Nothing to Lose but Our Fear

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.

Table of Contents:
Introduction by Fiona Jeffries Part I: Historicizing 1. Marcus Rediker: The Theater and Counter-Theater of Fear 2. Silvia Federici: Remembering Resistance: From the Witch-Hunts to Alter-Globalization Part II: Theorizing 3. David Harvey: Indignant Cities 4. Nandita Sharma: Terror and Mercy at the Border 5. John Holloway: We Are the Fragility of the System Part III: Practicing 6. Lydia Cacho: Dangerous Journalism 7. Sandra Moran: Feminist Indignation 8. Gustavo Esteva: Political Courage and the Strange Persistence of Hope 9. Wendy Mendez: Remembering the Disappeared, Revealing Hidden Histories of Resistance

About the Author :
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. 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.

Review :
A good introduction to a bottom-up history of the struggles of the poor. 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. A stimulant for hope. Passionate, positive, and practical, it suggests new ways to change our world. 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. 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.