Philosophy of Antifascism

Devin Zane Shaw teaches philosophy at Douglas College, Canada. He is author of Egalitarian Moments: From Descartes to Rancière (2016) and Freedom and Nature in Schelling’s Philosophy of Art (2010). He writes about philosophy, political theory, and social movements and co-edits the ‘Living Existentialism’ book series.

For too long mainstream philosophy has been content to imagine itself a neutral observer, acting as if it is the voice of reason by demanding tolerance, rational debate, and passivity in the face of the most abhorrent excesses of capitalism and colonialism. In response to such liberal accommodationism, endemic to philosophy departments and their gendarmes, Devin Zane Shaw’s A Philosophy of Antifascism is refreshing in its call to renew the tradition of philosophical militancy. Through his rigorous engagement with De Beauvoir, Sartre, Fanon, Rancière, Du Bois, and many others including movement scholars, Shaw provides us with a taxonomy of fascism and anti-fascism demarcated from liberalism. In doing so he demonstrates that philosophy does not have to resemble the snooty “give them an argument” attitude that leads to philosophers sharing platforms with reactionaries under the misapprehension that they can debate away monstrous political and ethical commitments. Rather, Shaw returns us to that radical tradition of philosophy that has no problem with isolating, marginalizing, and deplatforming those who would seek to annihilate thought itself. A Philosophy of Antifascism thus joins a growing body of literature produced by a new generation of philosophers that refuse to accept the way in which the mainstream representatives of their discipline have collaborated with reaction.

• Table of ContentsAcknowledgements§1. A Philosophy of Antifascism§1.1. The Three-Way Fight§1.1.1. Demarcating Antifascism and Liberalism§1.1.2. Demarcating Antifascism and Fascism§1.1.3. Settler-State Hegemony: Liberalism and White Settlerism§1.2. Towards a Philosophy of Antifascism§2. The Ethics of Ambiguity and the Antinomies of Emancipatory Violence§2.1. Existentialism is an Antifascism§2.2. Ambiguity and Solidarity§2.2.1. Beauvoir’s Cartesian Egalitarianism§2.2.2. Beauvoir’s Critique of Marxism§2.3. The Antinomies of Action§2.3.1. Discourse and Disagreement§2.3.2. The Antinomies of Emancipatory Violence§2.4. Vengeance, Violence, and the State§2.4.1 An Eye For an Eye§2.4.2 “I had my own Martyrs” §2.5. The Three-Way Fight and No-Platforming the Far Right§3. Politics That Does Not Command§3.1. Demarcating Egalitarianism§3.2. Politics Against the Police§3.3. Disagreement and Command§3.4. Why Fascism Isn’t Politics§4. Punching Nazis§4.1. The Reason f