Karolina Wigura

My project seeks to investigate the presence and articulations of fear in Poland, Ukraine, and the former GDR in the years after the democratic breakthrough of 1989. In particular, I shall focus on the following questions: is there a common nature of fear in those three countries, due to the long-time rule of totalitarian/authoritarian, brutal regimes, still present after 1989? What are the ways in which fear is articulated in the public sphere and employed in the political arena? And how does this relate to patterns of habituation and to attempts at canalizing that fear?