With Ana Texeira Pinto and Felix Stalder
Moderation Sabeth Buchmann
Where: University of Applied Arts, Vienna,
When: 11 June 2025, 18:00

Since the election of far-right leaders like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, liberals have tried to put a name to what they are defending from these illiberal heads of state. “Reason” is what most commentators often settle for. But haunting their formulations is the specter of a paradox: The distinction between reason and unreason sustains the universal appeal of liberal democracy but leaves unexamined the Enlightenment’s set of inconsistent claims––all human beings are equal; some human beings can be justly owned–– as if it were the last gasp of a premodern order, instead of the expression of a distinctively modern one: the role of race in the production and reproduction of global wealth differentials.
The White West: Fascism, Unreason and the Paradox of Modernity is an attempt to engage the overlaps between metaphysical predicates and colonial legacies in order to answer the fundamental question: What must remain unspeakable for Western representations of reason and liberty to “sustain their power of universal reiteration in contemporary political theory”?[1]
[1] Barnor Hesse, “Escaping Liberty: Western Hegemony, Black Fugitivity,” Political Theory 42, no. 3 (2014): https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591714526208.
The Academy of Fine Arts and the University of Applied Arts Vienna invite you to two events with writer and cultural theorist in connection with the Launch !
Ana Teixeira Pinto
Oh Man! Aggrieved Masculinity, Silicon Valley and the new Far-Right
Lecture
Where: Atelierhaus der Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Wien (Semperdepot),
Mehrzwecksaal, 1. Stock
Lehargasse 6-8, 1060 Wien
When: Thursday, June 12 2025, 18:00
Fascism, Unreason and the Paradox of Modernity
Book Presentation
Where: Seminar Room 20, Vordere Zollamtstraße 7, 1030 Vienna, Angewandte
When: Wednesday, June 11 2025, 18:00
A cooperation between the Studio for Art & Time | Media at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna and the lecture series “In Light of Recent Events” by the departments of Painting, Transmedia Arts, Art & Knowledge Transfer and the Institute for Collection & Archive at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.