ABSTRACT
A RECENT AD FOR A “HOMELAND SECURITY SUMMIT AND EXPOSITION’ BORE THE HEADLINE, “GRAB CENTER STAGE IN A $138 BILLION MARKET.’ Clearly paranoia is a growth industry, and the proliferation of conferences and meetings to discuss its implications is staggering. Since September ii, the nation has been consumed with its “war on terror,” and the lens of fear increasingly diffracts the meaning of everyday life. From the bomb detectors at the airport to the rise in ethnic profiling, to the visa difficulties of the students we admit from abroad, to the Pentagon’s sinister data-mining project under the supervision of Admiral John Poindexter of Iran-Contra fame, to new tics in our private behaviors, the culture is suffused with incitements to anxiety as the media fixates on the imminence of terror.
