Anxiety and the Re-figuration of Action: Living in a Crisis-Shaped Present

Abstract

This chapter considers Alfred Schutz’s notion of “anxiety” to analyze phenomenologically the disturbing experience of living in a crisis-shaped present, showing how the ongoing restructuration of societies by globalized capitalist activity generates unintended consequences, which are disclosed as irreversible threats to life on Earth. The resulting crisis constellation impacts on the whole biosphere and permeates our affective environment. The focus then turns to the work of affect theorist Lauren Berlant to concentrate upon the unfolding of event as an “impasse” that opens out into anxiety. Particular attention is given to the role of common-sense assumptions in relation to the “relevance” structures which guide the subject’s expectations and commitments in life. I conclude by revisiting contrasting views on anxiety and the “fear of death,” considered more as a problem of time-consciousness than an existentialist predicament, and undertaken more as a “shared readiness” to transcend the boundaries of former assumptions than a lonely awareness of the eventuality of one’s mortality.