Reappropriating the City of Fear

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.

Ghosts, Devils, and the Undead City

“…Neighbors collaborate to cut lawns and cultivate gardens; throngs of bicycles reclaim streets in the Detroit Slow Roll. Reclaiming the open spaces of the city (Allon, 2013) and occupying the spaces of fear (Jeffries, 2013), whether with bikes or flowers or sculptures, are two potential strategies for defanging the monstrous city. Artists are extremely sensitive to the power of images, and it should be no surprise that artists have seized upon Detroit’s distinctive visual and symbolic qualities.…”

“…The notion of the city as a haven for evil spirits is of course nothing new, but Jeffries (2013) argues that in contemporary societies cities have reemerged as a “repository of fear.” As a city and as a symbol, Detroit has been made to stand in for a particularly American set of fears about urban society and where it is heading. Whether Chafets intended to identify Black Detroit as one overtaken by “devils,” thus summoning a historically racialized iconography which links both Black people and the places where they live (Africa, Haiti) to malevolent supernatural forces, his language makes this connection difficult to avoid.…”

Walking Borders: Explorations of Aesthetics in Ephemeral Arts Activism for Asylum Seeker Rights

“…To disagree with demarcations, divisions, partitions, borders (i.e., dissensus) is to Ranciere (2010) the “essence of politics” (p. 38). Walking Borders sought, as Jeffers (2014) has described of other social movements (e.g., Arab Spring, and Occupy Wall Street), to reappropriate cultures and climates of fear, central to global capitalist politics, through collective action.…”