Have you ever noticed that our mode of interaction with the world is changing rapidly and fundamentally?
It is changing in ways we hardly notice. Whether it is about cooking, driving a car, playing with Lego bricks, writing or grading an exam paper, casting a political decision, refereeing a football match, or watching the stars: Up to very recently, being a human agent meant finding oneself in a situation which requires discretion, judgment, a good eye and various forms of sensitivity based on experience.
In our contemporary world, more and more of these activities no longer call for action of this sort, but require the mere execution of rules, algorithms, forms or instruction based on sophisticated technology. In this way, we are no longer agents placed within situations which trigger our emotions and thus call for action. Instead, we find ourselves placed vis a vis precisely defined constellations which require the execution of rules or instructions while making emotions irrelevant or even dysfunctional. Hence, the ‘organic’ link between action and emotion is severed. Most of our actions are no longer expressive of who we are: We stand opposed to the world and to our own activities instead of being embedded in them. This has most serious consequences for the way we live and feel about the world.
The lecture seeks to explore how this shift in the mode of action might explain the rise of burnout and feelings of utter loneliness, but also the rise of political rage and right-wing populism. It will also investigate the driving motors of the shift and explore ways of counterbalancing it.
17:00 - 17:45 | Hartmut Rosa: 'The Atrophy of Discretion? A Plea for Subversion' (AIAS Lecture theatre) |
17:45 - 18:15 | Panel discussion with Hartmut Rosa and Lene Holm Pedersen, Professor, University of Copenhagen & Magtudredningen 2.0 and Henrik Reintoft Christensen, Associate Professor, School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University & Afmagt.dk. Moderator: Andreas Roepstorff, director of AIAS. |
18:15 - 19:00 | Networking and refreshments (AIAS Hall). |
Hartmut Rosa is Professor of Sociology and Social Theory at Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena, Germany, and Director of the Max-Weber-Kolleg at the University of Erfurt. He has been an Affiliated Professor at the Department of Sociology, New School for Social Research, New York, 2001-2006. In 1997, he received his PhD in Political Science from Humboldt-University in Berlin. After that, he held teaching positions at the universities of Mannheim, Jena, Augsburg and Essen.
His publications focus on Social Acceleration, Resonance and the Temporal Structures of Modernity and have been translated in more than 25 languages.
In 2023, Hartmut Rosa was confered an Honorary Doctorate at Aarhus University and appointed an AIAS Honorary Doctorate Fellow. In the spring of 2026, Hartmut Rosa will be a Visiting Fellow at AIAS.
The event is open to all interested and free of charge by prior registration. Register here.
This fourth Science & the Flavour of Aarhus talk is organised by Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (AIAS) in collaboration with the project Magtudredningen 2.0, the Danish Power Inquiry initiated by the Danish Parliament, and the research project Afmagt.dk, supported by the Villum Foundation.
