Guest-edited by Devorah Baum and Josh Appignanesi

We're living through hysterical times. Rage, resentment, shame, guilt and paranoia are everywhere surfacing, as is the intemperate adoration or hatred of popular but divisive public figures. Political discourse suffers when people seem to trust only what they feel and can no longer be swayed by reason or facts.

If extreme feelings are a contagion within the political cultures of today, so too is the spread of a kind of affectlessness, as if we're starting to resemble the very technologies that threaten to replace us.

Featuring vital new fiction, non-fiction, photography and poetry from across the globe, this issue is all about how our feelings make our politics, and how our politics make us feel.


Adam Phillips, in conversation, analyses politics in the consulting room
David Baddiel probes the outrage of life online
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor witnesses devastation
Anouchka Grose on becoming a social justice warrior
Peter Pomerantsev unearths his data profile to conduct sentiment analysis
Poppy Sebag-Montefiore on China's public sense of touch
Fabián Martínez Siccardi on growing up in Patagonia
Margie Orford explores shame in South Africa
Josh Cohen inspects his own apathy
Hisham Matar reflects on Joseph Conrad and Edward Said
Hanif Kureishi on Keith Johnstone and Keith Jarrett
William Davies on affective politics
Chloe Aridjis revisits the wild nights of her teenage years in Mexico City

PLUS
FICTION: Benjamin Markovits, Olga Tokarczuk and Joff Winterhart
POETRY: Alissa Quart and Nick Laird
PHOTOGRAPHY: Diana Matar, introduced by Max Houghton

Devorah Baum is associate professor in English literature at the University of Southampton. She is the author of Feeling Jewish (A Book for Just About Anyone) and The Jewish Joke, and co-director of the documentary feature film The New Man.

Josh Appignanesi is a film-maker whose directing credits include the feature films Female Human Animal, The Infidel, The New Man and Song Of Songs. He is a lecturer in Film at Roehampton University, and teaches at the London Film School and other institutions.