LIAS Foucs Week: Book review and discussion: Alberto Toscano’s “Fascism as Life Form” and Its Contemporary Culturalisms
16. Jan
This event is open to everyone interested!
Thursday, 16 January 2025, 4-6pm
Location: Leuphana Campus | C40.704
Language: English
Book review & discussion in English with Danny Hayward (LIAS Artist Fellow) & Kerstin Stakemeier (AdBK Nürnberg, LIAS Associate Fellow)
Alberto Toscano’s book Late Fascism (2023) is a significant contribution to debates on the relationship between fascism, capitalism, race and gender. Reconstructing fascist ideas around time, death and myth, it also approaches the question of the plural anti-fascisms, questions of desire, and the relationship between defensive and utopian politics. “On a more optimistic note”, Toscano writes “that progressive or liberal reforms may appear to racists and reactionaries as signs of a communist dystopia that is almost already here could also be interpreted as the distorted recognition of utopian traces that demand to be blasted out of the continuum of reformism.”
This discussion of the book, led by Kerstin Stakemeier and Danny Hayward, will address the question of cultural expressions of fascism in the present. We will talk about what it means to think about fascism as a “life form”, as mimesis, and about anti-fascism as method and look at the Art Right, as an example of how fascism’s white supremacy translates into the designated sphere of aesthetic imagination.
The event can be attended without registration. If you want to prepare for the book discussion, please write an email to event.lias@leuphana.de to receive a text for reading.