security unconscious (1)*

marcuse:

terrorism / counter-terrorism / intersections with urbanism

responses to terrorist attacks (S11) - - wtc attack supertelevised event … traumatic / taboo … limited analysis (sort of analytical repression)

dual response : 1) legitimate response (safety) : actual protection from danger 2) false response (security) : psychological, perceived danger

“existential insecurity” : pervasive sense of danger, displacement / channeling of typical urban fears (economic insecurity, displacement, fragmentation, fear of other, naturalization of risk, competing values and moralities… nostalgia for primitive ideal / order / community) on terrorism ?

budget : (in)security is now part of big-business, urban security as major industry (with generous government subsidies). media : fox news “terror survival guide” … paranoid concepts trickle to academia… questions not to be questioned … terror becomes fixed unknown

physical / urban effects : control, barriers, fragmentation, checkpoints, chauvinism, restrictive measures (freedom tower is now tower of fear)

class character in the use of terrorist threat (compare response to wtc attack and response to katrina, one symbol/center of power and wealth, the other displaced, marginal, poor and discriminated population). what interests were affected by one and the other?

evaluation of risk : is the risk of (abstract) terror greater than the risk of (concrete) injustice

*scribbles from architectures of fear conferences