Microfascism of suffering
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Date
2026-08-02
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Plovdiv University Press
Abstract
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.
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Keywords
fascism, microfascism, ideology, suffering, ideological suffering