Fear: The History of a Political Idea

In the first intellectual history of its kind, Corey Robin shows how fear has shaped our politics and culture since time immemorial. From the Garden of Eden to the Gulag Archipelago to today’s Headlines, Robin traces our growing fascination with political danger and disaster. He argues that writers have systematically obscured fear’s political dimensions, diverting attention from the public and private authorities who sponsor and benefit from it. For fear, Robin insists, is an exemplary instrument of repression-in the public and private sector. Nowhere is this politically repressive fear-and its evasion-more evident than in contemporary America. With danger playing an increasing role in our daily lives and justifying a growing number of government policies, Robin’s Fear offers a bracing, and necessary, antidote to our contemporary culture of fear.