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  • Fear: The History of a Political Idea
  • Arthur W. Herbig IV
Fear: The History of a Political Idea. By Corey Robin. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2004; pp i + 316. $28.00.

In the wake of an election season dominated by fear appeals, Corey Robin looks critically at fear as a theoretical construct. Television advertisements produced in the closing weeks of the first presidential campaign since September 11, 2001, used wolves to symbolize impending danger to national security and talked about how a vote for the wrong candidate could risk personal and national safety. In order to illuminate the role fear plays in public perceptions of politics, Robin investigates the history of the concept and the evolution of how fear has influenced the public's beliefs and attitudes.

Robin uses a social constructionist lens to clearly define what he means by fear, or political fear, early in the book. Political fear, he writes, is "people's felt apprehension of some harm to their collective well-being" (2). The important tensions that inform Robin's argument are the dichotomies of the collective versus the individual and social construction versus individual interpretation. A major part of his historical representation of fear is an analysis of its place in society. He divides this deconstruction of fear into two sections. The beginning of the book treats cultural and scholarly approaches to fear as a social construct. The second half explores how perceptions of fear have played a role in the lives of Americans.

Tracing the modern idea of fear back past the time of Aristotle, Robin constructs a picture of the concept that he employs as a lens with which to view contemporary politics. His explorations of American fear include critiques of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), separation of powers, and unions. Robin argues that the modern American conceptualization of fear is a primal instinct or reaction. Politicians can use this primal fear as a uniting force in culture. Using the work of Hobbes, Montesquieu, and Tocqueville, Robin argues that fear, terror, and anxiety have been exploited by a ruling class to sustain their power. The evolution of fear over time has placed it in the "mass psyche" (86).

The concept of a mass psyche is central to Robin's arguments. In times such as the Cold War and now the threat of terrorism, Americans have been unified in a common fear. That unification has been used by politicians to create credibility for their leadership. In the case of international terrorism, fear has legitimized leaders on both sides of the conflict: Islamic extremists preach fear of losing tradition to modernity, and Americans leaders use fear to appeal to the American sense of vulnerability from foreign attacks.

The critical turn that Robin ascribes to this work is "urging us to give up our two basic assumptions about fear" (23). He challenges people to stop thinking of fear, first, as a unifying or restorative emotion, and, second, to stop [End Page 357] thinking of fear as if it has no origins in political discourse. Although he clearly sees fear as hegemonic, his only reference to hegemony is to say, "There may be elite influence and manipulation here, what some scholars call 'hegemony' and others 'the third face of power'" (161). This awareness of hegemony makes the lack of exploration of its implications startling. In the chapter discussing Hobbes's approach to fear as a political tool, Robin talks about the reasons the powerless submit to the powerful and largely neglects the work of critical scholars.

He states in his conclusion that "Political fear has been both the doing and undoing of American liberalism, but few of our writers seem willing to acknowledge that fact" (249). To that end, he is correct. And if he had stepped outside the narrow band of American political critique to embrace a wide range of critical scholars, his argument would blossom. He overwhelmingly ignores the potential power inherent in the work of scholars who do not exalt democracy as the superior political philosophy. Scholars such as Marx, Habermas, and Gramsci have all critiqued contemporary American politics in a similar fashion. By disregarding them, he has ended up...

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