CAPPE Conference | Politics of Fear; Fear of Politics

Politics of Fear; Fear of Politics

We live in a world that is dominated by fear. We are increasingly afraid to walk in our city streets, populated as they are by feral youths, drug-dealers and surveillance cameras. The threat of global warming and climate change is ever-present, and accompanied by the even greater fear that we’ll be too late to do anything about it. Then of course there’s terror: frightened of a Taliban invasion, apparently, we are still fighting in Afghanistan after eight years and pursuing a worldwide “war on terror”. And if that’s not enough, we are becoming ever more afraid of alcohol, of food, of being too fat, of being too thin; and afraid even of sex. In this climate of fear, it is not surprising that we should also have become terrified of politics, in case we suddenly have to think about an idea, let alone act on it. Our politicians appear as afraid of politics as we are: which is one reason they’re privatising everything in sight, so as to evade responsibility for it. As for ideas, they really are terrifying, and our young people have to be protected from them at all costs. In short, the “anti-ideological” determination to take the politics out of politics is closely related to the social, cultural and intellectual dominance of fear as the leitmotif of our everyday lives.

 

This avowedly interdisciplinary conference sought to do two things: to describe and analyse what might be termed the contemporary spheres and roles of fear as it is played out both in social, cultural and intellectual life and in day to day life; and to offer ways of escaping those fears.