Fear Disarmed

Abstract

AbstractFear is seen to be one of the defining political emotions of late modernity. Sociologists, artists, philosophers, activists, and pundits see fear everywhere. If fear has become a way of life, the contemporary city is seen to be one of its most prominent and productive social laboratories. However, while the growing fear scholarship argues that is such a politically significant emotion, the way it is studied often both naturalizes and exteriorizes fear from politics. As a result, fear’s antagonistic status as both a social relation and an arena of political action is submerged. In this article I raise the productive role of social protest and propose a different approach to thinking about, and acting in, the city of fear.