Fear has assumed an inordinate priority at this moment in history. Called now more often, in American discourse, by the name we give it at its worst extremity, terror shapes our world. We, who when we pledge our allegiance to our homeland, declare that ours is a nation “with liberty and justice for all,” defer to terror to define exactly what we mean by the words liberty, justice and all.

Creating fear of “the other,” and directing fear and attention to “those people” have a particular American history as well as a general world history. The magazine The Progressive provides a forum for author Matthew Rothschild that keeps this (particular US variety of the) scapegoating practice in view and places it in some historical […]

PANOPTICON;

OR

THE INSPECTION-HOUSE:

CONTAINING
THE
IDEA OF A NEW PRINCIPLE
OF CONSTRUCTION
APPLICABLE
TO
ANY SORT
OF ESTABLISHMENT, IN WHICH PERSONS OF
ANY DESCRIPTION
ARE TO BE KEPT UNDER INSPECTION;
AND
IN PARTICULAR TO
PENITENTIARY-HOUSES,

PRISONS,
HOUSES OF INDUSTRY, WORK-HOUSES, POOR-HOUSES, LAZARETTOS, MANUFACTORIES, HOSPITALS,
MAD-HOUSES, AND SCHOOLS:

WITH
A PLAN OF MANAGEMENT

ADAPTED
TO THE PRINCIPLE:
IN A SERIES OF LETTERS,

WRITTEN
IN THE YEAR 1787, FROM CRECHEFF IN WHITE
RUSSIA.
TO […]

Hobbes, and later advocates of the social contract, would have us believe that fear is grounded in a state of nature that lies outside civilization and provides the basis for a controlled state and sovereign rule over its citizens. This is not a necessary view. I would argue that it fails even by
Hobbes standard […]

The Transition
technorati tags:apartheid, racism