Anxiety, subjectivity and the possibility of emancipatory politics

Abstract

Anxiety is a politically charged and socially potent phenomenon. Scholars, politicians and activists often describe our present times as the ‘age of anxiety’. Anxiety permeates emotional or affective experiences, sets in motion temporal particularities, and creates distinct governing logics. Anxiety—in social sciences and international relations—is often linked with affect. By mobilising the distinction between anxiety as affect and anxiety as experience Rumelili points out that anxiety is different from fear. If fear arises from identifiable objects, then anxiety is a reaction to something which cannot be located. It is thus primarily a (disorienting) reaction to something with an unknown ‘source’. In my response to Rumelili I engage with the transformative potential that the experience of anxiety might have for how we conceive of political action. Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis I begin by outlining the role of anxiety as a structural force in the constitution of the subject before exploring its broader socio-political significance. I acknowledge that Rumelili notes the ‘structural significance’ of anxiety, but nonetheless, an appreciation of anxiety’s embeddedness in social and political reality remains missing in her work. My response explores the transformative potential of anxiety that Rumelili’s contribution only hints at.