The Province of Europe: Hyperpoliticization and Its Consequences

It is among the era’s most widely debated books: "Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization without Political Consequences" (London: Verso Books, 2026) by Oxford historian and political theorist ANTON JÄGER. This slim monograph tracks a mutation in the political culture of the West, detonated by the 2008 crash and accelerated by a newly digital public sphere. Its mixture of high politicization and low institutionalization has not only addled recent protest movements, it has also had unpredictable consequences for elites, particularly in Europe, as evidenced by the international tumult of the past years. “The end of the end of history” has caught Europe unguarded, reduced to a geopolitical supplicant: a province belonging to the past. Internally, the European Union’s rightward shift has continued unabated, with shocks to party systems from Germany to Italy, while the lines between Europe’s outsiders and insiders are being drawn ever more starkly. At the Vienna Humanities Festival, Anton Jäger will give a keynote lecture laying out his diagnosis, before being joined by IVAN KRASTEV, one of Europe’s most incisive observers of contemporary politics, for a conversation that puts his theory to the test. Together, Jäger and Krastev come together to discuss where Europe is heading and how it might self-identify in the coming decades, confronted with the rise of Asia and the gradual fracture of a previously unitary “West.”