E21 - Feminist Antifascism v Contemporary Microfascism  

In this episode of Minor Compositions we delve into the complex intersections of gender, power, and contemporary alt-right and neofascist politics with Jack Bratich and Ewa Majewska. Drawing on Bratich’s On Microfascism: Gender, Death, and War and Majewska’s Feminist Antifascism: Counterpublics of the Common, the discussion unpacks how gender dynamics are central to the rise of fascist ideologies in the 21st century. The conversation explores how microfascist tendencies operate in everyday life, particularly in the realms of social reproduction, and examines the ways feminist antifascism offers tools for resistance and building counterpublics. 

Bio: Jack Z. Bratich is professor in the Journalism and Media Studies Department at Rutgers University. He is author of Conspiracy Panics: Political Rationality and Popular Culture as well as coeditor of Foucault, Cultural Studies, and Governmentality. 

Ewa Majewska is a feminist philosopher of culture and an affiliated fellow at the Institute of Cultural Inquiry (ICI) in Berlin, Germany. She was Adjunct Professor of Gender Studies and Cultural Studies at the University of Warsaw and Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, and has held positions as a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley; Senior Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna, Austria; and as a fellow at the ICI Berlin. 

Intro / outro music: Test Department & the  South Wales Striking Miners Choir - Gdansk / Comrades from “Shoulder to Shoulder” (1984)