Will the 20th century be heroic? In the face of the crises and dangers that lie ahead, is a new heroism required? What will these new heroes look like? Are they the problem or the solution?

In The New Heroism, you will find the DNA of success behaviours in our liberal, democratic and media societies, as well as keys to understanding how imaginaries become dominant in our everyday ways of being. Based on a compilation of several hundred personal development manuals, films, press portraits, advertisements, etc., the book highlights the contradictory injunctions of the current world. In addition to providing a better understanding of our hypermodernity, this book offers a new perspective on contemporary individualism, the entrepreneurship of the self on networks, the challenges of ecology and politics, but also on the influx of controversy in the public arena, the future of work and the responsibility of governance.

Olivier Fournout is a senior lecturer at Telecom Paris, Department of Economic and Social Sciences, and a researcher at i3. He works at the intersection of culture and society. He is interested in the world of work, human relations, the ecological perspective (which includes relations), and what popular cultures can say and show about it.