Encyclopedia Britannica defines panic as an “acute … disturbance … widespread … failures, feverish … speculation followed by a … crash, or a climate of fear caused by economic crisis or the anticipation of such crisis.” According to a 2016 study by the Marketplace Economic Anxiety Index, 62.4% of Americans describe their primary emotion in regards to their financial situation as “mostly to somewhat anxious.” I was officially diagnosed as bipolar with generalized anxiety in 2007. That same year, the stock market imploded. My manic GAD was an affective analog to the largest systemic failure of neoliberalism in modern times. I want you to know what it feels like in my body. To be sick and tired and constantly on the edge of something sublime. “PANIC becomes us” can be considered as research into alternative modes that push the limits of human affective capacity.

As Spinoza reminds us, one does not know ahead of time the affects one is capable of. Together, we fall into the chaos that rests inside me, inside all of us. We look to the foundations of exploitation, incarceration, and medicalization of Othered bodies within late-capitalism.