Join at e-flux on Tuesday, September 9 at 7:30pm for a lecture and in-depth conversation with Dagmar Herzog about her new book The New Fascist Body, released from Wirklichkeit Books. Herzog will be in dialogue with Jonas von Lenthe, Wirklichkeit Books Founding Editor.

The success of new far-right movements cannot be explained by fear or rage alone; the pleasures of aggression and violence are just as essential. As such, racism is particularly intense when it is erotically charged—migration presenting as a sexual threat to white women being one of many examples. Germany’s strikingly successful right-wing political party Alternative für Deutschland is, according to the historian Dagmar Herzog, characterized by this “sexy racism.” Combined with an obsessive hostility to disability, these constituent elements resonate strongly with Nazism. In The New Fascist Body, Herzog connects her analysis of fascism’s libidinous energy with its animus against bodies perceived as imperfect. Only by studying the emotional and intellectual worlds of past fascisms can we understand and combat their current manifestations.

The book features an afterword by Alberto Toscano, author of Late Fascism: Race, Capitalism and the Politics of Crisis (Verso, 2023).

For more information, please contact program@e-flux.com.

RSVP Here.

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