This talk will investigate the interrelations between The Aesthetics of Resistance and Peter Weiss’s insistent literary interrogation and political activism around fascist, colonial and imperialist exterminatory mass violence, from The Investigation to the report “Limited Bombing” in Vietnam (co-authored with Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss). Weiss enacted not just a “multidirectional memory” – to borrow from Michael Rothberg’s reflection on approaches to the Holocaust in a decolonizing world – but a multidirectional politics, binding anti-fascism, anti-imperialism and emancipation, a politics whose legacy has lost none of its unsettling urgency, notwithstanding the upheaval of the Cold War order in which Weiss lived and wrote. 

Alberto Toscano is the author of Late Fascism (Verso), Terms of Disorder (Seagull) and Communism in Philosophy (Haymarket). He is the 2026-2027 International Chair of Contemporary Philosophy at Université Paris 8.

Free admission, no pre-registration required. Limited seating available, arrive early to secure a spot.

Image: Peter Weiss and Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss, Förenta Staternas förstärkta angrepp mot Nordvietnam efter 31/3 1968