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The Economy of Fear

The Economy of Fear THE ECONOMY OF FEAR1 GREGORY FLAXMAN AND BEN ROGERSON In the symptomatology of contemporary societies, we would have to say that fear ranks among the least understood of emotions--as well as the most in need of critique. The emergence of twenty-four hour news cycles, travel advisories, and terror threat levels, which claim to reflect the ever-changing landscape of risk, have produced and perpetuated a culture of fear whose full extent we have only begun to envision. Beyond any phenomenology, we require a critique of the history of values and ideas, of technology and politics, within which fear is now aggressively (over)determined and distributed. Today, Lars Svendsen writes, we are experiencing "the colonization of our life-world by fear" (7), and it's in this sense that his recent A Philosophy of Fear raises the hope that this critique has been undertaken in earnest. Drawing on his earlier book, A Philosophy of Boredom (2005), Svendsen argues that fear has become broadly characteristic of Western European and North American societies; but for all that, he suggests, its logic remains obscure. Inasmuch as "we are living more securely than ever before in human history," the tendency--or even desire--to "consider all phenomena from a http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png symploke University of Nebraska Press

The Economy of Fear

Flaxman, Gregory.
symploke , Volume 18 (1) – May 18, 2011
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University of Nebraska Press
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Copyright © University of Nebraska Press
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1534-0627
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Abstract

THE ECONOMY OF FEAR1 GREGORY FLAXMAN AND BEN ROGERSON In the symptomatology of contemporary societies, we would have to say that fear ranks among the least understood of emotions--as well as the most in need of critique. The emergence of twenty-four hour news cycles, travel advisories, and terror threat levels, which claim to reflect the ever-changing landscape of risk, have produced and perpetuated a culture of fear whose full extent we have only begun to envision. Beyond any phenomenology, we require a critique of the history of values and ideas, of technology and politics, within which fear is now aggressively (over)determined and distributed. Today, Lars Svendsen writes, we are experiencing "the colonization of our life-world by fear" (7), and it's in this sense that his recent A Philosophy of Fear raises the hope that this critique has been undertaken in earnest. Drawing on his earlier book, A Philosophy of Boredom (2005), Svendsen argues that fear has become broadly characteristic of Western European and North American societies; but for all that, he suggests, its logic remains obscure. Inasmuch as "we are living more securely than ever before in human history," the tendency--or even desire--to "consider all phenomena from a

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symploke – University of Nebraska Press

Published: May 18, 2011

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