For the Humanities Lecture with Alberto Toscano: "Caesarism Today"

Over a century ago, in the aftermath of World War I, critics from opposing ends of the political spectrum referred to the emergence of “men of destiny” amid social crisis and civilizational decline as “Caesarism.” For the conservative-revolutionary essayist Oswald Spengler, the rise of modern Caesars was the symptom of a cyclical phenomenon of cultural decline, the implosion of traditional institutions and the predominance of raw power politics – of the kind exemplified by the imperialist politician and extractive entrepreneur Cecil Rhodes. For the Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci, drawing on Karl Marx’s anatomy of “Bonapartism” in the Eighteenth Brumaire, contemporary Caesarism was an unstable fix to situations of “catastrophic equilibrium,” in which conflicting forces are unable to get the upper hand and risk generating a broader social collapse. While Caesarism could never fully resolve a crisis of hegemony, it could take “progressive” or “reactionary” forms, depending on whether it created the conditions for a revolutionary reconstruction of society on a new basis. But how useful is the conceptual persona of the “Caesar”—repurposed from antiquity—for an understanding of industrial and post-industrial political dynamics? What can a study of the new Caesars teach us about the formation, structure, and pathologies of capitalist political modernity, and about our own turbulent conjuncture? 

Join the IHGC and Political Theory Colloquium for this event with Alberto Toscano.  Although attendees will join in-person in Wilson 142, Toscano will join and present remotely.