Καιρός (Kairos)

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ISSN: 2534-8442

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Microfascism of suffering
(Plovdiv University Press, 2026-08-02) Panayotov, Stanimir
What does it mean to suffer socially due to ideology? Can we understand the social and ideological suffering associated with contemporary forms of fascism? This text aims to answer these questions in the following ways. First, I introduce and question the current circulation of concepts of “fascism” in order to diagnose whether “fascism” is an operationally and reflectively adequate concept reflecting ideology. Second, I consider the so-called “ideological suffering” (Deyan Deyanov) and “suffering by society” (Svetlana Sabeva) as socioanalytic tools for thinking and investigating potentially fascist forms of ideological suffering. Third, to support the socioanalytic analysis of ideological suffering and the understanding of fascism-as-suffering, I turn retroactively to the concepts of “micropolitics” and “microfascism” (Félix Guattari), arguing that they lead to a substantial explanation of many everyday manifestations of “fascism.” My main thesis is that the ideological suffering of phenomena that we today think of as extremist is, in essence, microfascist practices of social suffering. Fascism as an “extremity”, however, cannot socioanalytically explain this suffering, but rather the socioanalysis of microfascism can do so.