Hyperpolitics - by Anton Jäger (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

POLITICS AFTER THE END OF THE END OF HISTORY

What happens when politics is everywhere, yet nothing seems to change? From the abandoned dance floors of Thatcher's London to the mass mobilizations of Black Lives Matter, Anton Jäger traces how pub­lic life has become infused with protest, spectacle, and moral urgency -- while the old infrastructure of parties, unions, and civic solidarity has been hollowed out.

Hyperpolitics revisits the illusions of the "end of history" and dissects the strange energies that replaced them: viral outrage, endless culture wars, and the digital rush of causes that flare and vanish overnight. Jäger shows how the promises of post-Cold War liberalism gave way to a restless, unsteady public sphere where private pas­sions overflow into politics but rarely build enduring power.

Ranging from Guy Debord and Wolfgang Tillmans to Houellebecq's disenchanted fictions, Hyperpolitics makes sense of a world in which collective action remains fragmented and the social fabric thinner than ever. For anyone trying to grasp why our age feels so charged yet so incon­sequential, this book offers a vital map through the new contradictions of our hyperpolitical moment.

Review Quotes

"What Jäger seeks to understand in Hyperpolitics is the way politics appears to have returned with a vengeance, yet at the same time turned on itself as a form of anti-political rage and hopelessness."
--William Davies, London Review of Books

"Jäger shows that our increasingly saturated discourse prevents radical alternatives from taking shape, leaving us trapped in a hyperpolitical limbo: an eternal present characterized by 'extreme politicization without political consequences.'"
--John Livesey, Jacobin

"At a time when the various enthusiasms of the 2010s seem faraway indeed, no matter how low Trump's approval ratings sink, and when Democrats' sheer desire to win seems to blot out any questions of long-term reorientation of state and society, Jäger stands out for the sweep and force of his analysis."
--Daniel Schlozman, The New Republic

"Hyperpolitics is among the best and most dazzling efforts to model the political present in all its maddening strangeness."
--David Wallace-Wells, The New York Times

"Jäger offers an incisive analysis of the contemporary political moment. It's an urgent and clarifying call to log off and show up."
--Publishers Weekly

"A text to return to again and again. Hyperpolitics is wide-ranging but never stretched, always plausible. Jäger is a rare meeting of an exciting thinker and a graceful writer"
--Nesrine Malik, Guardian

"Never have we been aware of so much--corrosive politics, daily catastrophes, celebrity banalities--and known so little. This dizzying and ubiquitous unreality, suggests Anton Jäger, is the era of hyperpolitics."
--Lit Hub, Most Anticipated Books of 2026

"Striking expressions... make this book a compelling read. It challenges readers to engage seriously with a new phenomenon"
--Oliver Weber, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

"A sharp and insightful analysis of contemporary political culture"
--Konstatin Sakkas, NZZ am Sonntag

"Everything strains to be political, yet all activism fizzles out. This book explains why."
--Marc Reichwein, Welt am Sonntag

"Hyperpolitics is a very good book... It's very good because you don't need to have joined a party one wild night in 2016 to know that it's true. It's enough to live in the present."
--Nele Pollatschek, Süddeutsche Zeitung

"Both revelatory and invigorating. Anton Jäger's nimble and careful reconstruction of the recent past helps us to answer two very pressing questions: What happened to our politics, and what happened to our minds?"
--Vincent Bevins, author of If We Burn

"The potential energy of organized gangs of wine moms is implicit in the new book "Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization Without Political Consequences," in which Anton Jäger, a political historian at Oxford, draws a familiar but potent picture of an atomized, reactive, and screen-tethered culture, one lacking the sticky ongoing connections that were facilitated by the union meetings and shop floors and rec halls of yore."
--The New Yorker

About the Author

ANTON JÄGER is a Lecturer in Politics at Oxford and an opinion writer for the New York Times. He is the co-author (with Arthur Borriello) of The Populist Moment and (with Daniel Zamora) Welfare for Markets.