What advice would you have liked to have received when you were 16, Şeyda Kurt?
Born April 1992 in Cologne Profession Author and journalist Education Philosophy and Romance studies in Cologne and Bordeaux Status Emotional
Şeyda Kurt speaks about feelings as if they were tools—not soft, but effective. Her books deal with tenderness and hatred, with power and morality, with left-wing ideals and their cracks. Anyone who listens to her quickly realizes that this is someone who thinks out loud, but never carelessly. She is open to contradictions, including her own. Şeyda Kurt grew up in a family with Kurdish-Turkish roots; she became involved in migrant self-organizations and political associations from an early age. With her 2021 bestseller, Radical Tenderness, she became the voice of a new, political critique of emotions. Her analysis is decolonial, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist. Feelings are political, she believes. She understands anger, grief, and hatred as forms of resistance. "Emotions mobilize because they connect with people in their discomfort, as well as in their desire." Her second book, simply titled "Hate ," is both an analysis and a polemic: against neoliberal promises of harmony, for a left capable of conflict. She understands hate not just as an outburst, but as a political force. "We hate. And we have the right to do so," says Kurt. She believes "that one can deal with political emotions strategically—that one can draw strength from hate, just as one can from love."
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