NEW BOOK

Crisis Cultures:
Narratives of Western Modernity in the Digital Age

In Crisis Cultures: Narratives of Western Modernity in the Digital Age, I argue that crisis should be understood not as a series of isolated events, but as a constitutive state intrinsic to modern Western societies. I explores how this perpetual state of crisis intensifies underlying societal tensions and reshapes cultural and political dynamics. Drawing on a diverse range of case studies, including the Capitol Hill riots in the United States, and analyses from countries such as Spain and Greece, I explore how both digital and traditional media perpetuate crisis narratives that significantly influence contemporary cultural identities and shape political discourses. My analysis also engages with the emotional and temporal aspects of crises, particularly focusing on how digital environments, through their ambient influence, shape and sustain these states of crisis. By reinterpreting the concept of crisis through an interdisciplinary lens that includes historical, political and cultural analysis, I offer a compelling analysis of its role in shaping the present and future contours of Western societies.

Review

"We are immersed in crisis cultures. But not only.’ Manganas’s cartography of crisis cultures, as defined by a lack of meaningful events leading to the intensification of underlying tensions, represents a groundbreaking intervention in contemporary critical thought. A first-person, timely, experiential journey into the multilayered, complex temporality of the crises enveloping us."

— Alfredo Martínez-Expósito, University of Melbourne

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We are living in a crisis culture. Living in a crisis culture refers to that uncanny feeling that something fundamental about the world has changed. We might not be sure what that change is, when it occurred, nor whether it is permanent. Deep down, though, we know that it is happening. Living in a crisis culture is living in an endless and uncertain present. A key characteristic of these crisis cultures is their ability to disrupt the usual flow of time, unsettling our understanding of past, present and future. Although it is possible to refer to a crisis culture in the singular, it is more precise to refer to crisis cultures in the plural. We are immersed in crisis cultures. In this book I reflect on the processes whereby crisis as an epistemological category comes to be seen as characteristic of our historical moment. Rather than ask what is a crisis I am more interested in asking what do crises do? What does it mean to call something a “crisis” or to claim that we are living in a crisis? What happens when crisis is everywhere and we begin to experience crisis not as an event but an ongoing process, without a beginning or an end?