Colloquium: Sept. 27th 2019

Speaker: Devin Shaw, Douglas College

Title: Existentialism is an Antifascism: The Ethics of Ambiguity and Combating White Supremacy

Friday, September 27th at 2:30 in CLE A303

Abstract:

In the past four years, we have witnessed the public re-emergence of the far right in the United States and Canada. In my forthcoming book, A Philosophy of Antifascism, I argue that mainstream philosophy has failed to adequately address the political, ethical, and social perils of normalizing the far right in our political and social debates. On the one hand, I will seek to define the relationship between far-right movements and settler-colonialism in the United States and Canada. On the other hand, I will argue that Simone de Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity anticipates, and justifies, some of the philosophical positions of militant antifascism. Building on Beauvoir’s arguments, I will suggest that militant antifascism is a form of community self-defense.