A-Infos (en) Sicilia Libertaria: Analyses. The society of fear (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The publication in 1986 of Ulrich Beck's book, "The society of risk", made it 
possible to redefine the daily life of large post-industrial cities as places 
where the balance between security and destruction is broken and state 
institutions are no longer able to manage the complexity and thus protect 
citizens. This is undoubtedly an interesting interpretation, even if it must be 
borne in mind that the "citizens" alluded to were basically the middle classes, 
since the subordinate social groups and, in general, the marginalized lived this 
situation already as a condition, both as regards the risk and the fall of the 
protective action of the state. The importance of Beck's work lies in drawing 
attention to the generalization of risk to the whole of society, with a 
corollary, fear, which for the author could represent the basis of reference for 
the creation of defensive organizations. It does not seem that this has happened 
or, at least, fear seems to have mainly produced discriminatory reactions, 
populism and nationalisms, generators of violence.

Fear is an anxiety reaction generated by a sudden and unexpected event, perceived 
as dangerous for one's physical integrity. However, it can also take the form of 
a permanent emotional state, active in different degrees but always present in 
the individual consciousness: fear becomes endemic and generalized, a condition 
of existence. With greater social complexity, greater risks: from the climate 
that already does not allow too many predictions, to the lack of food for 
everyone; fear of falling ill, but also of being manipulated by politicians or 
the internet... Uncertainty thus constitutes itself as a horizon of meaning, it 
ends up defining life itself, and action has no sure guarantees of success, with 
the danger of generating tiredness and abulia, fear of acting, but also violence. 
In the "society of fear", as we could define the current situations of 
megalopolises, the individual finds himself lost in the landscape that he 
considered safe, the historical one of his childhood, generator of material 
anchoring for the construction of his own identity. Yet, even in this generalized 
condition, there are those who are more afraid than others: the poor, the 
marginalized, the different and women. As Javier Marías wrote, "For centuries, 
women have lived with an extra fear, when they go down the street and even in 
their homes". In fact, it is certainly no coincidence that, in this situation of 
ever deeper crisis, violence against women has increased exponentially.

Generally, in daily life, societies function through habituation and 
naturalization processes: in the first case, it is a question of structuring 
actions through automatic repetition; in the second, to make these responses 
natural, even if historically constructed. In "societies of fear", what is 
naturalized is violence, in its various forms; while you get used to predatory 
behavior on the part of the aggressors and passivity and acceptance on the part 
of the attacked. Talking about predation is relatively easy if we allude to the 
economy or the military world, it is a little more difficult to do it when it 
comes to human relationships, even if the facts are under our eyes every day, 
from school bullying on the rise, to violence against women and, in any case, the 
ease with which quarrels and violence break out in especially male circles. The 
predatory reaction to the insecurity of becoming does not imply the production of 
the consciousness of the state of fear, except in terms of an unnamed malaise, 
projected outside oneself, onto others: one thus becomes intolerant of diversity, 
but also of small changes in horizon, as any woman knows who sees her husband 
explode because she can't find her belongings where she left them.

The situation of the victims or, in general, of the subjects that society keeps 
in a state of weakness, whether they are migrants or the poor, is different. In 
this case, that "supplement of fear" mentioned above is valid, evidently beyond 
the gender of the other, in which fear easily overflows into real constant fear 
of being attacked. In fact, in order to continue living, habituation is 
associated with another mechanism: temporary forgetfulness, a superficial process 
of constant repression, clearly induced by the culture of unequal societies, 
which construct fear as a control mechanism (up to forms of alienation , 
artificially induced). Thus women leave the house, generally forgetting the risk 
they run every day in mixing with people, they forget the fear of being attacked, 
even if those who have experienced situations of violence find it difficult to 
ignore. But fear is always lurking and whoever gets distracted runs the risk of 
becoming an easy victim.  In this way, fear is spatialized and temporalized in 
our cities: there are safe places and dangerous places, according to the time of 
day or night, differentiating according to the gender of those who frequent them. 
This spatial and temporal violence is above all symbolic, but we know that the 
border with material violence is very porous, and a gesture or an insult can 
easily degenerate into stabbings or violations. It is still women who see their 
walking spaces reduced in this way, even if accompanied by their men.

Private space remains as a tendentially safe place, increasingly resembling a 
besieged fortress. A place to be in peace and, finally, forget the social, male 
pressure that thrives on urban streets. Unfortunately, the data on gender-based 
violence indicate that it is not only on the increase, but that in most cases it 
is violence that occurs within the family. The men beat and kill the women they 
are related to, many times the mothers of their own children. Thus, for women, 
fear cannot remain outside the door of one's home, since the enemy has already 
infiltrated it; indeed, they themselves opened the door for her. In the "society 
of fear", relationships are structured on the basis of violence, even if it is 
subterranean, positional, denied. And it is useless to get around it: this 
violence is fundamentally masculine, as are most of the murders in our society, 
as is war.

Emmanuel Amodio

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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