Fear in the 21st Century: U.S. cultural anxiety and the psychology of stress

Abstract

In the 21st century, narratives circulating throughout a variety of societal landscapes emphasize the danger the country's populace faces. This creates an overall stressful environment, with the result often manifesting itself in bigotry that seems to resist facts. For instance, the racism undergirding President Trump's Muslim ban continues to persist, despite an availability of information indicating Muslims aren't any sort of meaningful threat. This dissertation examines how underexamined fear narratives affect cultural discussions like the War on Terror, social media, gun violence, and the January 6th riot in Washington DC. In analyzing texts across politics, entertainment, journalism, and academic scholarship, I illustrate how fear operates in both explicit and subtle ways. As I argue, this results in a variety of cultural discussions where people opt for the 'comfort' of well-cultivated fear tropes instead of engaging with complicated societal concerns. Myriad fear narratives (of which I analyze just four) work together to ensure people are always reminded of the danger they're in. The collective fear, as a chronic source of stress, then lessens the likelihood of any one fear association disappearing. This means that trying to address prejudice of varying types, as humanists frequently do, is a losing proposition and explains why people often seem to ignore facts. In drawing upon psychology and neurology, I further the fields of American studies and affect theory in explaining how an understanding of human physiology helps explain these contentious arenas. I argue we need a theory of fear that builds upon established scientific research and presents a roadmap for addressing both individual fear discourses, and how they function together in the aggregate.