018. In 2019, he was awarded the Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation.

Jens Bisky, born in 1966, was a long-standing features editor at the Süddeutsche Zeitung and has been working as managing editor of Mittelweg 36 at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research since 2021. He is the author of several books, including Kleist. A Biography (2007) and Berlin. Biography of a Metropolis (2019). In 2017, the German Academy for Language and Poetry awarded him the Johann Heinrich Merck Prize for Literary Criticism and Essay.

Price information:

Admission: 8 €, reduced: 5 €, members: 3 €