Speakers:

Ana Teixeira Pinto
Neither Left Nor Right?

Before it became a political force, Zeev Sternhell argues in his seminal work The Birth of Fascist Ideology, fascism emerged as a cultural movement. Though this movement was composed of eclectic –and at times contradictory– elements, it cohered around the disdain for decadence. This talk will look into the ongoing ‘cultural wars’ and the moral panics they engender to argue that current debates, across the political spectrum, are saturated by partial truths and contradictory elements that only neo-fascist movements are able to reconcile.

Dr. Ana Teixeira Pinto is a writer and cultural theorist based in Berlin. She is a guest professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg (AdBK) and a theory tutor at the Dutch Art Institute. Her writings have appeared in publications such as Third Text, Afterall, e-flux journal, Manifesta Journal, and Texte zur Kunst. She is the editor of a forthcoming book series on the antipolitical turn to be published by Sternberg Press. Together with Kader Attia and Anselm Franke, she is organizing the conference and podcast series The White West: Whose Universal, taking place at HKW Berlin, and she was a member of the 2022 Berlin Biennial artistic team.

Federica Frazzetta
Is extreme right-wing emulating progressive movements? An insight on some Italian extreme right-wing organizations

In the early 2000s, a new Italian extreme right-wing group, called CasaPound Italia, had squatted a big empty building in Rome. Since that moment, a new phenomenon seemed to spread in Italy: the extreme-right wing squatted social centres. Despite this has been perceived as a novelty, the extreme-right wing emulation of the progressive movements has its roots in the history of the Italian far-right political area after the Second World War, and involves forms of action, tactical choices and organizational forms.

Federica Frazzetta is post-doc research fellow at Scuola Normale Superiore – Florence. She holds a PhD in Political Science and her main research field of interest is the one on social movements and collective action. She worked mainly on LULU movements and Italian extreme-right wing organizations. She is the author of L’onda nera frastagliata. L’estrema destra nell’Italia del nuovo millennio, published by Meltemi in 2022.

Leonie Hunter
Political Comedy Failing, Trying again, Failing again

Looking into the history of ideas, the concept of comedy seems to be a progressive force of political subversion. Strategies of comic doubling hold the power to suspend long lasting relations of power and domination, which explains their ongoing significance for many theories of democracy. And yet, the described structural change of political forces formulates a new challenge for this self-understanding of comic insurrection. How to deal with authoritarian strategies of comic self-immunization, so clownish that they seemingly evade politically effective critique?

Leonie Hunter is a post-doc research fellow at Istituto Svizzero in Rome and a research associate in Practical Philosohy at Justus-Liebig-University Giessen. She studied Political Theory in Zürich, Frankfurt am Main, New York and Paris and holds a PhD in Philosophy. Her research examines the intersection of Aesthetics, Politics and Critical Theory. Her latest publication is In the Sense of Material Reality. Film and Society after Siegfried Kracauer (Berlin: Bertz+Fischer 2022).