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Paul Virilio, The Administration of Fear, semiotext(e), 2012. pp. $12. 95, £ 9. 95, (paper), ISBN: 978-1584351054
An excellent addition to semiotext(e)'s exciting intervention series, this slim book offers a fascinating insight into Paul Virilio's thoughts on what he understands to be a time of fear. In conversation with Bertrand Richard, Virilio is eloquent and not a little explosive. Part biography, part exposition of previous work, this interview develops a novel analysis of the current juncture. Virilio is quick to explain that the title, The Administration of Fear, came to him very early on, as an echo of Graham Greene's (1943) The Ministry of Fear. The interview is in three parts which could be read separately, although there are references to previous points, and is prefaced by a short summary of the book by the interviewer. Richard tries to keep Virilio in check and at one point accuses him of being overly dramatic. The back and forth between the two is very effective, and Virilio is forced to pause and re-explain.
The question of fear, as Virilio notes, is polysemic. However, his task exceeds outlining the notion itself, focusing also on how it operates. Virilio asks the reader: "How can we not see that fear has been administered, in the strict meaning of the term, by instant interactivity, in particular in the functions that relate to real-time communications?" (44). Virilio deploys the expression 'the administration of fear,' in two specific ways. The first deals with the location of fear. He tells us that "fear is now an environment, a surrounding, a world. Fear both occupies and preoccupies us" (14). While fear was once, according to Virilio, a set of locatable and identifiable events, limited to a certain timeframe (wars, famines, epidemics), fear has become an environment which envelops us. We are restricted to a 'stressful claustrophobia', complete with contagious stock crises, faceless terrorism and lightening pandemics. Given this, and secondly, the administration of fear also refers to States being 'tempted to create policies for the orchestration and management of fear' (15). It is for this reason that Virilio is drawn to Greene's book, as...