What Fear Does to Feminist Engagement
In contrast to common meanings that associate fear with reflexes such as flight, inhibition or demobilization when it comes to activism, this article examines how fear can sometimes stimulate the engagement of feminist activists. Situated at the crossroads of "actionist" approaches (Bernard, 2017) to emotion, sociology of social movements and feminist sociology, the proposed discussion is based on 87 semi-directed interviews conducted between 2006 and 2015 across Quebec, and a comparison between feminist circles in French-speaking Switzerland and Quebec through 31 interviews conducted in 2018 and 2019 in these two regions. Taking into account the macro, meso and micro levels of the analysis, the study focuses more specifically on the contrasting effects of fear on feminist engagement according to the positioning of responded in social relations of race, class and sexuality, but also in relation to the origins of fear (intra or extra movement), its degree of intensity, its interactions with other emotions (including anger) and emotional work (Hochschild, 2012) of the feminists interviewed. The article thus paints a portrait of the causes of fear among feminists and then analyzes the most recurrent emotional sequences in order to highlight various emotional combinations and their effects on feminist engagement.