Sarai Reader 08: Fear
Modernity's great promise - the freedom from fear, now lies in ruins.
One can argue that this vision was always compromised - modernity
(especially in the form that emerged in the West, under Capitalism)
always hid its own fears, and hid from its own fears - the fear of
epidemics, of urban panic, of the homeless multitude and of criminal
activity. This led to a drive for transparency: for separating the civic
from the criminal, the civilised and the barbaric peoples, the human
from the non human, life from the machine.