The White West

Fascism, Unreason, and the Paradox of Modernity

Kader Attia, Anselm Franke, Ana Teixeira Pinto

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English

Sternberg Press
21 May 2024

Colonialism & imperialism; Fascism & Nazism; Picture books

"Ever since neofascist movements began to surge across the globe, liberal commentators have tried to put a name to what they are defending from these illiberal ideologies. The consensus is reason or rationality-after the Second World War, mainstream scholarship has supported the view that adherence to fascism is a thing of unreason. This 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 foundation, thus obscuring the continuities between fascism and imperial policies.

The White West 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. This collection of writing by leading historians, theorists, and scholars is an attempt to engage the overlaps between philosophical predicates and colonial legacies, as well as the undertheorized continuities between fascism and settler colonialism.

Contributors Larne Abse Gogarty, Norman Ajari, Ramon Amaro, Sladja Blazan, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Donna V. Jones, Nitzan Lebovic, Olivier Marboeuf, A. Dirk Moses, Rijin Sahakian, Nikhil Pal Singh, Kerstin Stakemeier, Felix Stalder

Tracing the relation between fascism and settler colonialism.

In the aftermath of World War II, the recently liberated nations in Europe were swift to resume colonial oppression abroad. On May 8, 1945, the day victory was celebrated by the Allies, the French police massacred hundreds of townspeople in Setif, leading the French editor Claude Bourdet to ask, ""Are we the Gestapo in Algeria?""

In Europe, what is called ""fascism,"" poet Aime Cesaire argued in his famous essay ""Discourse on Colonialism,"" is just colonial violence finding its way back home. In White West, contributors challenge the Eurocentrism that undergirds the current concept of fascism, tackling the under-theorized relation between settler colonialism and National Socialism via the ""proto-totalitarian"" scene of colonial expansion and its racialized concept of personhood, in order to counter the antipolitical nature of a concept such as the West, and the resurgence of fascist doctrines this notion engenders.

Contributors

Norman Ajari, Florian Cramer, Angela Dimitrakaki, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Quinsy Gario, Larne Abse Gogarty, Rose-Anne Gush, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Sven L tticken, Olivier Marboeuf, Rijin Sahakian, Nikhil Pal Singh, Fran oise Verg s, Marina Vishmidt, Giovanna Zapperi"

Edited by: Kader Attia, Anselm Franke, Ana Teixeira Pinto
Imprint: Sternberg Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 211mm, Width: 145mm, Spine: 23mm
Weight: 458g
ISBN: 9783956795336
ISBN 10: 3956795334
Pages: 248
Publication Date: 21 May 2024
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Ana Teixeira Pinto is a writer and theorist, based in Berlin. Kader Attia is a French/Algerian artist and the founder of La Colonie, an institution devoted to decolonial theory.