in theory | #10 Alberto Toscano

Conversation with
Moritz Gansen | Alberto Toscano

Around the end of June, Alberto Toscano will be in Berlin for the launch of the German translation of his recent book on Late Fascism. Since some of our lives with/in theory have intersected, at one point or another, with Alberto’s, what better thing to do than invite him for a session of our series in theory?

Among other things, we’ll discuss the intellectual ecology of the University of Warwick in the late 1990s and early 2000s, somewhere nearby the (in)famous Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU), then under the direction of the accelerationist Nick Land; the birth and naming of, not unrelated to the Warwick experience, Speculative Realism at Goldsmiths; how to inhabit both so-called French Theory and Historical Materialism; where art and literature become sites of theoretical work; protests and occupations as forms of study; and where to move while late fascism prevails.

Alberto Toscano’s research currently focuses on the politics of authoritarianism and their links to the racial, geopolitical and gendered crises of capital; tragedy as a framework through which to understand collective politics and its discontents; the development of ‘real abstraction’; artistic efforts to represent or ‘map’ racial capitalism; and the revitalisation of a critical theory of political action informed by anti-colonial and anti-racist thought. As the series editor of The Italian List for the Calcutta-based publisher Seagull books, Alberto’s research is also concerned with the translation and reception of Italian literature, literary criticism, and critical theory. He also edits the series Seagull Essays and is a columnist for the political magazine In These Times. He is Associate Faculty at the Brooklyn Institute of Social Research.

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