The latest refrain in the ongoing theater of terror involves an attack on the U.S embassy in Libya, an attack that was waged hours after a fervent protest of the film, "Innocence of Muslims" at the U.S. embassy in Egypt. The aftermath of the destruction ignited by rocket propelled grenades included the death of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens along with three other Americans. Libyan and Egyptian Muslims are not isolated in their ire as protesters in Yemen and Pakistan have also expressed their outrage. The White House has declared this act a terrorist act, another reminder of the current and perpetual state of global terror, where fear, anxiety and despair is abundant in a chain of unpredictable horrifying events. It matters not that the attacks were not premeditated; this attack epitomizes the idea that terrorism can occur unexpectedly with horrendous results. The assault of boundless terror is not merely an assault on bodies, institutions or sovereign states. It is an assault that never ceases assailing, our individual and collective psyches on edge in the face of constant threat.
Welcome to a world of terror where the possibility of catastrophe is never-ending, where dangers may not always be clear but certainly are always present. Welcome to a world where possibilities of diplomacy must be frozen as embassies close facing a persistent threat of violence. Welcome to a world where a trip to a movie may prompt you to carry your gun. Welcome to a world where threats against life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are ubiquitous and encompassing, no longer located abroad but possibly in your backyard. This world includes the possibilities of acts of domestic terrorism, that must be commemorated to remind us of our endless struggle with these unpredictable forces of evil, where we must maintain our resolve. Terrorist sympathizers may even be in your community, or someone from your community who is perpetrating terror abroad. The possibility of catastrophe may be concealed in a terrorist’s shoe or underwear. If these methods are not successful, they will be toiled with until they are perfected. We must learn to cope with this terror because it is here to stay, in a war that never ends.
In this blog post I present a two-pronged argument.
1) Following Ahmed’s discussion of affective economies, the ‘The War on Terror’ is based on an affective fear economy of ‘terrorism’, an economy that relies mainly on the signs of Islam and the Arab body, but also relies on ambiguous signs of the domestic terrorist. What makes terror so frightening is its ubiquity, the idea that anything can happen anytime, anywhere. This involves a multiplicity of potential actors, both against the state and potentially the state itself. Thus, the war on terror is a complex, promethean albatross of unending fear- a fear orgy. It is difficult to distinguish where it begins and it has no end. We are not merely afraid we must be terrified. Our fears beset us from all conceivable sides.
2) The ‘fear orgy’ that is the ‘War on Terror’ is an excess of affect that galvanizes the sociopolitical body in a perpetual state of hyper-vigilance. This excess of affect is necessary in the maintenance of national identity, as security and hyper-vigilance is essential for the nation-body’s productivity in the face of unending threat.
For the sake of brevity in this post, I will only begin this argument by highlighting a few key points, offer a few examples and engage different theories of affect. This only scratches the surface of my overall argument. A more detailed analysis is forthcoming.
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| John Walker Lindh |
The Sticky Attachment of Islam in the Terror Economy
The functioning of the word ‘terrorist’ in the War on Terror has a particular attachment to Islam as the alignment of the sign with the religion that immediately triggers an association between the two. The alignment of the sign terrorism with Islam has a precarious trajectory that has traveled a long way from its original connotation with Robespierre’s Reign of Terror. Although terrorism has been associated with groups like the IRA, it has been inextricably linked to Islamic militants with catastrophic events attibuted to Black September and the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. With subsequent events in the 1980’s and 1990’s labeled as terrorist that involved Muslim actors, the mythos of the terrorist and its alignment became more prevalent in discourses and popular culture. All of this culminated in the epochal event that was 9/11, which bound the attachment between terror, Islam and the Arabic body.
Ahmed describes the stickiness of terrorist and Islam in The Affective Politics of Fear:
“Importantly, the word ‘terrorist’ sticks to some bodies as it reopens histories of naming, just as the word ‘terrorist’ slides into other words in the accounts of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (such as fundamentalism, Islam, repressive, primitive and so on). Indeed, the slide of metonymy can function as an implicit argument about the causal relations between terms (such as Islam and terrorism), but in such a way that does not require an explicit statement. The work done by metonymy means that it can remake links- it can stick words like ‘terrorist’ and ‘Islam’ together- even when arguments are made that seem to unmake those links” (Ahmed, 76)
The sticking of terrorism to Islam relies on the circulation of the narratives produced by popular culture as well as actual events. This attachment raises suspicion in the activities and presence of the Muslim or Arabic body, as objects like the burqa or hijab become objects that produce anxiety and trepidation among Westerners. As Ahmed notes, affective economies are built on emotion as emotions become property, “everyday language certainly constructs emotions as a form of positive resistance” (p. 119). Terror is the intensity of heightened fear, and when attached to Islam, it raises suspicion with anything labeled Islamic. Emotions move through associations bound with imagined histories, operating as a form of capital within collectives. The movement of signs carries emotional value as the imagined become symbols for affective circulation.
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| Adel Daoud |
This perpetual state of fear and anxiety surrounding Muslims becomes even more frightening when domestic agents convert and commit treasonous acts as in the cases of John Walker Lindh and Adam Yahiye Gadahn. Now any connection to Islam is enough to raise suspicion, promoting elaborate sting operations to expose the domestic terror underbelly, as in the recent case of Adel Daoud. The state of terror has no borders and can include unseen actors of domestic origin. This state of terror precipitates a need for hyper-vigilance in order to combat all possible threats.
Orgy of Fear- An Excess of Affect
Fear allows us to feel our own mortality as the specters of death, violence and extreme bodily harm paralyze us. Fear also prompts vigilance against the objects and abstractions that cause us discomfort. Facing the threat of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban following 9/11, prompted the passing of the Homeland Security Act, the USA PATRIOT act and the formation of the Department of Homeland Security. Nationalism and patriotic sentiment were at a peak following the attacks as we set aside our petty differences- at this interval we were all Americans. The danger of an ever-present threat in an excess of fear or terror, binds us together as all eyes must remain open to see, all ears must remained attuned to the possible threat.
Massumi describes the logic of preemptive power in the shadows of a multitude of threats. The invasion of Iraq originally launched under the guise of stopping Saddam’s WMD’s, turned out to be an exercise of hyper-vigilance as U.S. military intervention squashed the potential threat despite the lack of WMD’s in Iraq. Massumi explains this could-have/would-have logic:
“The could-have/would-have logic works both ways. If the threat does not materialize, it still always would have if it could have. If the threat does materialize, then it just goes to show that the future potential for what happened had really been there in the past. In this case, the preemptive action is retroactively legitimated by future actual facts”. (Massumi, 56)
Anderson discusses the excess of affect following Deleuze as the “control society” modulates power through an excess of mechanisms. These mechanisms are necessary to modulate the ‘orgy of fear’ significantly in a global context of deterritorialization, where borders no longer exist and potential threats or terrorist networks could be operating anywhere at anytime, with unlimited capability for interaction.
“In the societies of control, on the other hand, what is important is no longer either a signature or a number, but a code: the code is a password, while on the other hand disciplinary societies are regulated by watchwords (as much as from the point of view of integration as from that of resistance). The numerical language of control is made of codes that mark access to information, or reject it. We no longer find ourselves dealing with the mass/individual pair. Individuals have become “dividuals,” and masses, samples, data, markets, or “banks.” […] The disciplinary man was a discontinuous producer of energy, but the man of control is undulatory, in orbit, in a continuous network.” (Deleuze, 1992:6)
Now our collective vigilance must extend to our networks as maintain our society and facilitate modes of production. Hyper-vigilance must extend to the digital realm as terrorism also threatens our networks.
We must be prepared for anything, anytime, anywhere. American hyper-vigilance is essential to American identity post 9/11. We must be prepared for terror attacks, cyber-attacks and even zombie apocalypses. Hyper-vigilance grounds the American socio-cultural milieu in the era of unending threat.
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| From a higher standpoint, the cyber and biological attacks are particularly concerning because there is a lot of attention being paid now because of cyber espionage and attempted cyber attacks on control systems and I think that is likely to cause terrorists or nation-state actors to focus attacks on critical infrastructure using the Internet.- FORMER DHS SECRETARY MICHAEL CHERTOFF |
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| Be prepared for the zombie apocalypse! |
Conclusion- Reflections on Power
Anderson in his examination of morale and “Total War” in the WWII era describes various techniques of modulating an excess of affect. In terms of the “War on Terror” we witness a consistent manipulation of affects via government apparatuses and media as it is necessary to modulate morale in a heightened state of fear. “The current “global war on terror” involves both providential and catastrophic techniques that take affects, including morale, as both their object and medium” (Anderson, 181). The morale of the United States depends on the technologies of hyper-vigilance to maintain our collective sanity in a dangerous and frightening world. The opportunity for catastrophe is unending and the climate of terror continues to produce an excess of fear as recent events continue to contribute to this affective economy.
Power is affective capacity and also a measure of affects with the highest intensity found at the intervals of life and death. Power is the ability to affect or endure adverse affects. In the current geo-political realm this affective power is not just wielded by wealthy men, large corporations or government apparatuses, but can also be exerted by singular unknown actors. The power of state apparatuses including the military to induce affect is obvious. However, we should not overlook the power of individual actors outside of state apparatuses to produce affect. This fact is evident in the case of a suicide bomber that is willing to pay the ultimate price to induce terror. The actions of a few hijackers precipitated the event that altered the way we view security and international relations forever. We are reminded of this every time we take our shoes off or go through the full body scan at the airport; we are reminded of this fact every September 11th. As new events unfold in this theater of terror we are reminded that this war can never end as the threat of catastrophe is forever imminent.
Questions
1. How do we situate power in the current geopolitical landscape considering the context of terrorism, where catastophic events may occur in a multitude of possible formations? How is the decntarlization of power connected to the control society and what are the implications for soveriegnty and nationalism?
2. Do you think the excesses of affect can ever be modulated away from the extreme realms of terror? How do you position the role of agency and political action in a seemingly endless war?
Citations
Ahmed, Sara. "Affective Economies". Social Text. 22. pp.117-139. 2004
Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. New York: Routledge, 2004. Print
Anderson, Ben. "Modulating the Excess of Affect". Morale in a State of "Total War"
Deleuze, Gilles. "Postscript on the Societies of Control", from _OCTOBER_ 59, Winter 1992, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 3-7.
Massumi, Brian. "The Future Birth of the Affective Fact"
Questions
1. How do we situate power in the current geopolitical landscape considering the context of terrorism, where catastophic events may occur in a multitude of possible formations? How is the decntarlization of power connected to the control society and what are the implications for soveriegnty and nationalism?
2. Do you think the excesses of affect can ever be modulated away from the extreme realms of terror? How do you position the role of agency and political action in a seemingly endless war?
Citations
Ahmed, Sara. "Affective Economies". Social Text. 22. pp.117-139. 2004
Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. New York: Routledge, 2004. Print
Anderson, Ben. "Modulating the Excess of Affect". Morale in a State of "Total War"
Deleuze, Gilles. "Postscript on the Societies of Control", from _OCTOBER_ 59, Winter 1992, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 3-7.
Massumi, Brian. "The Future Birth of the Affective Fact"
From our previous readings and discussions, we can be reminded that affect—as a constant state of becoming—is necessarily not present-oriented. Or, at least our ways of understanding and articulating it cannot be since we can never address affect in the moment that affect “happens.” By the time we are aware of the impressions made as our bodies are affected, the impressions themselves are already in the past and most of what is produced by those impressions is oriented toward the future.
ReplyDeleteFear, it seems, is no exception. Ahmed reminds us, for example, that “[f]ear involves the anticipation of future injury,” (65) and is “produced by an object's approach.” (66) As the object of fear approaches, Ahmed argues, it is in its passing by that it is solidified as fearsome. Our need to contain bodies to which fearsome affect has “stuck” makes their “passing by'” all the more fearsome because they have escaped containment. The futurity that we cannot contain or control creates or at least leaves space for yet another approach of the object of fear—each approach carrying with it the possibility of future injury.
Fear does not, however, just come into being out of nowhere. It is the result of past histories that work in multiple ways to associate certain fearsome attributes with certain bodies. (Of course, bodies are not just physical, human bodies—no need to revisit all of that). It is also the effect of the process of the “intensification of threats,” (72) which Ahmed argues is one of the ways that bodies align themselves with one another. Perceived shared threat motivates people to align with one another through its production of fear.
Massumi argues that the nature of the threats that align us is that they are always bound up in a double conditional state that allows us to justify preemptive action. The threat that could be is enough to justify the action and whether the threat comes to fruition or not, the action is still justified because the threat would have happened if it could have. The threat is made “real” enough to deserve addressing because of the double conditional logic in such a way that the threat becomes fetishized—takes on a life of its own that is independent of whether or not the thing that threatens actually happens—so that the threat itself becomes an event.
Now, keeping in mind that, according to Massumi, threats have no actual concrete referent and that preemption often reproduces that which it is meant to address (more feelings of threatened-ness), I would have to say that there is little reason to hope that the excesses of affect will be modulated away from the extreme realms of terror. Massumi posits threat as an operative logic which seeks to constantly extend and reproduce itself. This may possibly be supported by proliferation of certain attitudes about the state of affairs in the United States in the years since 2001.
All of our authors address, to some extent, the effects of the September 11 2001 attacks on the affective politics in this nation. Affect was argued to have both aligned groups of people in patriotic fervor in response to the attacks and to have “stuck” to certain bodies in ways that placed them outside the in-group almost automatically. All of this is true of the immediate effects of 9/11, but what since? I am interested in considering the role affect—particularly threat/fear—in the time between “we will never forget” and “take our country back.” I clearly believe that “take our country back” is constructed to align people against the threat of the loss of their country to an undetermined enemy.
Ahmed and Massumi tell us that the sliding of signs and sticking of signs to different bodies through metonymy and the self-causing, autopoeitic nature of threat/fear can produce an ill-defined threatening other. It seems that the signs that “stuck” so easily to the bodies of Muslims and people of Middle Eastern and Asian descent in 2001 (terrorist, extremist, etc.) have, through the self-creative and expanding nature of threat, “stuck” to other bodies—transforming both those bodies AND the nature of “threat to the nation.” The acute threat of the “terrorist” has been translated and reproduced in so many ways that almost anyone can be a threat, from a same sex couple seeking to “threaten” marriage to a woman's reproductive freedom as “threatening” to the traditional family (and thus the nation). This, to the point that when the question is asked. “from whom must we take our nation back?” it can be answered in a plethora of ways without ever acknowledging that, at least for some, “taking our nation back,” is simply the attempt to respond to the passing threat of the a leader in a body that has a history of the sticking of the affect of fear as a product of having been interpreted as threat. In, “we need to take our country back,” I cannot help but hear echoes of Fanon's young child's fear that, “Mama, the nigger's (or the gay's, or the lesbian's, or the woman's or the Muslim's or the Arab's or the Non-Christian's) going to eat me up.” (Ahmed, 63, from Fanon). This fear, it seems, will continue to replicate itself in such a way as to make the modulation of affect away from terror—at least anytime soon in the U. S.—quite doubtful.
ReplyDeleteWho controls the past now controls the future
ReplyDeleteWho controls the present now controls the past
Perhaps Rage Against the Machine isn’t the best place to locate complex and well-formulated political theory (though in a class on affect, they may be a perfect source), but I believe their 2000 hit Testify, provides us with a nice starting point for a discussion of power by revealing to us a particular conceptualization of power that is, in many ways, being transformed by the politics of fear. What Rage’s lyrics suggest here is that power finds its source and alleged legitimacy in the past, controlling the present and projecting its desires onto the future. And, in many ways, this is a traditional conceptualization of power. Divine right and social contract theories alike (e.g.) locate their source of legitimacy in a narrative of an alleged past. Yet, what Ahmed, Massumi and Anderson have done in this week’s readings is to relocate the supposed source of power, not in the past, but in the potentiality of the future. In other words, this new emerging form of power, a politics of fear, is born of possibility not right.
So, how is this? Well, as Ahmed argues, fear is about what is not quite present. It is all about possibility. “Fear,” she says, “projects us from the present into a future,” where the object of our fear might bring us pain (Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion p. 65). And in this expectation, both power and security take shape through the establishment of this object—the other.
As we see in the example of terrorism, the object of our fear is the terrorist as someone or something that is outside of “me” or “us” and poses a threat to “my” happiness and “our” way of life. Here, in the process of othering, the promise of security emerges out of the insecurity of the body. Why is this? Because, there is no preexisting border between the self and other, but rather, that border in need of defense is itself constituted through its transgression. In order to “secure” a thing, it must be presumed to be insecure. So, in other words, insecurity is the basis of security. Insecurity is the basis of power.
Power, therefore, seems to be linked, at least in Ahmed, to the ability to limit the mobility of this “other’s” body. By controlling it’s movements and defining its appropriate space. This requires a narrative about who “we” are and who “they” are. Saying where “we” can exist and where “they” can be. This means power operates on numerous interacting levels. Not only on the self but also on the other. Yet, where do these sources of power come from and how do they legitimate themselves?
As Massumi shows, sources of power construct their own peculiar logic in a politics of fear—what he calls operative logic. This is, essentially, a logic of self-fulfilling prophecy. In order to establish and maintain power a potential threat must be identified. Preemptive security measures are then taken. These security measures act upon the very bodies they are meant to protect without even having to act upon the feared object. The threat is treated as though it could cause harm to the body (whether it would have actually caused harm or not), eliciting the same affective response as if the threat would have manifested. If it could happen it would happen. And therefore, we see that the threat which the body is promised protection from has no specific referent object:
“The security that preemption is explicitly meant to produce is predicated on its tacitly producing what it is meant to avoid: preemptive security is predicated on a production of insecurity to which it itself contributes. Preemption thus positively contributes to producing the conditions for its own exercise.“[Melissa Gregg;Gregory J. Seigworth. The Affect Theory Reader (p. 58). Kindle Edition.]
Of course, making images of the “other” stick, so to speak, is not guaranteed and is a difficult process. This is what Anderson reveals to us. There’s no guarantee a narrative will affect. As you so perfectly put it Marcus, “Power is affective capacity and also a measure of affects (italics added) with the highest intensity found at the intervals of life and death.” So, power works two ways and relies on reaction. If it does not get the response it needs it is then itself transformed. And I think it is here that the futurity of power has its greatest potential. Rather than seeing power as a force that simply acts upon us from the outside (whether legitimate or not), we can now see power as potential. A potential we all posses (though by no means equally). We affect exertions of power just as they affect us. And because affects are seemingly limitless, in any given moment there is limitless possibility. Of course, the methods of biopower and discipline do limit this potential (I’m realistic), but as power becomes more and more decentralized, there is more and more potential.
ReplyDeleteIn the immortal words of Christopher Walken, “The past is passed, the future is now.”
and for those feeling nostalgic...
ReplyDeletehttp://youtu.be/1JSBhI_0at0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYL4pyzx-V4
ReplyDeleteOn April 20, 2011 secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano announced the implementation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS). This system was established to replace the color coded terror alert system most often experienced in American airports that was enacted in response to September 11th. The color coded system was criticized because it “didn’t communicate information” to the public for how to proceed following an alert. Most of us probably remember hearing the public announcement in airports that the terror alert had been elevated to orange, but no one really knew what the meant. Did something happen? Did something happen here? The color coded system soon passed into the backs of our minds, a normal part of the everyday which most people failed to notice. Was it ever not elevated? Not that I recall. I KNOW I never heard it to be green. We were always in some sort of danger. Terrorists could (and likely would) materialize at any moment. We needed to exercise caution at all times. The new NTAS, however, removes the constant state of alert and defines threat in two manners: “elevated” and “imminent.” An “elevated Threat warns of a credible terrorist threat against the United States” whereas an “imminent Threat warns of a credible, specific, and impending terrorist threat against the United States.” As of August 2012, no alerts have been issued although citizens are reminded “If You See Something Say Something.”
A copy of Napolitano’s speech can be found here: http://www.dhs.gov/news/2011/04/20/secretary-napolitano-announces-implementation-national-terrorism-advisory-system.
The See Something Say Something campaign illustrates the public’s role in the safety and security of the U.S. and also allows fear to influence politics. This heightened responsibility for citizens changes the power structure from the governmental disciplinary society to the control society where I am my brother’s keeper and also the reporting agent for his misdealing’s. For many Americans this may seem like an effective way to communicate and protect against possible threats, but a closer look reveals the interplay between fear and politics and the stickiness of the term ‘terrorist’ to certain bodies. As Marcus mentions and Ahmed explains, “the bodies who ‘could be terrorists’ are the ones who might ‘look Muslim’”(p. 76). Because of the associations between Muslims and terrorists, the public feels justified in its judgments on a population of peoples. What the public “sees” and “says something” about are the “inappropriate others, against whom the nation must defend itself” (Ahmed, 76). The physical characteristics, style of dress, and native language use become the markers that instill fear as bodies pass by each other. We must watch these bodies, ever aware of their proximity to our “normal” ones and we must report what we see. Indeed, it is our duty to report what we see for the sake of the safety and security of the entire country. Citizens police each other looking for “signs” of terrorism. With this relentless surveillance of certain bodies comes an increased right of detention of these bodies. It is allowable, and indeed encouraged, to detain these bodies until the threat can be assessed and our fear can subside.
Hi, thanks Marcus for starting this off.
ReplyDeleteI want to comment on your second question, regarding whether "excesses of affect can ever be modulated away from the extreme realms of terror," with the assumption that, if it truly has gotten that bad, such excesses must be modulated. I want to come at it from the temporal angle mentioned in all of our readings (and in most of our class's commentary so far).
Is it enough to grasp the ontology of fear in order to quell it? I don't think it's that easy, for as we have confirmed in class many times, intellectual knowledge cannot an affect dampen. The dampening effect must come from another affect, it seems, yet since all of our writers have linked fear so strongly with futurity, I wonder if we can replace "affect," in just this one case, with a feeling of anticipation through time. Specifically, the fear of being too late.
This, in a way, goes back to the discussion of duration in Deleuze's 1981 lecture on Spinoza when he defines duration as a "lived... passage from one thing to another." This coincides with Ahmed's discussion of temporality and fear, "the structural possibility that the terrorist may pass us by" (79). It also aligns with Massumi's insistence on "could/would/should," the subjunctive verb tense, as the primary symptom of the fear-affect. The key word is "pre-emption." Fear cuts itself off before its object can manifest; thus it perpetuates itself, while keeping "certainty" of all kinds in abeyance.
The thought is, better to eliminate all possibilities rather than permit one undesirable possibility. Or, than to live with the guilt that one "could have" pre-empted it. If anticipation links to fear, could the opposite diminish it? I mean, recollection or memory?
I can't answer that question but it seems to me now, that an absence of fear might be characterized by timeliness. See if you can follow, if I can logically get this straight:
1. Fear arises from uncertainty about the future, especially the affect that one will be thrown "out of time" with oneself. One will be forced into another, less comfortable temporality which is not self-determined but determined by some outside condition or factor.
2. The attempt to diminish fear corresponds with an effort to become timely. That is, if one makes the proper arrangements, one may contrive to be on time, and thus have no fear. Fear perpetuates itself by a vicious cycle wherein a person or entity "pre-empts" a dangerous future rather than living it out. The test is never made for fear of the results. Therefore, the affect remains undiminished, and may even grow stronger. We cut out our future, jumping the line too early, for fear we might arrive too late. But this earliness is not timeliness, for it maintains our tightened state of anticipation, our "shrunken body" to use Ahmed's connotation.
3. Yet with recollection of the past we are able to regain a feeling of certainty. Even if something bad happened in the past, it in fact happened and we more or less know that it did. So we may feel regret, sadness, or resolve, but technically and literally speaking, we have nothing to fear from the past. (Do we?)
What allows us to feel on time? It is a mastery, of sorts, in relation to our circumstances, our social obligations, the way we measure ourselves vis-a-vis others. The recollection of some past experience, whether success or failure, at least informs us somewhat as to the certain. Sometimes, we are blessed to view the present not merely as an incipient future, but as a fulfilled or at least developing past.
Actually, I would say we expend a good deal of mental and physical energy to make sure the past expresses itself "positively" in the present, perhaps so as to diminish our inevitable fears. The feeling--whatever we call it--that fights against fear is like the great saying about God: never comes when you want it but it's right on time.
Be afraid. Be afraid of terrorists, Obama, healthcare, debt, taxes, and immigrants, to name just a few. Be afraid of the people telling you to be afraid, because they will use your fear to control you. Be afraid of those telling you to be afraid of the people telling you to be afraid, because they want to lull you into a false sense of security so they can control you. And so on… “Just because you are paranoid, doesn’t mean they are not out to get you.” It seems that only by sustaining a fear can you have any feeling of security.
ReplyDeleteThe politics of fear is not a new concept. In the not so distant past of America, we can see fear of race or immigrants to push for political action. One need only think of the McCarthy era and the Red Scare as a means to control media, entertainment and politics, thus culture. In The Affective Politics of Fear, Ahmed provides a deeper and more nuanced understanding of how is used and how it is created. Where the previous discussions of the politics of fear which I have encountered tend to be reasoned arguments that point out the rhetorical constructs that are used to incite fear, and how those constructs are often based on inaccurate portrayals of “facts”, Ahmed goes beyond the a dry or “objective” look at the facts to discuss the subtle and ephemeral aspects of how fear ripples through a culture to cause change. So while overt statements like, “All Muslims are terrorists,” may be dismissed as ignorant or racist, the continued affirmation that all Muslims are not terrorists still contributes to the affective fear of the Muslim as terrorist.
I was most intrigued by Massumi’s discussion of the affective fact. As I examine how people can hold and sustain seemingly illogical or contradictory beliefs, Massumi points out the power of something being “real” because it feels “real.” Perhaps more important to understanding the politics of fear is that ideas can be sustained and justified not because they are based on empirical evidence or quantifiable “fact”, but that affective facts are true because they raise awareness of a threat that is “real.” By coincidence, there was a discussion on the NPR program On the Media, regarding the use of made up facts, events, or statements which were argued as acceptable because they help build the appropriate setting or evoked the right feeling that was more important to report on than the hard “facts” of the story. The link to the show is here and I highly recommend it (http://www.onthemedia.org/2012/sep/21/).
I am also reminded of Impressionist painters, who at the time were criticized for their lack of attention to reality. The Impressionists were not trying to capture the physical exactness of a scene, but rather the affect or impression of the scene.
Also worth looking at is Tony Schwartz’s The Responsive Chord. Schwartz created the Daisy Girl ad (http://youtu.be/ExjDzDsgbww) for the Johnson campaign against Barry Goldwater. While the ad never mentions Goldwater, nor does it make any direct argument, the ad only ran once and was criticized for being too effective.
Like last week’s topic, this week’s focus on the politics of fear explores how affective objects are constituted by the circulation of emotions, which mark and delineate the surface of these objects by creating slippage between signs. As Sara Ahmed says, however, this is not a psychic process in the mind of the subject but rather something which establishes subjectivity by calibrating certain relationships which bind subjects-already-in-the-making to history and to certain regimes of appropriate emotional response. Of course, the political ramifications for this can be seen in the evening news. Angry Libyans storming an American embassy become captured images in history, circulating through the American media, recalling and rekindling associations between the “Middle East,” “angry youths,” “violence,” and “Islam,” all within the charged phrase “terrorism.”
ReplyDeleteMassumi shows how this economy of fear can provide the basis for a political logic of preemption. If we feel there is a threat, then affectively, the threat is real. Causality becomes inverted in the sense that preemptive action will be justified on the basis of future events, to be determined. Characteristics are read into the targets of preemption, which can then be used to construct alternative accounts of what the targets “would do” in different circumstances. However, such economies of affect are not merely natural or inevitable. Instead, they represent what Anderson refers to as a modulation of excess affect. Because affects are essentially infinite, open, and indeterminate, they continually exceed their nominal demarcation within the surfaces of objects or the minds of subjects. This affective overflow can then become the target of power, which must, ironically, submit itself to the unpredictability of the affects. A politics of fear, therefore, will be bound by the ever-changing environment of encounters, using the intensity of affects to arrange a series of anticipatory responses. From this perspective, “flour alerts” are not just occasional errors in judgment but valid expressions of an affective politics disciplined to read encounters as potential acts of terrorism.
Returning to Ahmed, we can see how the affect of fear is closely associated with that of love. As the object of fear approaches, we are not sent in just any direction but back towards the object of love. Fear becomes a blanket threat against the existence of what is loved, whether it is life, the nation, the home, or what have you. And the object of love, too, is constituted in part by this relation of fear. Given the apparent impossibility of unconditioned, unconditional love, any relationship of love carries with it the fear that love may be rescinded or that the loved object may be taken or destroyed. If we are to believe Spinoza, this affect of desire has innately more power to produce action than negative affects such as fear, which drive the subject further back into pre-existing affective relations. The impossibility of overcoming terror as the never-quite-present, ubiquitous threat to our security may indicate that we can get better political traction by re-examining the objects of our love and dedication within the political realm.