On the Spirit of Terrorism

Lecture 6 in a series entitled “Reflections Beneath a Dark Sun: Myth, History, Politics and Paganism”.

Finally, via a reading of the French theorist Jean Baudrillard, Dr. Stephen Alexander will suggest that whilst the spirit of terrorism which possesses postmodernity is not simply a replay of traditional political and religious nihilism, it nevertheless displays a pathological desire, like fascism, to return to the wellsprings of violence and a “collective attempt to hallucinate the historical truth of evil”. This is the final lecture-seminar in Stephen Alexander’s series on fascism, paganism and politics.

Philosopher of the taboo Stephen Alexander does an annual lecture-seminar at Treadwell’s. This year’s series looks at the darkly romantic temptation to seek out ways to tear apart the material reality of modern life, to make manifest “unbound powers of being”. His aim is to identify the nihilism in us all: not to say things because we think them, but so that we will not have to think them anymore; to rid our speech and our acts, our hearts and pleasures, of fascism. Dr. Stephen Alexander did his Ph.D. at Warwick University on D.H. Lawrence and continental philosophy. His work focuses on transgression, shock and forbidden subjects.

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