All tagged cyberbullying

Author’s Note: this is the second installment in a four-part series on the current public climate of fear and intimidation that since the kick-off of the last presidential campaign in 2015 has dominated national life in the United States to a degree not seen in a long while. In Part One, “The Emotional Toll of Public Bullying and Political Intimidation,” the focus was on the experience of the sheer power and psychological effects of bullying in general and public bullying and political intimidation in particular. Below in Part Two, I now look at how public bullying works as a concrete method and set of political tools: I examine specific devices and tactics that will provide readers something of a practical guide through this potent minefield and a way to anticipate future acts of aggression. As we approach the midterm elections, the hope is to provide readers with some protective mental armor against the daily barrage of assaults.

SUMMARY

- intimidation as a political and theoretical problem

- traumatic lessons

- taking political violence seriously

- political intimidation vs. everyday bullying

- from political tool to an entire political program & form of governing

- how it works

- affective challenges to civic action and activism

- resistance: a nimble politics of anticipation

- creating our own affective facts on the ground

THEORETICAL FRAME

My thinking has been in conversation with the work of Étienne Balibar on citizenship, globalization, extreme violence and the State, Wendy Brown’s deep inquiry into the political project of neoliberalism of “dedemocratization,” Judith Butler’s and Brian Massumi’s respective writings on lawless sovereignty, indefinite detention, and the affective politics of preemption in the endless War on Terror, and Corey Robin’s book on fear as an operative concept in the liberal political tradition.