Alberto Toscano
Late Fascism: Race, Capitalism and the Politics of Crisis
London & New York, Verso, 2024

We turn to fascism. Toscano writes:

“Fiercely, viciously identitarian, fascism also evades exhaustive identification. It repeats, but with differences, scavenging the ideological terrain for usable materials—not uncommonly from its antagonists on the left. It can flaunt its relativism while trading in absolutes. And for all its Cold War association with the hyper-statist logic of totalitarianism, it breeds its own forms of pluralism and its own visions of freedom. My wager has been that it is possible to think cogently about the elements of fascism as an anti-emancipatory politics of crisis without equating theory and definition, avoiding the checklist of tell-tale features or the streamlined schedule of the steps to fascist victory.”

Schedule

Unsettled Subjects met to discuss reading this book between May and August 2024

21 May Preface and Chapter 1: Out of Time

4 June Chapter 2: Racial Fascism and Chapter 3: Fascist Freedom

18 June Chapter 4: A Phantom with Limbs of Steel; Chapter 5: Rushing Forward into the Past

2 July Chapter 6: Ideas Without Words; Chapter 7: Cathedrals of Erotic Misery

16 July Conclusion