The Logic of Abstraction: Towards a Critical Interpretation of Posthuman Fascism

Abstract

The paper problematizes fascism through the distinction between its exoteric reading —which includes what we refer to as twentieth-century ‘militant Marxism’— and an esoteric reading grounded in the logic of abstraction and rooted in Critical Theory. While the marxist exoteric interpretation identifies fascism as a counterrevolution articulated through class and oriented toward halting proletarian organization and, ultimately, proletarian revolution, the esoteric approach holds that its core lies in the historically specific form of capitalist domination constituted through value and its convergence with fetishism, reification, and real abstraction, all of which structure subjectivity in late capitalism. This shift makes it possible to understand why, in the absence of revolutionary movements, contemporary sociopolitical configurations emerge that no longer necessarily require mass mobilization or an openly terroristic state. Contemporary —posthuman— fascism manifests itself in the management of superfluous lives, social desensitization, algorithmic culture, and the channeling of social malaise into essentialized identities. By situating these dynamics within the terrain of real abstraction, the article argues that a theory of fascism appropriate for the twenty-first century must depart—taking into account both the continuities and discontinuities with its most consolidated twentieth-century European form—from a critique of the capitalist social form in its totality, rather than from the mere political instrumentalization of crisis.