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Rhetorical Ecology of Fear: New Scholarship

As the postmodern era of scholarship has recently opened debate and doubt about the nature and role of emotions, so also has been the case specifically with new postmodern scholarship on fear (what I prefer to call 'fear'). One recent example, worth checking out, is the edited volume Entertaining Fear: Rhetoric and the Political Economy of Social Control ed. by Catherine Chaput, M. J. Braun and Danika M. Brown (New York: Peter Lang, 2010). I had not seen this book until just a week ago and thought I ought to check it out. I only read the Preface and Introduction (by Chaput), and I must say this is great work going on regarding the way to conceive of rhetoric in a conceptualization Chaput calls a rhetorical "ecology of fear." Not having studied rhetoric and theory, this Introduction chapter is very technical, and theoretical and I was not able to follow it totally. It may take time to absorb through various re-readings.

I bought the book to add to my collection of new scholarship on 'fear' that takes it way beyond the psychology or philosophy of fear, and brings it into the intersectional dynamics of social, political and economic contexts and the way rhetorical situations and energies move--directly and most profoundly influenced by an "ecology of fear." This really interests me, although it is hard to get a handle on exactly what an "ecology of fear" is. There are other authors, from biology to cultural studies also using this phrase ecology of fear all with quite different meanings in some ways, and yet I am seeing some pattern that makes them all the same as well. So, hypothetically, and theoretically, the argument of Chaput et al., and my own thought, is that the best unit to understand 'fear' is by studying its ecology (and sub-ecologies). In other words, it is best we do not rely on studying fear "as an isolated event [or experience] rather than as a circulating energy" (p. 15). Let me cite Chaput some to give you a flavor of this ecological way she is attempting to create a discourse of understanding about fear for research and practical purposes (i.e., fear management/education):

"Global capitalism, as an extension of the past and an imagination of the future, relies on fear to pull us within its new modalities. Fear discourses [rhetorics] work in an paradoxical structure.... Although individuals certainly act on their own volition, their choices are powerfully proscribed by the rhetorical energy of fear.... What I am calling the rhetorical energy inherent in these discourses functions, according to theorists of fear, as a unbiquitous and apparently innocuous form of political and social control.... Unlike the visible repression of Orwell's watchful Big Brother, this form of social control occurs through the rhetorical energy circulating almost imperceptibly among many of the more open and free political and cultural sites of contemporary life.... this overdetermined rhetorical space of political economic reproduction [e.g., a campaign speech to preys on our worries] means that 'it is not necessary to make active or express threats in order to arouse fear; instead, fear can, and usually does, hover quietly about relationships [like a glue between them and the society's forms of social order] between the powerful and the powerless, subtly influencing everyday conduct without requiring much in the way of active intimidation' (Robin, 2004, p. 19).... [p. 14] the fear explicit in any one of these examples implicitly recalls the fear in the other spaces, and such [ecological] connections form the discursive undrepinnings of an overdetermined rhetorical ecology that sustains our current [conservative] political economic moment.... it is precisely this pervasive intangible quality that gives the rhetorical energy of fear its power.... Like ambient noises, fear resonates in the background of most contemporary experiences..." (pp. 20-21). 

What I make out of this way of imagining and using the conceptualization of a rhetorical ecology of fear, is that there has grown invisible 'channels' like grooves based on hyper-over-arousal of fear energy, circulating in these grooves (or veins) and each kind of experience that 'triggers' fear, then immediately lights up the entire grooved network of past and present and future imagined fears, and more fear energy is released from these sites in split second restimulations and accumulations but also in complex systems of constructing new ecological dynamics in which this rhetorical ecology of fear serves many things, of which global (predatory) capitalism is a major provider/host.

One almost has to talk about this organismically, and autopoietically, ecologically, as well as poetically, just to 'play' with ways to ensure we don't fall into an easy reductionism as fear is only in our brain, our self thought. No, an ecology of fear, especially via rhetorical discursive practices (many which don't seem fearful themselves per se or coming from someone afraid in any obvious way)-- takes on a 'life of its own' and thus 'fear' takes on a life of its own (a point Michel Foucault made about Discourses). 

There's an entire sub-field of study of the ecology of fear, in the larger sense, that I have long been a supporter of those naming this 'unit' and way of studying fear ('fear')... and, I am barely scratching the surface in this blog post... perhaps, as I read this new book by Chaput et al. more things will come clearer... and no doubt, more complex in how to understand fear ('fear') in our highly constructed rhetorical world today.

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