Nidesh Lawtoo : '(New) Fascism and the Mimetic Unconscious'

The Philosophy and the World Out There lecture series will resume shortly (online). The series features talks by HIW researchers and professors that address today's challenges, with ample room for discussion.

(New) Fascism and the Mimetic Unconscious
Fascism tends to be relegated to a dark chapter of European history, but what if new forms of fascism are currently returning to the forefront of the political scene? In this talk, Nidesh Lawtoo takes his recent book, (New) Fascism (2019) as an occasion to step back to theorists like Nietzsche, Le Bon, and Freud in order to diagnose the dynamic of crowd behavior, identification, and affective contagion that casts a shadow on the digital age. Donald Trump and the storming of the Capitol on January 6, will be considered as a case study to illustrate Nietzsche’s untimely claim that, one day, “ ‘actors,’ all kinds of actors, will be the real masters.” In the process, new concepts internal to the ERC-funded Homo mimeticus  project like the "mimetic unconscious" and hypermimesis" will be used to account for the power of  new media to reload (new) fascist psychology in the digital age.

Event URL

• Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89267209610?pwd=TEZYbklhUFdHbHA5R3lrU0c1bklzdz09
• Meeting ID: 892 6720 9610 // Passcode: 2x3UjK