ABSTRACT
It comes from a feeling of insecurity, from an abandonment of the god Pan, the fear of seeing all the values in which one has believed, the values on which one has constructed one’s whole life, suddenly collapse-the fear of the void, the fear of innovation. One might say that panic is the total absence of kairos: one finds oneself on the edge of the void without being able to throw positive bridges across it, against it. It is the vertigo of the opening, the terror of creation that confuses the absolute void with the possibility of novelty. Perhaps
panic substitutes today for the fear that Hobbes described as giving rise to the contract of association that provides the foundation for the modern state. In Empire we tried to bring out these aspects. In the fear of man against man there is still, at bottom, a certain longing for peace. For Hobbes, the contract represents political peace. In panic, by contrast, there is no longer even a longing for peace but simply the desire for a certain kind of normality, even if for this reason there must be war. Panic is linked in particular today to new forms of financial organization. It no longer affects only the rich but also the middle class and, increasingly, the working class, which is similarly inclined to gamble the money it has saved for retirement in the stock market. In the United States, for example, the majority of the money invested in mutual funds comes from retirement plans. Financial panic therefore becomes something that is directly related to people’s lives. In the modern period this fear was at the root of the contract with the state. But in the new postmodern and imperial situation in which we find ourselves today, panic is the basis of the demand for imperial authority: everyone wants things to stay the same. And because panic arouses a clear desire to neutralize all sources of conflict, peace itself becomes passive, inactive, submitted to. Perhaps in panic there is even a certain demand for oppression. After all, oppression is rather practical-so long as circumstances are bearable there is no need to take decisions.
