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Reappropriating the City of Fear

Space and Culture

Published online on

Abstract

Fear is seen to be one of the defining political emotions of late modernity. Filmmakers, sociologists, artists, philosophers, and pundits see fear everywhere. If fear is a way of life, the contemporary city is seen by many to be one of its most prominent and productive social laboratories. But while fear is seen to be so politically significant, the way it is studied often both naturalizes and exteriorizes fear from politics. As a result, fear’s antagonistic status as both a social relation and an arena of political action is submerged. In this article, I propose a different approach to thinking about, and acting in, the city of fear. By taking social struggles as our starting point, the city of fear becomes recognizable as a platform for social action, a place for the elaboration of a theory and practice of social change, a staging ground for the reappropriation of the city.