Breaking out of the cycle of fear

exodus politics

Andreas Hetzel

pp. 183-201

in: Andreas Oberprantacher, Andrei Siclodi (eds), Subjectivation in political theory and contemporary practices, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016

Abstract

Participants in those protests that gave rise to the Arab Spring and to the Gezi-movement repeatedly mentioned a decisive moment for their public assembly: the breaking of the cycles of fear. In this chapter, Hetzel explores the role of fear in the affective economy of subjectivation and indicates why and under which conditions the breaking of a cycle of fear may be regarded as a political event. For this purpose, Hetzel draws on concepts of an exodus-politics, as it has been outlined in Walzer's and in Virno's respective accounts of the biblical exodus-myth. For both authors the exodus designates a "presentic", inner-worldly eschatology, which focuses on acts of in-subordination that generate a political subject, which is associated by confidence and not by fear anymore.