Jack Z. Bratich - On microfascism : gender, war, and death

On Microfascism stands out as a uniquely important offering, in which Bratich goes further and deeper than almost every text dedicated to naming and understanding the fascism(s) of today. In this rigorous and righteous book, Bratich rightly insists on the insufficiency of seeing fascism only when it arises in state regime form. Through which subjectivities, practices, hierarchies, and cultural forms do fascistic constellations permeate and grow? Bratichs razor-sharp analysis provides invaluable answers, and in so doing, offers a crucial tool for antifascist praxis.

Natasha Lennard, author ofBeing Numerous: Essays on Non-Fascist Life

On Microfascism is a profoundly original and compelling analysis of fascisms deep roots in Western traditions of patriarchy. By pinpointing the foundational role of the concept of autogenetic sovereignty and charting its many implications for how we live and die, Bratich equips readers with the intellectual framework necessary to wage not only an antifascist struggle, but an anti-microfascist struggle.

Mark Bray, author ofAntifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook

It was hard to miss the wake-up call: fascism is back, no doubt about it, but in the novel formations of a microfascist culture that is directing the contemporary production of subjectivity. Jack Bratich not only undertakes a probing analysis of the mechanisms of the misogynistic, racist death-style of the self-affirming sovereign microfascist subject, but he most importantly proposes a number of welcome responses for living, to paraphrase Foucault, a micro-antifascist life. This book puts its readers on the path to such an art of living.

Gary Genosko, Professor of Communication and Digital Media Studies at Ontario Tech University, Oshawa, Canada

On Microfascism provides crucial insight into the gendered dynamics and libidinal binds of everyday fascisms. In a devastating analysis of the necropolitical drive and militarized infatuations of fascist subjectivity, Bratich highlights the concerted authoritarian desire for the restoration and renewal of white supremacist heteropatriarchy. On Microfascism is a generative companion to such significant and varied studies as Ewa Majewskas and Natasha Lennards writing on antifascist feminism and Klaus Theweleits classic analysis of the misogynistic psychopathologies of the German Freikorps.

Alyosha Goldstein, coeditor ofFor Antifascist Futures: Against the Violence of Imperial Crisis

On Microfascism unpacks the deeply disturbing gender narratives that underskirt our societies and create an insurgent cruelty that corrodes our human relationships. This is an incredible intervention in the crisis we are living through and calls for us to collectively look deeper when responding to the growth of misogynist, white supremacist movements.

Shane Burley, author ofWhy We Fight: Essays on Fascism, Resistance, andSurviving the Apocalypse

Jack Bratich has written a compelling and original discourse on how microfascism presents itself nowadays and how this is imbued with misogyny, the cult of death, and violence in many formswar included. A must-read for all scholars and activists concerned with the historical, political, and social need to understand in time the real nature and the more or less weak signs of the emergent dimensions of this political phenomenon.

Leopoldina Fortunati, author ofThe Arcane of Reproduction: Housework, Prostitution, Labor and Capital

On Microfascism

Gender, War, and Death

Jack Z. Bratich

On Microfascism: Gender, War, and Death

2022 Jack Z. Bratich

This edition 2022 Common Notions

Parts of Chapter 4 (Necrotics: Death and the Microfascist) first appeared in Bratich, J. (2017). Reality wars: Notes on the Homicidal State. Fifth Estate, 399, 3940.

Bratich, J. (2021). Give Me Liberty or Give Me Covid!: Anti-lockdown Protests as Necropopulist Downsurgency. Cultural Studies 35(2 & 3) 257265.

Parts of Chapter 5 (Platforming Micro-Antifascism) first appeared in Bratich, J. (2010). Digital Touch: Craft-work as Immaterial Labour and Ontological Accumulation. Ephemera, 10(34), 303318.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

ISBN: 978-1-94217-349-6 | EBook ISBN: 978-1-94217-361-8

Library of Congress Number: 2021948733

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Cover design by Josh MacPhee

Layout design and typesetting by Morgan Buck

Writing a book on fascism requires an initial nod to the long history of antifascist multitudes. Along these lines, this books direction would not exist without my parents, Milovan and Vasilija Bratic, whose tales of Yugoslav Partisans formed some of my early dispositions.

My fourteen years of living in New York Citys anti-authoritarian and anarchist milieu were indispensable to forming the thoughts herein. An archipelago of radical spaces (16 Beaver, Not an Alternative, Bluestockings, Woodbine, The Base) provided shelters and incubators for thinking and practicing antifascism. Elements and moments of Occupy Wall Street, BlackLivesMatter, and the less visible antifascist resistance in NYC also demonstrated ways to ward off fascisms varying forms. As a zine library staffer and an advisory board member at ABC No Rio, I have seen the successful efforts, both collective and individual (shout out to Steven Englander!), to maintain an organization run on anti-authoritarian, inclusive, and community-oriented principles. Since moving to Philadelphia I have connected with these operationalized values at Making Worlds Bookstore and Social Center.

This books initial ideas came together thanks to Fifth Estates editor-in-chief Peter Werbe, who asked me to write for a special issue of that venerable anarchist magazine. Thank you to Carrie Rentschler for the chance to guest lecture in her McGill graduate seminar Cultural Studies of Political Affects, where students read and generated a fruitful conversation around that essay. A pivotal moment came when Andrew Culp at California Institute of the Arts invited me to participate in their West Hollywood Aesthetics and Politics speaker series. Not only did I get to present my thoughts on necropopulism and aesthetics for an hour (a luxury in academic time), I also had a stimulating and lively conversation with the Masters students there, especially my interlocutor Claudia Grigg Edo. Grant Kien graciously offered me a plenary platform at the 2019 Union for Democratic Communication conference, resulting in audience feedback that was challenging and even moving. An important thread of the book was presented at the Media, Gender and Feminism Symposium at the London School of Economics, where astute insights from feminist scholars elevated and sharpened the projects intellectual contribution.