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Robert Misik in conversation with Andreas Reckwitz LOSS A fundamental problem of modernity "Can the claim of progress of western modernity still be maintained when the experiences and expectations of loss become as powerful as we are currently experiencing?" Experiences of loss, but also just the feeling of impending loss, the feeling that everything is on shaky ground and the future is clouded - this has become an almost dominant feeling of our time and is partly responsible for irritation, populism and other political and social pathologies of our day. Andreas Reckwitz, the much-celebrated sociologist and diagnostician of our time, has now written the book of the season on loss, the "fundamental problem of modernity". Losses are plaguing contemporary western societies in great numbers and variety. They are driving people onto the streets, into therapists' offices and into the arms of populists. Under the banner of progress, Reckwitz explains, Western modernity has always been driven by a paradox of loss: it wants (and can) reduce experiences of loss - and at the same time it increases them. This fragile arrangement has lasted for a long time, but the narrative of progress is losing a lot of credibility. The existential question of the 21st century is: can societies remain modern and at the same time deal productively with loss? A groundbreaking book. Andreas Reckwitz, born in 1970, is Professor of General Sociology and Cultural Sociology at the Humboldt University of Berlin and was a Fellow at the Thomas Mann House in Los Angeles. His book "The Society of Singularities" was awarded the Bavarian Book Prize in 2017 and was shortlisted for the Leipzig Book Fair's Non-Fiction Prize in 2018. In 2019 he received the Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation. Moderation: Robert Misik, author and journalist Andreas Reckwitz: Loss - A fundamental problem of modernity Suhrkamp Insel, October 2024, ISBN 978-3-518-58822-2; € 32,-also available as an ebook! Recorded at the Kreisky Forum on December 9, 2024 Technical production: Milan Loewy