A Little Fear: Rethinking Scapes, Structures, Time and the Ordinary

Abstract

Treating fear as a kind of scape risks overlooking its peculiar temporality. Fear is, we argue, only ever established as a motivator, for social change for example, after the occurrences that gave rise to it, hence at some point in the future. This retro-clarity poses problems for the commonplace practice of treating fear as a causal explanation for things. Following this warning, we explain fear’s peculiar temporality. Fear is, we argue, only ever constituted at the moment of its commission. Indeed, it is this present-ness of fearful events that accounts for the very things that make them so fearful – their appearance as emergent, chaotic and unexpectedly obtrusive within the normalcy of ev..