Joseph Tanke
Today, discussions of anxiety reinforce the idea that one is dealing with a pathological medical phenomenon, particularly since much of the discourse is informed by the naturalized perspective of neurobiology. My book endeavors to show why anxiety is a problem for philosophy and, in particular, for a critical social philosophy concerned with human emancipation. As modern European philosophers attest, anxiety is the place where individuals struggle with questions of embodiment, freedom, and what it means to be in relation with others. To pose these questions concretely, however, one must understand the social context in which they are formed. Accordingly, my book is an analysis of the regime of subject formation specific to the period of capitalist intensification known as neoliberalism. “Neoliberalism” designates the historical process by which market-based logics colonize ever more aspects of human life. From this perspective, I argue that anxiety is the body’s non-conscious awareness of the fact that it is overtaxed by new forms of value extraction.