Join us at e-flux on Tuesday, September 9, for a lecture and in-depth conversation with Dagmar Herzog about her new book The New Fascist Body, released by Wirklichkeit Books. Herzog will be in dialogue with Jonas von Lenthe, Wirklichkeit Books Founding Editor.

The success of new far-right movements cannot be explained by fear or rage alone; the pleasures of aggression and violence are just as essential. As such, racism is particularly intense when it is erotically charged—migration presenting as a sexual threat to white women being one of many examples. Germany’s strikingly successful right-wing political party Alternative für Deutschland is, according to the historian Dagmar Herzog, characterized by this “sexy racism.” Combined with an obsessive hostility to disability, these constituent elements resonate strongly with Nazism. In The New Fascist Body, Herzog connects her analysis of fascism’s libidinous energy with its animus against bodies perceived as imperfect. Only by studying the emotional and intellectual worlds of past fascisms can we understand and combat their current manifestations. The book features an afterword by Alberto Toscano, author of Late Fascism: Race, Capitalism and the Politics of Crisis (Verso, 2023).

Dagmar Herzog is Distinguished Professor of History and the Daniel Rose Faculty Scholar at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her many books include The Question of Unworthy Life: Eugenics and Germany’s Twentieth Century (2024), Cold War Freud: Psychoanalysis in an Age of Catastrophes (2017), and Sex after Fascism: Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany (2005).

Jonas von Lenthe is the founding editor of Wirklichkeit Books, Berlin. Recent publications include Hierarchies of Solidarity by Moshtari Hilal and Sinthujan Varatharajah and the German translation of Enzo Traverso’s Gaza Faces History.

For more information, please contact program@e-flux.com.

Accessibility—Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.—For elevator access, RSVP to program@e-flux.com. The building has a freight elevator that leads to the e-flux office space. Entrance to the elevator is nearest to 180 Classon Ave (a garage door). We have a ramp for the steps within the space.—e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom. There are no steps between the event space and this bathroom.

Time: 7:30 pm EST

Free!

Registration