The Politics of Everyday Fear

1993

Brian Massumi, editor

The contemporary consumer is bombarded with fear-inducing images and information. This media shower of imagery is equaled only by the sheer quantity of fear-assuaging products offered for our consumption. The contributors address questions raised by the saturation of social space by capitalized fear.

The contemporary consumer is bombarded with fear-inducing images and information. This media shower of imagery is equaled only by the sheer quantity of fear-assuaging products offered for our consumption. The contributors address questions raised by the saturation of social space by capitalized fear.

An unusual and timely collection. Appropriate for teaching in philosophy, critical theory, cultural criticism, political theory, feminist theory, and media studies.

Avery Gordon

The contemporary consumer is bombarded with fear-inducing images and information. This media shower of imagery is equaled only by the sheer quantity of fear-assuaging products offered for our consumption. The contributors address questions raised by the saturation of social space by capitalized fear.

Brain Massumi is associate professor in the comparative literature program at McGill University. He is the author and translator of numerous books and has written many essays on contemporary discourses.

"Capitalized fear": This ominous term, like many coined by academics, seems at once perfectly succinct and impossible to understand. In a new anthology, The Politics of Everyday Fear, it refers to the mass production and consumption of fear in a capitalist society. A publisher’s note says that 'the aim of the contributors'—Charles Manson is one—'is as much to enact fear as to analyze it.'

New York Times

This is a fascinating and timely collection which examines a long-acknowledged staple of contemporary life: the production of fear within the consumption logic of late capitalism. While not buying into the credo that we have nothing to fear except fear itself, Massumi’s significant collection raises the stakes in the analysis of the politics of fear.

The Censoring Mind

An unusual and timely collection. Appropriate for teaching in philosophy, critical theory, cultural criticism, political theory, feminist theory, and media studies.

Avery Gordon