The Art of Unsilencing: Research, Testimony, and the Stories We Tell

with Alberto Toscano

DATE: Monday, September 28, 2026

TIME: 7:00pm – 8:30pm, with reception to follow [updated time]

LOCATION: Royal Bank Cinema, Chan Centre

Interwar European fascisms imagined themselves as militant reactions to a decolonial race war that was accelerating the decline of the West. Many of their contemporary epigoni, steeped in nostalgias for imperial White world supremacy, also frame their movements in these civilizational terms. Yet fascism has never been a term easily contained by the relations of domination between “the West and the Rest.” To the contrary, some of the most vital theories of fascism have not just emerged outside of North Atlantic imperial heartlands but have also concerned non-Western regimes and movements. This talk will explore some of these theories, from Tosaka Jun’s account of Japanese “emperor-fascism” to Ghassan Kanafani’s treatment of Arab authoritarian states, from Mahmood Mamdani’s analysis of “neo-colonial fascism” in Idi Amin’s Uganda to Sumit Sarkar’s portrayal of the fascist dimensions of Hindutva. In what sense can we speak of fascisms outside, or even without the West? And how are these fascisms shaped by the changing forms of “Western” (US and European) imperialism?

Presented in partnership with UBC Centre for Climate Justice, UBC Department of Central, Eastern and Northern European Studies, UBC Department of Department of Political Science, UBC Department of French, Hispanic and Italian Studies, and the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts.

The event will be recorded and made available in the coming weeks on our Youtube channel. 

Speakers

Alberto Toscano is the author of Communism in Philosophy: Essays on Alain Badiou and Toni Negri(2025), Late Fascism: Race, Capitalism and the Politics of Crisis (2023), Terms of Disorder: Keywords of an Interregnum(2023), Fanaticism: On the Uses of an Idea (2017, 2nd ed) and Cartographies of the Absolute (with J. Kinkle, 2015). He is the co-editor (with B. Noys) of Georges Bataille’s Critical Essays (3 vols, 2023-) and (with S. Bromberg, S. Farris and B. Skeggs) of The SAGE Handbook of Marxism(2022). He edits the series Seagull Essays and The Italian List for Seagull Books and is a columnist for In These Times. He has translated books by Franco Fortini, Furio Jesi, Alain Badiou, Giorgio Agamben, Gianni Carchia and Antonio Negri. He is Associate Faculty at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, and will be International Chair of Contemporary Philosophy at Université Paris 8 in 2027.

Respondent

Gastón Gordillo, Professor, Department of Anthropology, UBC

Moderator

Carol Liao, Professor and UBC Sauder Distinguished Fellow; Chair, Canada Climate Law Initiative; and Co-Director, UBC Centre for Climate Justice

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Safety

• Masks are encouraged and will be provided at the door.
• If you have cold or flu symptoms, please stay home, rest well, and and watch our event recording when it goes up.

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