Alberto Toscano is Reader in Critical Theory and Co-Director of the Centre for Philosophy and Critical Theory at Goldsmiths University, London. He is the author of The Theatre of Production: Philosophy and Individuation Between Kant and Deleuze, and (with Jeff Kinkle) Cartographies of the Absolute. He edited The Italian Difference: Between Nihilism and Biopolitics with Lorenzo Chiesa, and has translated several works by Alain Badiou, as well as Antonio Negri, Furio Jesi and Franco Fortini. He is on the editorial board of the journal Historical Materialism, and is series editor of The Italian List for Seagull Books.
Succinct yet expansively allusive in scope, dense yet highly readable, Fanaticism is a multi-levelled investigation into the role that the idea of the fanatic has played in political discourse. -- Mark Fisher * Frieze * A tour de force in every sense-Toscano wipes the smug smiles off the self-righteous faces of the New Philosophers. -- Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums By the end he has at irrefutably demolished our lazy opposition between rational-moderate liberalism and fanatical religion; while his sorrowful comparison of modern blowhards with the great reactionaries of yesterday is a slyly humorous touch. -- Steven Poole * The Guardian *