The distinction between reason and unreason, a tenet of Enlightenment thought, sustains the universal appeal of liberal democracy, but leaves unexamined the paradoxes that haunt modernity, particularly its colonial foundations, thus obscuring the continuities between imperial policies and fascism. A recent book, The White West: Fascism, Unreason, and the Paradox of Modernity (Sternberg Press, 2024), contends that without confronting the structuring force of race in the production and reproduction of global wealth disparities, fighting for reason only leads to flawed utopias in which a critique or disruption of capitalism is easily inflected in the direction of neofascism.
In conversation with cultural theorists Ana Teixeira Pinto and Anselm Franke, using their collected volume as a point of departure, Clio Nicastro and Agata Lisiak will critically unpack the ongoing processes of fascisization in Germany and beyond, reflecting on how the most recent political developments have affected, or possibly challenged, their theorization of fascism. Interrogating fascism’s genealogies and legacies, we will also contemplate possible ways forward, outside myopic and harmful frameworks of universality.