Organized by Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou (University College London) and Chiara Bottici (New School) What do the worlds of global finance and nationalist populism have in common? How can we understand the rise of today’s ‘new fascisms’ through the prism of financialization? This one-day workshop brought together scholars from across disciplines to debate these key questions for our understanding of contemporary capitalism. The workshop took place on February 21st 2019; it was part of Public Seminar’s Imaginal Politics initiative and was organized jointly with the Department of Social Science, University College London.
In the third panel, speakers focused on the psychoanalytic resources at our disposal for unpacking the role of uncertainty, anxiety, sexism and racism in mass-mobilization. Eli Zaretsky (New School) threw some light on the collective identifications and (ir)rationalities that gather fascist crowds around the figure of Trump. Chiara Bottici (New School) demonstrated the historical continuities of fascist propaganda and mobilization, drawing on Adorno’s essay on freudian theory to discuss the libidinal bonds offered by dominant narratives of decline and rebirth. Jamieson Webster (Psychoanalyst, DU) discussed the growing role of melancholia as a mode of knowing and as a new dominant form of violence in global capitalist order.
