Deleuze & Fascism : Security: War: Aesthetics - Edited by Brad Evans and Julian Reid @ Routledge, Uk, 13th May 2013

This edited volume deploys Deleuzian thinking to re-theorize fascism as a mutable problem in changing orders of power relations dependent on hitherto misunderstood social and political conditions of formation. The book provides a theoretically distinct approach to the problem of fascism and its relations with liberalism and modernity in both historical and contemporary contexts. It serves as a seminal intervention into the debate over the causes and consequences of contemporary wars and global political conflicts as well as functioning as an accessible guide to the theoretical utilities of Deleuzian thought for International Relations (IR) in a manner that is very much lacking in current debates about IR.

Covering a wide array of topics, this volume will provide a set of original contributions focussed in particular upon the contemporary nature of war; the increased priorities afforded to the security imperative; the changing designs of bio-political regimes, fascist aesthetics; nihilistic tendencies and the modernist logic of finitude; the politics of suicide; the specific desires upon which fascism draws and, of course, the recurring pursuit of power.

An important contribution to the field, this work will be of great interest to students and scholars of international relations, fascism and international relations theory.

Introduction: 

Fascism in All its Forms Brad Evans & Julian Reid 

1. Desire and Ideology in Fascism Todd May 

2. Anti-Fascist Aesthetics Michael J. Shapiro 

3. Oppression Desired: Fascism & the Security Imperative Brad Evans 

4. Movement and Human Logistics: Pre-emption, Technology and Fascism Geoffrey Whitehall 

5. A People of Seers: The Political Aesthetics of Postwar Cinema Revisited Julian Reid 

6. Waltzing the Limit Erin Manning 

7. Politics on the Line Leonie Ansems de Vries

8. Fascist lines of the tokkotai Nicholas Michelsen

9. Fascism, France and Film: Inside-Out -Territorializing Aesthetics in The Raven (Le Corbeau) and Hidden (Cache) Ruth Kitchen

Brad Evans is a senior lecturer in International Relations at the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies, the University of Bristol.
Julian Reid is Professor of International Relations at the University of Lapland, Finland.

"The editors of this superb volume tell us that 'We are all, always,

fascists, of multiple kinds'; the fascism that they speak of, via Deleuze,

is not limited to the exploits of Hitler and Nazism. This is the fascism

of our own time, a fascism that has deepened and extended even since the

time that Deleuze and Guattari penned Anti-Oedipus. This is the fascism of

liberalism itself, the fascism of Kant, of humanism; it is a fascism of

desire turned against itself, of the most basic aspects of power and

authority. The authors of this volume, extend upon, argue with, probe, and

complicate Deleuze's insights about pervasive fascism; through engagements

with western philosophy, science fiction, cinema, Marxism, Foucault, and

many other sources, these authors seek to reproblematize and reschematize

a fascism that we all partake in, a tendency that, in some sense, we can

never fully escape or leave behind. The beauty of this volume is that it

explicitly politicizes an endemic crisis, allowing very diverse frames of

reference (historical, aesthetic, theoretical) to mutually engage and

contest what must be the greatest challenge of the 21st century."
James Martel, San Francisco State University, USA

"When Foucault described Anti-Oedipus as a book for combating the inner fascist in us all his statement was taken at face value and never questioned or investigated. Deleuze and Fascism changes that: it turns Foucault’s claim into a question and problematic and pursues the various lines of flight it opens for us. This is a richly interesting collection of essays with a very serious purpose."-
- Ian Buchanan, Editor Deleuze Studies

Picblog: Francis Bacon's painting