Mundaneum - The Transformed World

Die Veränderte Welt 1918-1932 (The Transformed World, 1918-1932) is the title of a book authored by Ernst Jünger in collaboration with photographer Edmund Schultz to chronicle the shocking transformations that were transfiguring the political, social and anthropological reality of their time. In the East as in the West, the world seemed pervaded by uncontrollable energies and a dizzying concatenation of effects on local and global scales. The political mobilization of the masses, the crisis of Western democracies, and the genesis of imperial formations far larger than those envisioned by the traditional state order were drastically changing the global geography. One hundred years later, the impression is that we are going through a similar historical experience. Today's armed conflicts, the genesis of unprecedented spatial-political relations and the rise of various populisms, raise disturbing new questions: is the global world doomed to demise? Is American dominance, challenged by the new powers of Russia and China, itself on the verge of ending? What is the significance of populist movements, understood as an expression of the psychology of the contemporary masses? Can we really give up, in the name of a multipolar world, the Enlightenment, universalist assumptions of politics? By discussing these questions, the conference, on Saturday, April 6, at Monte Verità, will propose a set of conceptual maps with which to address the disorientation caused by the current transformations.

CATEGORIES

• Literature