Fear & Sovereign Power

Rethinking Refugees (2006) Peter Nyers Extract (Page 51-52) Fear is an enigmatic concept, one that expresses some of the deepest contradictions and paradoxes of modern political life. On one hand, the meaning of fear is all too apparent and obvious. Fear, we know, is an intense emotional reaction to a real or perceived danger; it is something that causes us either to fight or to take flight. And yet, to pin down the meaning of fear is a decidedly a slippery task. "Fear, like pain, is overwhelmingly present to the person experiencing it, but it may be barely perceptible to anyone else and almost defies objectification.” When fear is present, its effects may be too intense to consider it with any degree of detachment. Conversely, when emotion is assent, its meaning remains elusive. It is not surprising; therefore, that Aristotle once refereed to fear has a “kind of depression or bewilderment.” Or that Edmund Burke was compelled to write, “No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.” These views are still commonly held today. Fear, it is often said, involves a kind of forgetting of oneself, a loss of self that can lead to feelings of intense alienation and anxiety. Instead of providing a solid foundation on which personal subjectivity is founded and cultivated, fear is a radically decentring and deauthentifying experience.