Fear and Retrotopia – Critical Reflections on the Rise of Defensive Emotions in Liquid Modernity

This article critically addresses the contemporary study of what is called
'defensive emotions' such as fear and nostalgia among a number of social
theorists. While it may be true that the collective emotions of fear and
nostalgia (here framed by the phrase of 'retrotopia') may indeed be on the
rise in Western liberal democracies, it is also important to be wary of taking
the literature on the matter as a sign that fear and nostalgia actually permeate
all levels of culture and everyday life. The article starts out with some
reflections on the sociology of emotions and shows how the early interest in
emotions (theoretical and empirical) among a small group of sociologists is
today supplemented with the rise of a critical social theory using collective
emotions as a lens for conducting a critical analysis of the times. Then the
article in turn deals with the contemporary interest within varuious quarters
of the social sciences with describing, analysing and diagnosing the rise of
what is here called 'defensive emotions' – emotions that express and
symbolize a society under attack and emotions that are mostly interpreted as
negative signs of the times. This is followed by some reflections on the
collective emotions of fear and nostalgia/retrotopia respectively. The article
is concluded with a discussion of how we may understand and assess this
relatively new interest in defensive emotions.