Anxiety, Modern Society, and the Critical Method

Anxiety, Modern Society, and the Critical Method interrogates the historical intersections of political economy, technology, and anxiety. By analyzing and building upon the tools developed by critical theorists to diagnose the symptoms of modern life—such as alienation, anomie, the Protestant ethic, and repression—Joel Michael Crombez convincingly argues for a revitalization of critical social science to better confront the anxiety of life in modern societies. While anxiety typically falls under the purview of psychology and its biomedical approach to treatment, here anxiety is situated within the totalizing logics of modern society. As such, Crombez provides a compelling, interdisciplinary roadmap to diagnose and treat anxiety—which he calls critical socioanalysis—that accounts for the psychosocial complexity of its production.