Breaking Out of the Cycle of Fear: Exodus Politics

Andreas Hetzel (Universität Hildesheim)

Participants in those protests, which gave rise to the Arab Spring and to the Gezi-movement, repeatedly mentioned a decisive moment, of which it is difficult to say whether it preceded or rather resulted from the occupation of public spaces: breaking the cycles of fear. The paper explores the role of fear in the affective economy of subjectification techniques, and, apart from that, indicates, why and under which conditions the breaking of a cycle of fear may be regarded as a political event. For this purpose, the paper draws on concepts of an exodus-politics, as it has been outlined in Walzer’s and in Virno’s respective accounts of the biblical exodus-myth. For the exodus constitutes both for Walzer and for Virno a model for a ‘presentic,’ inner-worldly eschatology, which appreciates the departure from Egypt in terms of an in-subordination, that is, of a liberation from a fear, which has been identified as an instrument of domination and eventually disenchanted. At the same time, this in-subordination constitutes a new and genuinely political subject, which is associated by confidence and not by fear anymore.

Bio:

Andreas Hetzel is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hildesheim (Germany). Previously, he was Full Professor at Fatih University (Istanbul), Interim Professor at the University of Magdeburg (Germany), visiting Professor in Vienna (Austria), and Private Lecturer in Darmstadt (Germany). His research interests include social and political philosophy, cultural theory, environmental ethics, pragmatism, and classical rhetoric. Currently he focuses on the philosophical relevance of rhetorical concepts of speech and on Ethics of Biodiversity. He is co-editor of the journal Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Philosophie and of the book series Contemporary Discourses on the Political. He published a book on culture as praxis (Zwischen Poiesis und Praxis. Elemente einer kritischen Theorie der Kultur, 2001) and a book on language between classical rhetoric and modern pragmatics (Die Wirksamkeit der Rede. Zur Aktualität klassischer Rhetorik für die moderne Sprachphilosophie, 2011).