Dread: The Dizziness of Freedom

Dread: The Dizziness of Freedom reflects on possible re-articulations of the concept of dread in our times. Associated with the dizziness of freedom by Soren Kierkegaard, and with the ecstasy of nihilism by China Mieville, the experience of dread is a defining characteristic of the contemporary human condition, and–according to the contributors to this volume–an essential and potentially productive emotion. However dark and fatalistic its connotations, through its dialectical coupling of caution and transgression, of paralysis and overdrive, dread allows us to imagine the world differently. Through conversations with and essays by some of today’s foremost cultural commentators, this book explores the creative agency of dread–an agency that is created by the very forces wishing to suppress or even destroy it–as well as its politics and related conceptions of fear and anxiety.