The Affective Politics of Fear – Sara Ahmed

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Ahmed Sara write the quotes of Fanon that basically tell the story about some white child who saw a “Negro” and feels afraid of him, cause he automatically related to a black man,as “negro” get closer the child get more and more afraid of him, so we can conclude that fear works through and on the bodies of those who are transformed into its subjects and fear doesn’t simply come from within and then move outwards towards objects and others (ex: the white child who feels afraid of the black man), rather, fear works to secure the relationship between those bodies.

Another idea is if an object cause fear to another person, he will suffer as well. That fear re-establishes distance between bodies whose difference is read of the surface. Involves relationships of proximity, which are crucial to establishing the “apartness” of white bodies.

Fear, as well, doesn’t reside positively in an object or sign. It is lack of residence that allows fear to slide across signs and between the bodies.

 

FEAR AND ANXIETY

Rachman argues that anxiety can be described as the ‘tense anticipation of a threatening but vague event’, or a feeling of ‘uneasy suspense’, while fear is described as an emotional reaction ‘to a threat.

Fear’s relation to the object has an important temporal dimension: we fear an object that approaches us. Fear, like pain, is felt as an unpleasant form of intensity. So, when the child felt afraid of the black guy, he starts to run to his mother to go back to safety.

When Heidegger discusses anxiety, he emphasizes how it comes from nowhere: ‘Accordingly, when something threatening brings itself close, anxiety does not “see” any definite “here” or “yonder” from which it comes.

When we compare anxiety to fear we can tell that is an anticipation of a threat, so we can fell fear when the object approach us, fear involves an anticipation of hurt or injury andprojects us from the present into a future.

 

BODIES THAT FEAR

Fear is felt differently by different bodies, so there are people more afraid than others, and normally, we assume, this peopleare the most vulnerable, however they are not correlated.(Fear of crime)

Talking about vulnerability, Elizabeth Stanko argues, women’s must always be on guard when they leave the house, cause it’s dangerous, so they just stay at home, as domestication, or appear in public carefully.

 

GLOBAL ECONOMIES OF FEAR

Within political theory, fear has been understood as crucial to the forming of collectives, Machiavelli say “One ought to be both feared and loved, but as it is difficult for the two to go together, it is much safer to be feared than loved”. Fear makes the subjects of the prince consent to his power as the possibility of dissent is linked to pain and torture.

Fear has been theorized not just as a technology, but also as a symptom of modern life. It has even been used to describe ‘the age in which we live’. In “culture of life” Furedidescribes the modern age as inflating dangers and risks not just to individual, but to life itself. And In “age of anxiety” Dunant and Porter suggests that for the people of Western world the evolution of technology through communication to shopping has brought a lot of opportunity to choose things (could present anxiety), but also an expanding potential for feeling out of control.