The Ethics of Extremity: On Hearing, Seeing, and Feeling Each Other

The Ethics of Extremity critically examines how we can understand, interact with, and intervene in a world where what was once considered extreme has become normalized as part of everyday life.
Contributors invite us to re-examine our explicit and implicit expectations that ethics would curtail extremity-and how those assumptions have frequently failed. This opens up a central question: what is the relationship between ethics and extremity today? Rather than offering fixed solutions to this question, the chapters invite readers to rethink how ethics might respond to a world in which extremity is embedded in everyday experience. Through contributions from scholars, artists, and activists, the volume explores how extremity manifests in areas such as public health, digital media, gender violence, combat sports, and ecological collapse. Drawing on diverse methods and contexts, the book unfolds across five thematic interventions proposed by the authors for grappling with extremity today: engaging in uncomfortable forms of closeness; seeing and feeling extremity anew; reclaiming truth in a post-truth era; rethinking illegality and marginality; and using extremity as a teaching tool. Together, these offer entry points for reimagining what ethical life might look like under conditions of persistent crisis.

Nelson Varas-Díaz is professor of global and sociocultural studies at Florida International University.
Vivek Venkatesh is dean of the Faculty of Education and a James McGill professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University.