Sasha Lilley of the highly erudite Against the Grain interviews Corey Robin, author of the brilliant Fear: The History of A Political Idea. Also check out Robin’s superb essay on Hannah Arendt, and his commentary on Barack Obama’s recent capitulation on the debt deal.
Fear dominates our society. Fear of crime, fear of the poor, fear of foreign terrorists, to which we might add fear of our government and fear of our bosses. For some liberal thinkers, fear serves a purpose. It’s supposed to pull us all together so we can find some kind of social solidarity in an atomized, alienated world. Corey Robin discusses the problems with that notion and talks about the places where fear truly lurks in our society.
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