Extremity in Society and Culture – serie

The Ethics of Extremity critically examines how we can understand, interact with, and intervene in a world where what was once considered extreme has become normalized as part of everyday life.Contributors invite us to re-examine our explicit and implicit expectations that ethics would curtail extremity - and how those assumptions have frequently failed. This opens up a central question: what is the relationship between ethics and extremity today? Rather than offering fixed solutions to this question, the chapters invite readers to rethink how ethics might respond to a world in which extremity is embedded in everyday experience. Through contributions from scholars, artists, and activists, the volume explores how extremity manifests in areas such as public health, digital media, gender violence, combat sports, and ecological collapse. Drawing on diverse methods and contexts, the book unfolds across five thematic interventions proposed by the authors for grappling with extremity today: engaging in uncomfortable forms of closeness; seeing and feeling extremity anew; reclaiming truth in a post-truth era; rethinking illegality and marginality; and using extremity as a teaching tool. Together, these offer entry points for reimagining what ethical life might look like under conditions of persistent crisis.

Extremity and the Future: Reflections on Survival, Imagination, and Ambiguous Times brings together psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, educators, artists, and activists to explore how we make sense of extremity in an era of broken futures and uncertain survival. From the eerie calm of nuclear bunkers to the disquieting humor of apocalyptic marketing, this collection investigates how play, pedagogy, and imagination serve as tools for navigating collapse, cultural anxiety, and existential threat. At its core is the concept of playful foreboding—a critical strategy that blends seriousness and levity to face the unthinkable without denying its weight. Through essays, photo essays, and interdisciplinary inquiry, contributors from around the globe examine how extremity is lived, denied, aestheticized, and reimagined in daily life. With insight and urgency, this volume offers a new lens for understanding the complex relationship between extremity and the future.