Abstract

Our 24/7 lives are saturated with round-the-clock fear. Scare-tactic headlines fill our homes and our public spaces. If it’s not the war on terror, it’s the new war on the middle class. Crisis is the new black, as catastrophe after casualty after crash shape the order of the day. Nothing to Lose But Our Fear delivers a counter blow to this rampant culture of fear fuelled by the likes of CNN, Fox and the Daily Mail.

Exploring contemporary and historical manifestations of this controlling force, the conversations in this collection go beyond just scrutinizing what constitutes rational versus irrational fear, or identifying ways in which human fears are manipulated by political players. They reveal how fear antagonizes and changes our subjectivity and, crucially, how the political use of fear has been resisted in different times and places, by different people across the globe.

Fiona Jeffries is a Vancouver-based researcher, writer, educator and currently a visiting scholar at the Center for Policy Studies in Culture and Communities at Simon Fraser University. Her work focuses on the multiple expressions of contestation to the globalization of fear, particularly in spaces of migration and border crossing, in cities recovering from civil war, and in spaces of tourist development and ecological degradation. She has published extensively in both academic and journalistic venues, focusing on feminist politics, media and gender violence, urban social movements, and the role of communication practices in the production of alternative globalizations.

'Multi-faceted, insightful, global: Fiona Jeffries' conversations with some of our best contemporary theorists, activists, historians (and frequently all three at once) confront fear head-on and come out fighting. In-depth conversations tackle some of the thorniest topics confronting activists and theorists today: how best to understand the state? How best to fight against it? What types of global thinking and resistance can help us to think - and act - otherwise.'
Nina Power, author of One-Dimensional Woman

'An eloquent and urgent book. Fiona Jeffries has assembled some of our planet's most important thinkers, who help us figure out the present in order to imagine a better future.'
Greg Grandin, author of The Empire of Necessity

'Here, like a family album of loved ones, is a collection from nine accomplished, active radicals whose biographical background helps introduce figures of resistance from our collective memory - the pirate, the migrant, the witch, the communard, the mother, the dispossessed, the Other - who recuperate our dignity through laughter, courage, truth, and indignation.'
Peter Linebaugh, author of Stop, Thief! The Commons, Enclosure, and Resistance

'A stimulant for hope. Passionate, positive, and practical, it suggests new ways to change our world.'
Joanna Bourke, author of Wounding the World: How Military Violence and War-Play Invade our Lives

'A good introduction to a bottom-up history of the struggles of the poor.'
Peace News