Age of Anger (Mishra) - Discussion Questions

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, please use our LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for Age of Anger...then take off on your own:

m. Discuss the overall premise of Pankaj Mishra's book, Age of Anger. To what does he attribute the current divisiveness in our political and social arenas—what does he see as the psychic and emotional forces propelling nationalism?

m. Talk about the history Mishra traces—to where and in what historical figure he finds the roots of our current age of anger. Where else in history does he point to as similarly divisive?

m. What refers to ISIS "a broader and more apocalyptic mood that we have witnessed before." What else does Mishra have to say about ISIS?

m. The book was written before Brexit and before the election of Donald Trump. In what way, if at all, might that timing lend credibility to this work?

m. Mishra argues that the West is self-righteous in that it obscures its "own bloody extraordinarily brutal initiation into political and economic modernity" while, at the same time, it urges the rest of the world to undertake the same progression. What does he mean?

m. Consider Jean Jacques Rousseau and the ideas he championed? What does Mishra think of him? What do you think of him? How does Rousseau—and Mishra—view Voltaire? According to our author, what was Voltaire's influence on the development of Western thought?

m. The author finds few, if any, redeeming qualities in liberal democracy? Overall, do you agree with his anger about the economics and politics of the "Western model"?  Does he offer a replacement?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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