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ANKARA UNIVERSITY
GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
DEPARTMENT OF WESTERN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
THE CULTURE OF FEAR IN CONTEMPORARY BRITISH DRAMA: ZINNIE HARRIS’ HOW TO HOLD YOUR BREATH, DENNIS KELLY’S OSAMA THE HERO
AND ALI TAYLOR’S OVERSPILL
M. A. THESIS
MERT GÜÇLÜ
ASSOC. PROF. DR. SILA ŞENLEN GÜVENÇ
ANKARA – 2019
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ANKARA UNIVERSITY
GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
DEPARTMENT OF WESTERN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
THE CULTURE OF FEAR IN CONTEMPORARY BRITISH DRAMA: ZINNIE HARRIS’ HOW TO HOLD YOUR BREATH, DENNIS KELLY’S OSAMA THE HERO
AND ALI TAYLOR’S OVERSPILL
M. A. THESIS
MERT GÜÇLÜ
ASSOC. PROF. DR. SILA ŞENLEN GÜVENÇ
ANKARA – 2019
To all Marauders, mischief managed
…
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First and foremost, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude with my sincere regards to my thesis supervisor Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sıla Şenlen Güvenç, for her vital and invaluable comments, feedback and guidance. Without her support, patience and encouragement I would not have survived the difficulties of this academic adventure. I am also very grateful to the distinguished members of the jury, Prof. Dr. Nazan Tutaş and Assist. Prof. Dr. Mustafa Kırca for their constructive comments, beneficial suggestions, guidance and feedback.
I would like to thank my high school English teacher Engin Şen who inspired me to steer into the field of English language and literature and encouraged me to go all the way. She has been an inspirational figure in my life motivating me to choose my current path.
Most importantly, my deepest and strongest gratitude is reserved for my mother Hülya Güçlü, my father Nevzat Güçlü and my sister İrem Güçlü for their constant support and encouragement throughout the writing process of this thesis.
I would like to thank Ahmet Bağlan, Murat Kartal, Nilsu Abay and Yunus Yılmaz, for gratuitous friendship, moral and material support. They have always been there for me whenever I felt down and hopeless during this academic adventure.
Last but not least, I would like to thank Yekta Yağmur Öztürk for her loving and caring companionship and her unconditional support throughout this process.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ... 1
CHAPTER 1: THEORY OF FEAR: CULTURE OF FEAR IN LIQUID TIMES .. 6
CHAPTER 2: CULTURE OF FEAR IN CONTEMPORARY BRITISH DRAMA ... 42
CHAPTER 3: ECONOMIC FEAR IN ZINNIE HARRIS’ HOW TO HOLD YOUR BREATH ... 60
CHAPTER 4: FEAR OF TERRORISM IN DENNIS KELLY’S OSAMA THE HERO ... 84
CHAPTER 5: FEAR OF THE UNKOWN IN ALI TAYLOR’S OVERSPILL .... 114
CONCLUSION ... 132
BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 137
ÖZET ... 143
ABSTRACT ... 145
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INTRODUCTION
Fear today has acquired a new perspective arising from the uncertain, insecure, and ambivalent atmosphere of the current modernity. Technological developments alongside pollution, uncontrolled climate changes, and fatal viruses have led to
‘prophecies’ about the future of the world, apocalyptic narratives of the doom of human beings, scaremongering, the threat of worldwide terrorism, etc. On looking at the condition of humankind in the 21st century from a sociological perspective, people now live in a constantly changing environment ‘fed’ with evolving fear narratives. Although it is not a newly introduced phase of life, it has gained momentum especially after the 9/11 terrorist attacks which have led to an increase in the spread of fear narratives and the entrenchment of fear.
Fear and liquidity are among the most influential factors of the contemporary era that shape communities and people’s lifestyles. Having such a broad impact on the formation of their lives it is unavoidable to witness its impacts on the stage concerning the bond between the theatre and the society. Therefore, in Contemporary British Theatre, it is possible to see the traces of the culture of fear. In Rewriting the Nation:
British New Writing, Aleks Sierz groups the themes that shape the contemporary new writing. In the book that encompasses plays from the contemporary British Theatre, Sierz highlights main topics that playwrights make use of in parallel with the realities of current times. Global roaming, fear atmosphere, prophecies about war, terrorism and war on terror, market dynamics, economic problems, asylum seekers, etc.
Zygmunt Bauman (1925-2017), one of the most influential sociologists of the contemporary era, describes the current situation of the 21st century modernity as liquid since in this phase of the modernity nothing remains as it is, almost nothing maintains its form or structure for a longer periods of time as in the past when solidity of the
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structure or the concepts was considered to be more important. In this liquid modern era that is governed by uncertainties, insecurities, ambivalences, everything has become harder to control due to their slippery and changing states. Because of these uncertainties, fear finds itself a rather suitable environment to feed upon and reach out larger swathes of social lives. In order to define the current situation of modern society that is encroached by these terms, the sociology professor Frank Füredi (1947 - ), extrapolating on Ulrich Beck’s term “risk society,” uses the phrase ‘culture of fear’.
Füredi closely analyses the term ‘fear’ that has always remained in the background of sociological arguments. In sociology, ‘risk' had greater importance before fear acquired its current condition. Although risk and fear are closely related terms, researches about fear remain weaker in comparison to the researches and analyses on the topic of risk. In his article “The Only Thing We Have to Fear is the Culture of Fear Itself” Füredi states that “[t]hough sometimes used as a synonym for risk, fear is treated as an afterthought in today’s risk literature; the focus tends to remain on risk theory rather than on an interrogation of fear itself. Indeed, in sociological debate fear seems to have become the invisible companion to debates about risk” (1). Having acquired the form of culture, fear has become one of the most important factors that shape society and social behaviours. Thus, fear becomes a provider for society to carry out their daily lives, a resource, and a guide into which people seek refuge.
In a globalised world, similar to economic relations, fear and terror have also become globalised in the sense of their impact on the lifestyles of many communities.
As Füredi puts it in his book How Fear Works: Culture of Fear in The Twenty-First Century, people were previously afraid to voice their fears to avoid being labelled as
‘cowards’, today they feel free to talk about it without being subjected to such labelling.
The previous repression of fear has vanished in the contemporary era; however, the ease in revealing people’s fearful condition has also made it possible for fear to crawl into
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the daily lives of contemporary men and women without ado. Talking about fears is a positive thing but conversely this prompts people to disposition to attach their fears easily to the things they are inclined to avoid. Being able to discuss their fears easily individuals are accustomed to this narrative. As a result, the normalization of fear has emerged and paved the way for the normalization and banalization of the fear. Thus, fear permeated into individuals’ lives and internalised by the community from which it emerged, becomes a part of the cultural script. In relation to this internalization of the fear, Füredi in his article “The Only Thing We Have to Fear is the Culture of Fear Itself” states that:
Fear plays a key role in twenty-first-century consciousness. Increasingly, we seem to engage with various issues through a narrative of fear. You could see this trend emerging and taking hold in the last century, which was frequently described as an ‘Age of Anxiety’1. But in recent decades, it has become more and better defined, as specific fears have been cultivated. (1)
Although the ‘specific fear has been cultivated' this does not help humanity to have control over the fear itself. In the 21st century, fear has begun to progress due to the uncertainty and constantly changing the atmosphere that emerged out of the liquidity of modernity. For this reason, the culture of fear resides within the liquid modernity, it resides in it; the ambivalent, uncertain and insecure atmosphere of the liquid modernity feeds it. Thus, the liquid modernity and the culture of fear have a mutual relationship and they support each other. In his book Liquid Fear, Zygmunt Bauman states the following regarding the definition of fear:
Fear is at its most fearsome when it is diffuse, scattered, unclear, unattached, unanchored, free-floating, with no clear address or cause; when it haunts us with no visible rhyme or reason when the menace we should be afraid of can be glimpsed everywhere but is nowhere to be seen.
1 Influenced by the Age of Anxiety poem by W. H. Auden, this term is used to refer to the 20th century because of the condition people of that time were in because of the economic recessions, depression after the world wars.
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‘Fear' is the name we give to our uncertainty: to our ignorance of the threat and of what is to be done. (1)
These effects of the atmosphere created by the culture of fear atmosphere are not only limited to the level of the individual and society but also are also observable in the arts.
As factors shaping contemporary societies, liquidity, and culture of fear are also reflected in the artistic representation. Within the scope of observing these reflections on the stage, Amelia Howe Kritzer in her book Political Theatre in Post-Thatcher Britain states that “Theatre’s most basic political potential lies in its paradigmatic relationship to the polis2: within the theatre's space, assembled citizens view and consider representations of their world enacted for them in the immediacy of live performance" (1). Everything that is staged by the playwrights and dramaturges are the reflection of the modern society. Therefore, it is inevitable that the elements of fear, terror, uncertainty, and insecurity observed in contemporary plays are the reflections of the society’s current condition observed and analysed by Füredi's culture of fear that emerged within Bauman's concept of liquid modernity in the contemporary world.
The aim of this thesis is to show that fearful and quasi-dystopic elements of the British theatre results from the influence of the culture of fear and liquid modernity.
These elements are now ubiquitous in every aspect of the lives of modern men and women. In a sense contemporary era is subjugated by their rules and perspectives change and evolve in compliance with them. Fear have become the most dominant factor in the daily lives of the individuals and it is so imbedded to their life that instead of conquering it, people of the contemporary world have become its subjects. In order to observe the effects and representations of the culture of fear in a liquid modern world the plays of Zinnie Harris’ How to Hold Your Breath (2015), Ali Taylor’s Overspill (2008) and Dennis Kelly’s Osama the Hero (2005) of contemporary British Theatre will be analysed since these plays provide dominant elements of the current atmosphere, and
2 Greek, a city-state or a society characterized by a sense of community (Merriam-Webster)
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these are; economic fear, fear of terrorism and fear of the unknown. In this respect, the first chapter will provide background information regarding the theory of fear and the culture of fear. By such means, in the second chapter British Theatre will be localized within this theoretical framework and the effects of liquidity and the culture of fear will be highlighted. Within this context, Zygmunt Bauman’s Liquid Modernity, Liquid Fear and Frank Füredi’s book How Fear Works: Culture of Fear in The Twenty-First Century which make up the main theoretical focus of this study will be examined.
In chapters three, four and five; the plays of Zinnie Harris, Dennis Kelly, and Ali Taylor will be analysed within the context of liquid modernity and the culture of fear to examine their effects and reflections on these plays. The effects of economic change through globalisation/negative globalisation and the consequent effects of fear will be analysed in Zinnie Harris’ How to Hold Your Breath which portrays the dramatic downfall of two sisters: Dana and Jasmine. In Osama the Hero, the analysis will be focused on Dennis Kelly’s reflection of a society overwhelmed by the fear of terrorism, its highly disruptive effects and the way he shows how this narrative of fear creates a safety-obsessed people inclined to achieve it at all costs with shock tactics reminiscent of In-yer-face theatre. Lastly in Ali Taylor’s Overspill, the elements of uncertainty and obscurity in a fear-ridden society and the emergence of a phantom enemy from the eyes of three close friends will be analysed.
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CHAPTER 1: THEORY OF FEAR: CULTURE OF FEAR IN LIQUID TIMES
‘Peur toujours, peur partout’ (Lucien Febvre)3
The emotion of fear has long been an inseparable companion of human beings in their journey of evolution through the ages, enabling them to survive this far. The fear present in the early stages of this journey emerged as a vital instinct to make them aware of the dangers in their environment. Therefore, it had a positive contribution to this evolution. However, due to the changes experienced and that are still being experiencing in the contemporary age regarding people’s lifestyles, it has undergone drastic changes in the sense of turning into a somewhat disruptive feeling, altering its previously helpful and benefitting side. That notion of fear has evolved into something that should be avoided, something that has a restrictive force and a negative effect on humanity. The main contributor to this change is the new dynamics and perspectives emerged in the contemporary era. However, this change did not happen all of a sudden, its background dates back to the first half of the 20th century. Humanity had already been surrounded by the elements of fear at the first half of the 20th century due to economic uncertainties emerged in the United States and spread globally. The cause of these uncertainties was The Great Depression which “began after the stock market crash of October 1929, which sent Wall Street into a panic and wiped out millions of investors” (history.com). Due to the unregulated functioning of the stock market it reached to a point of no return. Then the stock market crash happened on October 24, 1929. Since “everyone from millionaire tycoons to cooks and janitors poured their savings into stocks” the scope of this crash was immense (history.com). Consequently:
3 ‘Fear always, fear everywhere’
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[t]he average citizen, frightened and pessimistic about his or her economic prospects, stopped buying non-essential goods; spending dropped by 20% in 1930. This, in turn, drove down demand for consumer goods and more businesses began to fail. Unemployment rates doubled.
(encyclopedia.ushmm.org)
In return, it created a nation-wide panic due to these economic downfalls. Furthermore, as the United States was a central part of the economic system this crisis could not be contained and spread to Europe creating ever-more fearful atmosphere in the global scale.
All these uncertainties, economic concerns, unemployment rates, looming poverty and desperate situation of the governments in power back then, prompted people to seek a way out. In this regard, it would not be misleading to quote that “[t]he Great Depression, of course, had created the perfect environment—political instability and an economically devastated and vulnerable populace—for the Nazi seizure of power and fascist empire building” (Britannica.com). In this domino effect, in order to escape this catastrophic environment and its consequences, people of Europe, especially of Germany, preferred to choose the most resolute solution for their destitute. Thus, it paved the way for Hitler seizing the power and starting another world war. Although the Great Depression was not the only responsible element for Hitler’s seizing the power in Germany, it can be construed from the dynamics that shaped the ‘30s environment that the Great Depression was helpful in the creation of such an atmosphere. In this regard this economic catastrophe played an important role in the history of humankind as an economist John Maynard Keynes stated in his book Unemployment as a World Problem in 1931:
We are today in the middle of the greatest economic catastrophe—the greatest catastrophe due almost entirely to economic causes—of the modern world. I am told that the view is held in Moscow that this is the last, the culminating crisis of capitalism and that our existing order of society will not survive it. Wishes are fathers to thoughts. But there is, I think, a possibility—I will not put
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it higher than that—that when this crisis is looked back upon by the economic historian of the future it will be seen to mark one of the major turning-points. (3)
In terms of its economic and social consequences, it was a rather important ‘turning- point’ in the history of modern men and women. In terms of social changes, it created an immensely vast field for fear to develop feeding on people’s economic fears. It changed people’s way of life and economic concerns becoming an inseparable part of their lives. For this reason the famous inaugural speech of the President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt is very important in the sense that it captures the mood of that time and addresses the worries of the people of the United States:
I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impel. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days. (archives.gov)
It can be construed from his speech that fear became an issue to be addressed and to be solved. Fear of fear was addressed as a foremost threat to the people’s well-being just as the fear that the 21st century individuals have in almost every sphere of their lives. As a result of the aforementioned incidents, new form of fear introduced itself into the minds of modern people.
Considering the fear present in today’s society, especially in western societies, it is evident that contemporary people are dispositioned to avoid it and anything that is related to fear because of the new perspective acquired in 20th and 21st century. Because acting in fear is harmful as they learned from the Great Depression. Therefore, if there
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is to be a fearful condition ahead, modern people have grown to think that the best course to tackle with this fear is aversion lest it would cause damage to their well-being as it did previously.
Before it attained its recent form, fear had been regarded as a feeling that had both bad and virtuous aspects. For instance, in biblical sense fear of God is one of seven gifts as mentioned in the book of Isaiah 11:1-2. In book of Job 28:28 ‘fear of the LORD is wisdom', in Book of Proverbs "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge"
(1:7), "Better is little with the fear of the Lord than great treasure and trouble therewith"
(15:16), "The fear of the Lord is the instruction of wisdom" (15:33). Foremost, fearing the Lord is a virtuous act within the moral context endowed with religion. It was not something that had well-nigh negative traits as it has today, but an organizing notion.
Previous rules of feeling, which provided people with religious or philosophical guidelines about how and what to fear, helped endow the experience with meaning. Fear back then had positive and beneficial connotations as well. However, the important thing was to ensure a balance in the amount of fear the people breed against certain incidents. In essence, considering the biological and social layers of the fear, it is evident that it has its own uses and benefits to have some kind of fear. Acting in accordance with fear had positive effects as well. For instance, in Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle makes a distinction between two different ends of fear that are Tharsos and Phobos4. In order to highlight the perspective of fear ascribing it both positive and negative qualities with the aim of obtaining a balanced attitude between the two ends.
According to him, one must exceed neither in tharsos nor in phobos for it results in impetuousness and cowardness. In this sense, individuals have to maintain a balance and should disregard neither of the two sides. In contrast to that balancing view, contemporary people are inclined to being fearful to avert all possible dangers that
4 Tharsos means meticulousness and phobos stands for fear in the sense that one feels against something unknown.
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would threaten their well-being. In relation to Aristotle’s analysis, considering the current attitude towards fear it is evident, as it will be analysed in the following paragraphs, that modern people have lost that vital equilibrium between the two ends of fear sinking deep into the side of phobos.
Before dealing with the lost balance between the two ends of the fear, it would be helpful to understand the development of fear in human mind. When human consciousness started to develop, people have endeavoured to give meaning and tried to understand their surroundings. They ascribed meanings to both material and immaterial things since naming things is to have a control and to be familiar with the surroundings.
In consequence, this process of naming things enabled them to get rid of the feeling of the unknown that bred the fear of the unknown. In relation to knowing through naming and dealing with the fear of the unknown Bauman states, “[w]e fear what we can’t manage. We call that inability to manage ‘incomprehension’; what we call
‘comprehension’ of something is our know-how for tackling it,” and adds “[w]hat we are not able to manage is ‘unknown’ to us; and the ‘unknown’ is frightening. Fear is another name we give to our defencelessness" (Liquid Fear, 94). In this sense it is appropriate to conclude that knowing and naming is interrelated and when a discrepancy occurs in this relation the fear of the unknown emerges.
Susan Rako, in her article “The Power of Naming” regarding the early childhood development and speech acquisition states, “[g]iving something a name makes it real, as well as something that can be communicated about. This is a constructive achievement”
(psychologytoday.com). Robin Wall Kimmerer, Professor of Environmental and Forest Biology at the State University of New York College, in her book on mosses and her journey on the way of knowing and understanding how mosses live and their connection with the nature points out:
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In indigenous ways of knowing, all beings are recognized as non-human persons, and all have their own names. It is a sign of respect to call a being by its name, and a sign of disrespect to ignore it. Words and names are the ways we humans build relationships, not only with each other, but also with plants. (Gathering Moss, vii)
In this respect, it can be construed that in order to be confident in their surroundings and to cognize what is happening around them people named things thanks to the medium of language. Progressively, they evolved to acquire a mental apparatus to process and discern the environment in which they are living. Their consciousness is shaped through this process and everything around them are connected to this language driven consciousness. The linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf in his study of the language states:
… [T]he forms of a person's thoughts are controlled by inexorable laws of pattern of which he is-unconscious.
These patterns are the unperceived intricate systematizations of his own language--shown readily enough by a candid comparison and contrast with other languages, especially those of a different linguistic family.
His thinking itself is in a language--in English, in Sanskrit, in Chinese. And every language is a vast pattern-system, different from others, in which are culturally ordained the forms and categories by which the personality not only communicates, but also analyzes nature, notices or neglects types of relationship and phenomena, channels his reasoning, and builds the house of his consciousness.
(web.stanford.edu)
Within this ‘house of consciousness’ an individual is able to comprehend and give meaning to his or her surroundings. Through this medium of language and the cognitive process one can try to internalise the world in which he or she is living. The more he or she understands the environment, the less fearful he or she becomes.
The most important phase during this cognitive process took place when they were able to name but unable to comprehend a phenomenon, an object they encountered in their environment or a feeling arising out of the encounters they had with the former ones. The unknown in their cognition grew in power, in response and being unable to
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cognize, these unknowns prompted them to fear and to devise certain means to deal with them since the presence of an unknown thing or a phenomenon foster the anxiety.
In this regard, it would be befitting to quote R. Nicholas Carleton’s definition of the unknown in his review “Into the unknown: A review and synthesis of contemporary models involving uncertainty”:
[a]n unknown is the perceived absence of information at any level of consciousness. Per that definition, the unknown is a foundational and necessary core component of several closely related words and constructs such as uncertainty, novelty, unfamiliarity, and strange. (31)
Therefore, in order not to have an unknown or to know that unknown object, human beings developed frontal cortex through thousands of years of evolution. However, the fear arising out of the unknown is the product of the limbic system as pointed out by Dr.
Gail Brenner. He states, “fear comes from the limbic system, a more primitive, animalistic part of the brain that drives basic survival” (gailbrenner.com). In this regard fears that prompted first humans to devise certain manners to deal with them were of a primitive origin. This was an attempt to grasp those unknown phenomenon within the scope of their primitive mental faculties. Consequently, out of this alien and fearful disposition, they seek some kind of a shelter, a place to retreat and to overcome their fears. “Attempts to increase perceived predictability and controllability serve as coping responses for fear of the unknown and IU5, as well as efforts to mitigate potentially aversive consequences” (Carleton, 32) . Within the scope of this argument, as opposed to modern means to deal with the fear of the unknown, it would not be misleading to state that primitive minds’ attempts to deal with the unknowns or give meaning to them precipitated the birth of taboos, totems, myths, rituals, etc. As the Roman poet Lucretius said that “[f]ear was the first thing on earth to make gods” (“Lucretius Quotes”), they
5Intolerance of Uncertainty
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created their gods. Peter Harrison refers to Democritus in his book and comments as follows:
Democritus is said to have suggested that men became frightened when the sky thundered, imagining gods to be the causes of such phenomena. Correlated with this theory was the corollary that the study of nature disabuses man of his erroneous beliefs concerning the causes of various natural phenomena. (15)
In relation to this argument that people created gods out of fear, French sociologist Èmile Durkheim argued that the primitive people formed their beliefs and ways of thinking as par by their cultural spheres in relation to their nature; therefore, the creation of the gods should not be wholly perceived as merely the response to the sources of fear and anxiety in nature instead it includes a much more complex structure.
Therefore, in order to understand the formation of religion one must treat it as real for it stems from the endeavour to make sense of the reality6. This did not only give them the means to construe their nature and the order of things but a sense of being, faith and energy to carry on and endure the phenomenon which were beyond their cognition at that time (Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life). Religion in their sense was not very much different from the modern-day science since through their myths, rituals, and cults they took a step to interpret the order of things around them. In addition, Durkheim claims that religion is a product of social origin. Therefore, in correspondence with this close relation between religion and society, the two becomes in separable from one and another. From the most basic totemic, animistic beliefs to complex religious structures, it is evident that the moulding aspect of cultural beliefs and religion has played a vital role in the formation and the continuation of the descendant societies. In this sense, the narrative of fear introduced itself and became
6 Emile Durkheim criticises the person who does not regard the religion from the perspective of a believer and he resembles him a blind man saying, “[h]e who does not bring to the study of religion a sort of religious sentiment cannot speak about it! He is like a blind man trying to talk about colour” (The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, xvii).
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ubiquitous in every sphere of the religious beliefs since it is one of the most basic modes of emotions inherent in humankind as a drive to urge them to act in accordance and to devise certain manners to overcome as the most powerful element. Accordingly, this mode of fear was internalised and passed down in this cultural way of crystallisation it became rooted in the social structures of the subsequent societies. Out of lack of knowledge and out of fear they created their beliefs and around it they influenced their morality. Fear of God became a primary factor in the formation of a functioning society. For instance, regarding the importance of having a belief in God, Füredi states “in the renaissance era it was recognised that ‘an elite of philosophers or statements’ had a right to ‘private unbelief’, but this view coincided with the consensus that people who did not fear God could not be trusted” (How Fear Works, loc. 825).
Furthermore, in a recent research about the trend in the way people regard the connection between the morality and belief in God suggests that “[i]n 22 of 39 countries surveyed, clear majorities say it is necessary to believe in God to be moral and have good values. This position is highly prevalent, if not universal, in Africa and the Middle East” (“Worldwide, Many See Belief in God as Essential to Morality” 2015). In this respect it is rather clear that the faith in God proves to be of importance in relatively religious communities since it was perceived that if a person lacked belief in God that eventually would mean that this person could act in a socially corrosive way for he or she had no inhibitions that were of divine origin which were considered the most powerful and authoritative because they were supposed to be imposed by the “God almighty”.
From the beginning of the domination of Christianity onward until the age of reason, fear was mainly regarded as a religious virtue that held people away from committing ‘sins’ against the god. Through this moral grounding, people had been able to maintain some level of order within their societies. Because religion in addition to
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having the role of leading people to salvation and a blissful afterlife, it functioned as a guidebook for their behaviours they tried to figure out what was morally right or wrong in the way that it was grounded by the religion. Although the connection between morality and religion is open to discussion and includes many disputes it would constitute a completely vast sphere to debate that is out of the boundaries of thesis, it would be useful to focus on the complex religious systems that would demand a moral order for maintenance.
To return to topic of fear, the fear of God and consecutive dogmas in this regard, within the scope of primordial mind of the humankind, came into being as a result of the formation of religions out of the need to have a mental apparatus to deal with the unexplainable events and problems people had is of an organising aspect. Then, these dogmatic views evolved to create a better functioning society since fear was, and it still is, considered to be the most powerful emotion to maintain an order. In this regard, as a branch protruding from the domain of religion, the fear of God urges people to act in accordance with the moral norms of their religion that are embraced by their society. In a time where the class of clergy had a very notable status and held the power thanks to the inspiration of religion, the fear in those times rooted in moral grounds. However, with the secularism introduced by modernity in place, this perspective lost its previous influence over the members of a society. Even the churches in the west commenced bringing forth modern approaches to adapt the demoralised concept of fear. Füredi explains that many of the Christians in the late 19th century were not comfortable with the concept of the fear of God. In addition to that, “significant constituency of Christian thinkers sought to depict their religion as one of love rather than of fear” (How Fear Works, loc. 935). Since people have started to perceive fear as a sickness and avoid anything that is attributed with fear. The wave of change began with rational thinking and that has affected the way fear is perceived. In relation to fear’s detachment from the
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moral ground of religion Füredi in his article Fear Today highlights, “[w]ithout the clarity offered by moral guidance, fear has become a problem in its own right. Detached from a system of meaning, fear signals the absence of safety and security—that is all.
Safety has assumed the status of a moral good that trumps all others” (frankfüredi.com).
Thus, contemporary fear took its current potentially disruptive form.
Under the influence of the secular thought and scientific mind, many theologians attempted to change the notion of fear previously induced by the Christian faith. This was carried out in order to adapt to the changes introduced by this new wave of thought since it could diminish the number of believers within their community. As Füredi quotes from the Reverend Archibald Parsons “[he] cited the Chief Medical Officer of one of England’s large asylums, who claimed that the ‘three prime causes of mental unbalances are alcoholism, venereal disease and fear’ and ‘the most prolific of the three is fear’” (How Fear Works, loc. 1042). Once used to achieve an order among the members of a faithful society, the clergy understood that, by the light of recent developments happened in the field of psychology, it would be rather difficult to use fear as a tool to create a morally earnest society for it had lost its virtuous aspect.
Therefore, they resolved to abide by these changes.
Considering the role of fear in maintaining an order, in Plato’s The Republic, 3rd book, it is seen that in a dialogue Socrates explains the power of the fear of death and the importance of positive illustration of the underworld in order not to scare ‘boys and men’. Concerning Homer’s horrifying depictions regarding the world of Hades, he states:
[W]e must beg Homer and the other poets not to be angry if we strike out these and similar passages, not because they are unpoetical, or unattractive to the popular ear, but because the greater the poetical charm of them, the less are they suitable for the ears of boys and men who are meant to be free, and who should fear slavery more than death.
(Book 3)
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Here there is an attempt to reconstruct the corrosive effects of the fear of death for people, especially for the soldiers. Fear in the form of the fear of death must be diluted or wiped out so as not to disrupt the courage in people. Within the perspective of Socrates' argument, it is possible to deduce that fear here resembles the fear that emerged in the 20th century in the sense that both have a powerful influence. Through the modifications made to the fear, new forms of it have acquired useful purposes for the ones in control. The fear Socrates talks about had a manipulating aspect – manipulating in the sense that the amount of it could be used to highly benefit from it – and is and should be used by the authority to maintain the order among the fighting men. Today fear as a whole has become a tool at the hands of scaremongers to keep societies under their control to execute their political agendas.
The change has been the most prevalent slogan of the last two centuries.
Although scientific and technological developments have been great assets to humanity, they have had their negative aspects as well. In addition to the changes that took place in the field of positive sciences, new discoveries made in the field of social sciences gave the modern fear its new form. To elaborate the significance of the developments happened in the psychology that were too immense that the churches found solution in changing their fear narrative as it was dictated by psychology. The new findings about the human psyche marked the first step of change in the evolution of the concept of fear.
Among the most notable discoveries, Sigmund Freud’s (1856-1939) researches and his findings regarding human psychology played a fundamental role. In order to define fear in psychological grounds, he makes a distinction between fear and anxiety in his book
“A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis” part three “General Theory of Neuroses”, arguing that “anxiety is used in connection with a condition regardless of any objective, while fear is essentially directed toward an object. Fright, on the other hand, seems
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really to possess a special meaning, which emphasizes the effects of a danger which is precipitated without any expectancy or readiness of fear” (bartleby/283). In this work, he discusses that anxiety does not need any object; it attaches itself to the unknown, whereas fear requires an object to hold on. Extrapolating on Freud's discussion about fear and anxiety, Füredi, in relation to the contemporary culture of fear states the following:
The frequency with which twenty-first-century fear is interlinked with expectations of threats that are not yet seen or known indicates that it is not always useful to distinguish between fear and anxiety. In practice, anxiety about the unknown reinforces the public’s concern about specific threats and habituates it to fear. When society is habitually drawn towards worst possible outcomes it fosters a mood where fear can acquire the character of a habit, the acquisition of which endows fear with a banal and casual character. (loc. 433)
Freud's findings have been very useful in the sense that they are convenient in defining modern age mental problems and finding a way to deal with them; however, in addition to the other contributors of modern psychology, it paved the way for the demoralization of fear. Today people are able to identify what is beneath their craven fears. Once they are defined, most of their fears appear solvable by means of scientific methods. Apart from being able to ‘overcome’ their fears, the notion of being on the lookout for threats, impending dangers, proliferate the fear of fear because fear now has acquired a disease- like feature. Therefore, due to the scientific grounding of fear, fear was stripped off from the moral roots it had before the age of modernity.
Separating fear from the timeworn or useless moral grounds, ‘useless' within the perspective that was brought by the age of science since, did not enable humanity to dispose of it completely as Bertrand Russel had hoped that it would. In his, essay "Why I Am Not a Christian” he claims that “science can help us, to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations” (596). Unfortunately, his optimistic
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vision did not come true and instead of overcoming this ‘craven fear’, humanity ventured deeper into that fear and let it spread even more. In relation to this fact, Füredi states:
The weakening hold of religion and the loss of cultural valuation for the fear of God did not mean that society had become more fearless. All that happened was that the manner in which people feared altered, as did its focus and character. Deprived of religious legitimation, fear lost much of its moral bearing. The most dramatic indicator of this trend was that the fear of God was increasingly displaced by an unfocused, and therefore confusing and often meaningless, force: the fear of fear itself. (loc. 919- 930)
When the fear of fear itself has taken control it has acquired a self-propelling status, reaching every corner of daily life. As Scott Bader suggests, disordered and excessive fear fosters shadow virtues like suspicion, pre-emption, and control. Building on the
“virtues” like this, the fear grows ever more at an unprecedented speed and without control since these notions feed each other and upon themselves leading to other fearful incidents.
Carlo Bordoni points out “[i]n addition to religion, there is an endless series of beliefs, rituals, customs, patterns, and traditions connected to instinctive fear and which help to keep it under control” (State of Fear in a Liquid World, 5). In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life Emile Durkheim explains that this internalisation of myths, rites, customs as a way of primitive people’s attempt to produce a supportive emotive force that could help them live their lives less dreadfully. Men and women in their primordial epoch conjured up images, personifications related to their social conjuncture to make “them enter into us and blend into our inner life. To achieve this, it is not enough that we think about them; it is indispensable that we place ourselves under their influence, that we turn ourselves in the direction from which we can best feel that
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influence” (419-420). The purpose of this action is to help them live their lives.
Durkheim clearly explains this notion from the perspective of the believer:
The believer who has communed with his god is not simply a man who sees new truths that the unbeliever knows not; he is a man who is stronger. * Within himself, he feels more strength to endure the trials of existence or to overcome them. He is as though lifted above the human miseries, because he is lifted above his human condition.
He believes he is delivered from evil—whatever the form in which he conceives of evil. The first article of any faith is belief in salvation by faith. (419)
In relation to what Füredi and Bordoni pointed out, Durkheim plainly summarises the influence of religion on a given society and the connection with it: religion has a vital role for it could offer an internal device for resistance. However, when these influences and their emotive powers introduced with religion were all dissipated relentlessly with the scientific discoveries – in a quest to lead a life free from primitive beliefs and dogmas to enrich people’s capacity to know and to destroy the primordial fears – fear escaped this prison. Therefore, within the scope of scientific developments, psychology and psychoanalysis encouraged a new perspective towards the concept of fear in order to understand it, to figure out what lies beneath this emotion resembling the explanations brought by science regarding the natural phenomenon that were once interpreted by means of myths and other tales. This new perspective, in Füredi’s words, led to the ‘demoralization of fear’ since fear acquired the condition of sickness losing its connection with the morality and virtue. In this phase, fear has undergone drastic alterations in the sense that it is perceived. Füredi claims that the demoralization of the fear, stripping it from its foundations greatly affected the behaviours of individuals.
Considering this, he writes:
Previous rules of feeling, which provided people with religious or philosophical guidelines about how and what to fear, helped endow the experience with meaning. The new psychologically informed rules of fear that emerged
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in the interwar era, treated this emotion as a threat to people’s wellbeing. (loc. 1121)
As a result, the blueprints based on the older moral beliefs, traditions were left away, and the new approach under the guidance of psychology was embraced. Under the influence of the modern psychology people in 21st century have started to regard previous rules of fear as outdated and incompatible to their secular thought and due to the fact that the fear is considered as a threat, in this regard, they have begun to avoid anything that can be associated with fear, in other words anything that is suspicious, uncertain and ambiguous.
Füredi resembles the western society’s decoupling their fears from their moral grounds the events took place in Peloponnesian War. During the war when the sense of authority is shattered, people abandoned their civilised states. When the plague broke out nothing of the moral or civic codes remained only the fear of death was their main drive in their desperate way to escape this catastrophe. In relation to this event, he explains the way Romans established the concept of auctoritas associating morality with the authority to maintain a functioning society both influenced by the morals and authority7(“Fear Today”). Authority in the sense of auctoritas did not mean sheer force of power instead it signified moral authority. Considering the contemporary western societies, under the influence of secular, scientific, and liberal thought, members of the society are very much inclined to question the authority and the majority of the population are cynical of it. The figures of authority in order to overcome this suspicious stance of the society have to support their agendas with evidences, outside
7 In this regard, it is important to point out Edward Taylor and Edward Spencer’s arguments about the connection between religion and morality as summarised by Rodney Stark. He simply points out that
“[b]oth Taylor and Spencer believed that the connection between religion and morality was a mark of cultural progress-that it was something to be found in the religions of more "advanced" peoples” (622).
Within this scope, the connection between the morality and religion I hinted on in this part is because the focus of this analysis is centred on the western society and it is of a civilised and possesses an
“advanced” character in the sense that was mentioned in the extract. Therefore, since Stark's refutation of the connection between morality and religion based on Taylor and Herbert's findings exclude
advanced societies and their religion, this topic is left untouched.
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sources and etc. In relation to this, Füredi argues that “[i]n the absence of authoritative guidance, fear takes on an irrational and atomized character. Fear that is unrestrained by communal norms has a corrosive and disorienting impact on community life” (“Fear Today”). Carlo Bordoni states that “[t]he problem of our time, of this “liquid” society that has now lost its reference points and its ethical principles, marked by centuries of civilisation, is the condition of living in a continuous state of emergency” (State of Fear in a Liquid World, 23). Having all the reference points of older morals lost – and all these established moral norms were crystallised and embedded into human mind over the course of more than thousands of years during the process of the evolution of humankind – humanity have acquired avoidance behaviour and in a liquid environment such as ours, where uncertainty and ambivalence are let loose, they are encouraged to be on the lookout all the times in order to identify the threats and avert the possible dangerous outcomes. However, this does not require anyone to live in a never-ending misery of fear, instead, people internalise this situation resulting in the banalisation of the fear. This was an attempt to adapt to the new dynamics of human life emerged within a relatively short period of time in contrast to the formation of the previous norms. Furthermore, as Bauman argues that living in liquidity is to accept the certain uncertainty of the tomorrow. Thus this “means a daily rehearsal of disappearance, vanishing, effacement and dying; and so, obliquely, a rehearsal of the non-finality of death, of recurrent resurrections and perpetual reincarnations…” (Liquid Fear, 5).
In order to avoid contemporary threats, people construct various cultural strongholds within their modern societies. Bordoni explains the reason of these
“constructs” as positions to defend against the “complex and fearsome” fears evolved in parallel with the evolution of humankind. According to him, all kinds of social structures that provide a space to stay away from certain threats function as protective bases. "These fears did not stop at the construction of mighty bastions to defend against
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natural impending threats that afflict humanity’s fragility and finiteness but contributed to creating new threats and reasons for new and unprecedented fears” (Bordoni, 5).
Thus, the accumulation of contemporary fears has begun, in a well-nigh uncontrollable environment. No matter how hard they try, they are not able to escape from the self- propelling progression of contemporary fears. As everything changes, fears change too.
It resembles a fight against ever-changing and constantly mutating bacteria and viruses that are also among the many contemporary fears of us. In effect, the cultural script of fear has been seriously revised and reframed owing to the new language of psychology.
What could once be construed as a virtue now has evolved into a quasi-malady state that should be avoided permanently and at all costs. Consequently, this creates the fear of fear as stated before. Now, the fear is able to feed itself and it has acquired a very competent form to move freely within the ever-expanding spheres of this liquid modern life.
Contemporary fear is demoralised, but as Füredi claims, although the fear response is of a psychological one, it is mediated through moral norms. However, since this is the modern times where the scientific mind is praised, resources for fear are rationalised by means of scientific methods, empirical evidences, analysis etc. In the 21st century, the authority of science prevails, and it justifies the caveats by means of underlining the power of their scientific evidence. Granting that the scientific evidence confirms fear appeals, most of them adopt moral exhortation to promote their objective.
Still, this does not save people from the trouble of finding a decent perspective to place their fear in. Without the moral context due to the process of demoralisation, people begin to perceive that ‘the moral order' has become fragile. According to Füredi, "a moral order refers to the deep structures of moral life through which people and their community make sense of their circumstances' (loc. 1796). Thus, a moral panic has emerged urging people to exaggerate any kind of a threat and left them in constant fear.
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Therefore, Füredi states, “the disorienting influence of the culture of fear in the twenty- first century can be attributed to the separation of fear from a moral grammar of meaning” (Loc. 918). Hence, this demoralisation merely serves to the proliferation of the volatility of fear as it constantly changes its meaning lacking a ‘master narrative’ to encompass them all. In this volatility, stemmed from the conditions of the liquid modern environment, various forms of fear perspectives emerge from every nook and corner due to moral uncertainty.
The increased speed of change due to technological advancements brought many positive outcomes as well as risky and ambivalent results that gradually made their way into the fear perspectives of contemporary people. The developments that took place in the fields of robotics, artificial engineering, and bioengineering can be listed among the fearful topics of the current time. All sorts of discoveries made in these fields raise more doubts about the future and people’s ability to control these newly introduced changes.
Henceforth, Füredi argues that “rapid pace of change promoted by constant scientific and technological innovation and globalisation has created a variety of potent risks whose consequences are impossible to know or calculable” (How Fear Works, loc.
502). Consequently, people are dispositioned to avoid everything that can be risky. The virtue of taking risks has lost its meaning as an act of bravery and courage or as an action of common sense in particular settings to say the least. Under these modern circumstances, risk avoidance behaviour in the contemporary world is praised as opposed to risk-taking. Because, as Füredi explains, in the present-day society, people who are willing to take risks without proper foreplaning are not welcomed, due to the perspective provided by the science of risk assessment. Diving into the risks and uncertainties is considered as a foolish deed and irresponsible behaviour because it is regarded as an act of defying the guidance of the science that is the one and only guide
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of modern man8. Thus, the association of fear with risks settles down onto the life of modern men and women furthermore prognosticating the fearful look at every possibility.
Apart from the contributions made by psychological advancements to the demoralisation of fear and to the spread of the culture of fear as well, scientific discoveries as a whole have prompted the fear of future and of incomprehensible new information. On looking at the history of humanity it evidently stands out that the fear of future or fearing particular things that might happen in the future is as old as the conscience of humanity. Hence, through this process, people have begun to feel like that they are losing their grip on their authority over the knowledge in the sense that they would no longer able to predict the future possibilities correctly or control and they feel incompetent to use the newly discovered findings to their benefits. Therefore, they have developed an inclination to stay away from the potential perilous outcomes of the aforementioned scientific developments as much as they can. Bauman points out in Liquid Fear regarding the incalculability of the outcomes of future risks; “the most awesome and fearsome dangers are precisely those that are impossible, or excruciatingly difficult, to anticipate: the unpredicted, and in all likelihood unpredictable ones” (11) . Thus, the fears of modern men and women have become crystallised. Since everything has become almost ‘unpredictable’, people lost themselves in this sea of uncertainty. All these changes are happening too fast and the control over them is receding away rather quickly. On the other side of the reality of the culture of fear, there is the unprecedented speed of the scientific developments as well. Although witnessing increased amounts of
8 For instance in his book Füredi gives various examples from parenting to taking a stance against the climate change. Modern day families are bombarded with precautionary ‘scientific’ evidences about how to raise a child. If parents are to act in disregard of these risks aversive narratives, they are named irresponsible, insensible. In terms of environment people who act ignorantly experiences the same fate as the former ones. Out of this stance considering the scope of behaviours within the scientific
evidences people indirectly form another type of moral without the religious elements and act in accordance.
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developments may sound quite positive and can herald a better future, the institutive feeling that people have acquired due to the fear of fear, modern men and women have grown to think that they lack the capacity to control the discoveries being made and hence become the preys to the culture of fear. Cutting-edge technology, breath-taking discoveries are being scattered in front of individuals almost on a daily basis. However, humanity, for now, is not able to keep up with the pace of these developments.
Generally, humanity is losing its control once it had over the knowledge. About this issue, Füredi states:
It often appears that the passing of time and the meaning of change continually expose the limits of the state of human knowledge and science. The constant refrain that we live in an era of unprecedented change often serves as a prelude to calling into question the value and status of human knowledge. (Loc. 1462)
Within this overwhelming speed of the discoveries, people feel that as if they will not be able to catch up with them. The excerpt mentioned here signifies the lack of trust that people have regarding their knowledge. Any form of scientific findings, be they already discovered or to be discovered, urge people to refrain from the unknown. In the fostering of a culture of fear, knowledge plays an important role as well, because:
Knowledge also assists people to engage with the future because it helps convert uncertainty into probable outcomes, which can be grasped as a calculable risk.
Conversely, a loss of authority of knowledge excites the sensibility of uncertainty and inflates society's fear of the future. The devaluation of knowledge endows uncertainty with stability and leads to its dramatization. In turn, the dramatization of uncertainty turns it into a frightening and incomprehensible. (Füredi, Loc. 1481-1490)
Under these circumstances, it becomes clear that individuals are losing faith in their long-time guide ‘knowledge’, or at least, fear that it might not be as helpful as it used to be. About the current condition of human knowledge where individuals are sceptical about their ability to keep up with the pace of the speed of the discoveries, in his article on Financial Times, Peter Marsh concludes that “[i]t appears that – for all the level of
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technology change and interest in the power of engineering to create radical shifts in how the world works – the ability of humans to make sense of it all may not be increasing at the same rate as innovation activity overall” (ft.com). The belief that knowledge can conquer the unknown and clear the uncertainty is now receding away from people.
Fear of fear is now very active in almost all levels of social life. In addition to its de-motivational influences, it is also very useful for the power holders to dwell on its usage to meet their domestic or international political agendas. This gives rise to the scaremongering in politics affecting social lives. This narrative involves the use of every bit of fear to scare people into submitting to governmental politics. Since fear has permeated into the lives of people and have become one of the most influential drives, scaremongers have been doing very fine with their horror stories. In a demoralized context, fear has also become a tool that can easily be manipulated and is highly effective in terms of guiding people's actions. In the sense of manipulation and carrying out policies to keep up with their political agendas, it would be helpful to look at the election campaigns of political leaders. For instance, a phrase called Project Fear was coined during two referendums, the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum and the 2016 UK Referendum on EU Membership, to deter electors from voting for separation and leaving the EU. In his article “Brexit Armageddon Was a Terrifying Vision – but It Simply Hasn't Happened” about Brexit regarding the negative perspective and doomsday narratives, Larry Elliott briefly states what was stated by the opposing side about this issue as following; “[u]nemployment would rocket. Tumbleweed would billow through deserted high streets. Share prices would crash. The government would struggle to find buyers for UK bonds. Financial markets would be in meltdown. Britain would be plunged instantly into another deep recession” (Elliot, 2016). In his article, Elliott, using analytical statistics and values, proves that none of these claims by the
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doomsday promoters is reasonable and valid in general. Barry Glassner in his article
“The Future of Fearmongering”, points out the ‘three techniques’ of fearmongering as follows; “repetition, trend claiming, and misdirection” (183). Utilizing these narratives, opposition parties tried to gain the electorates' votes in their favour. Although they could not obtain any significant gain from such politics, the existence of such narratives confirms the reality of fearmongering providing benefits from the actual fears of a given society, and there are people still believing or acting in accordance to such politics lest their fears would become true.
In addition to the aforementioned features of fear, there is another important aspect about it, and Bauman describes this as “‘second-degree’ fear” (Liquid Fear, 3), Hugues Lagrange characterises this kind of fear as ‘derivative fear’[1]. Bauman in his book Liquid Fear explains that:
‘derivative fear' that guides their behaviour (having first re-formed their perception of the world and the expectations guiding their behavioural choices) whether or not a menace is immediately present. Secondary fear may be seen as sediment of past experience of facing the menace point blank – sediment that outlives the encounter and becomes an important factor in shaping human conduct even if there is no longer a direct threat to life or integrity. (3)
From this extract, it can be extrapolated that the derivative fear people have today is the fear shaped by the experiences they had and still have in modern times. The changed perspective towards fear, handling the fear within a psychological framework; the altered global dynamics, new economic conditions, terrorist attacks, changing economics and fears arising from within; insecurity, uncertainty, and ambivalence spread owing to negative globalisation, and they all have an active role to form a base for ‘derivative fear’, empowering the contemporary fear reign all over the lives of individuals. As it is in the nature of derivative fear, people being constantly exposed to the narrative of fear tend to perceive the future from the perspective of their past fears.
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In addition to this, in his book How Fear Works, Frank Füredi states that “[t]he troubles of the past, and the stories that are transmitted about them, continue to influence the human imagination” (loc. 423). This builds up the cultural script of a given society, and this script includes various kinds of fear narratives, such as ‘fear of war’, ‘fear of economic insecurity, ‘fear of fear’ etc. Within the context of this thesis, it corresponds to the cultural script of western societies.
On looking at today’s cultural script that is being shaped by various factors as can be seen from the former paragraphs, it is evident that there are many elements to support this alteration. Because they are bred within the current condition of the modernity in which modern people live. Considering recent times, humanity is living in an environment that is constantly on the move and always changing. To describe the contemporary modernity more precisely, the late sociologist Zygmunt Bauman used the phrase ‘liquid modernity’. In his book, Liquid Modernity Bauman states that “[t]he society which enters the twenty-first century is no less ‘modern’ than the society which entered the twentieth; the most one can say is that it is modern in a different way” (51) emphasising his reasoning. As a prefix, post- gives a meaning of ‘afterness’ to the word it modifies, however, considering the contemporary period described with the prefix
‘post- ‘, it does not possess this quality; there is no complete disconnection of its prequel.
The modernity observed in recent times creates liquidness in the sense that Bauman argues. ‘Solids’9 that had existed long before, gradually gave their places to their new, liquefied, quick-changing versions. The solid concepts that existed within the old modernity, provided societies of the 20th century the ability to control their environment, problems, and community. However, the quest of freeing humanity from
9 With this metaphor, Bauman refers to the solid concepts that existed before. These were the solid norms and concepts regarded valuable for a functioning society; such as traditional and religious bonds, rooted economic structure, feudal system, etc.
