Centre for the Study of Law and the Humanities: Capitalism and Authoritarianism
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck Clore Management Centre
Is the 21st Century the century of authoritarianism? Are we the people submitting without raising any questions to authority? Is individual freedom of thought and action being repressed? Is capitalism the driver of authoritarianism?
Federico Zappino visiting fellow at the Centre for the Study of Law and the Humanities will be in conversation with Leticia Sabsay (LSE Gender Institute) and Esther Leslie (Birkbeck) discussing his talk:
'Authoritarian Capitalism: State, Market, and Family in the 21st Century West'
Date: 7th March 2025
Time: 18:00-20:00
Place: Birkbeck Clore Building, B01
Speakers Bio:
Federico Zappino is a philosopher and translator. He contributed in introducing queer thought in Italy and raising theoretical and political awareness about it. He has translated leading works of queer and feminist thought, including Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Epistemology of the Closet and Monique Wittig's The Straight Mind and Other Essays, and is still the Italian translator of Judith Butler's main works. He has also translated into Italian works by Chiara Bottici, Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval.
Central to his thought is the attempt to combine queer theory and historical materialism. He is currently doing research on the relationship between capitalism and authoritarianism.
Since 2022 Federico Zappino has been Research Fellow in Political Philosophy at the University of Sassari, where he teaches Gender and Queer Theories and Critical Global Theory, and in 2024 he is a Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Law and the Humanities at Birkbeck (London).
Leticia Sabsay is an Associate Professor in Gender and Contemporary Culture at the Department of Gender Studies at the LSE. Sabsay’s work interrogates the entanglement between sexuality, subjectivity and political ideals of freedom and justice as processes of cultural translation, both across disciplines and transnational contexts. She is the author of many publications including 'The Political Imaginary of Sexual Freedom'. London: Palgrave. Their current research is concerned with embodiment and the political aesthetics of cruelty in contemporary authoritarianism.
Esther Leslie is Professor of Political Aesthetics, School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication at Birkbeck and Co-Director of the Birkbeck Institute of Humanities. Leslie's research has research interests in political theories of aesthetics and culture and the poetics of science and technology. Her books include 'Walter Benjamin: Overpowering Conformism', ' Hollywood Flatlands, Animation, Critical Theory' and 'The Avant Garde, Synthetic Worlds: Nature, Art and the Chemical Industry'. Her more recent book is 'The Rise and Fall of Imperial Chemical Industries Synthetics, Sensism and the Environment' (2023).
Elena Loizidou (Chair of panel) is Professor of Law and Political Theory. Her research focuses on the relation between law and politics. She is currently undertaking research on post-truth and the law. Her publications include 'Judith Butler: Law, Ethics, Politics' and 'Anarchism: An art of living without law'. She co-directs with Stewart Motha the Centre for the Study of Law and the Humanities.
Contact name:
Elena Loizidou