Conference from 28-Nov-2024 to 01-Dec-2024
Casa de Filosofía – 1623 La Paz St.
Montevideo – Uruguay
Foucault presents Anti-Oedipus as an “Introduction to the Non-Fascist Life”, a book of ethics −not of morality.
The Non-Fascist Life? Naming it thus has the advantage of neither reducing nor fixing it within a single form of life. As such, one of its most remarkable traits is to refrain from becoming enamored with power. Its “Non-” distinguishes itself of being “in opposition to”. But what kind of negation is this?
In view of the equivocal nature of the word “fascist”, of its generalized and vague use, our attempt will be to problematize it, without intending to reach a consensus. Fascism, whilst its relationship to totalitarianism will need to be problematised, is not restricted to its counter-revolutionary historical forms in Italy or Germany. Nor to dictatorship. Far from being static, it is constantly changing.
Fascist forms of subjectification of power relations also take place in democratic regimes. They proliferate and contaminate not only the State and political parties but also the spaces one would least expect it to. We would like to examine every form of fascism we can experience in communities that fight against the current state of things. Be it the forms that inhabit our bodies and habits, the fascination for domination or the desire of the very things that keep us in a state of subjugation. As such, the question arises as to how to avoid both examination of consciousness and self-blaming crusades.
It is urgent to think of types of individual and collective actions in order to face what subjugates us, given that no subjection is either everlasting or infallible. We seek to think of non-fascist strategies and forms of life that increase our own power, that save us from succumbing to sadness and that create forms of complicity.
Complicity that we attempt to build with anyone who might want to conspire, who puts the current world into question, wherever he or she might be −since there are cracks in every wall.
Which are, then, the non-fascist languages, practices, gestures, values, eroticisms, sensibilities? What’s the role of autonomy, utopia, hospitality, oddkin, the relationship with other species, friendship, freedom, solitude, desertion, anonymity, party, memory? How would a non-fascist philosophy or politics, art, science, clinic or psychoanalysis be? In what ways is fascism related to identity, class, sex, race, thought, desire and the unconscious? What kind of non-fascist life experiences take place in different cultures? How does neo-fascism relate to sovereignty, and the logic of capitalism? Is it still useful to distinguish fascism from microfascism, and how?
Considering not only these coordinates, that situate what forces us to think today, but also the resonances that they might cause, we make a call to participate −individually or collectively− in the creation of a space of encounter between multiple and heterogeneous ways of thinking, feeling, struggling and living. In order to allow for new ways of being in the world whilst respecting differences in the creation of new bonds and affinities.
We invite those
who resist the capture of new questions by old answers;
who situate themselves within a relationality that is not limited to the human or the subject form;
who venture into storms and open skies;
those who expose themselves to generate a new field of possibilities;
those who risk themselves to staying with the trouble.
Call for papers, workshops, film forum, performances, installation art…
Deadline for submissions: 15 September 2024.
Contact: vidanofascista@protonmail.com