Book Talk | Neoreaction a Basilisk: Essays on and Around the Alt-Right
Updated 10/17/2022:
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The Global New Right working group at NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge invites you to a book talk on Neoreaction a Basilisk: Essays on and Around the Alt-Right, featuring the author Elizabeth Sandifer in conversation with Maya Vinokour.
Neoreaction a Basilisk is a look at some of the intellectual foundations of modern fascism, and at how squishy they are and how there’s a weird and putrescent black ooze that comes out when you poke them with a stick. Published five years ago to rather more acclaim than a book by a failed humanities academic turned blogger who smokes too much weed should really receive, it is a savage journey into the black heart of our present eschaton, or possibly just a Twitter thread gone very, very wrong.
Author El Sandifer writes, “Let us assume that we are fucked. We’re all going to die, and probably horribly. But it’s worth stopping to stare at some of the forces arrayed against human survival. Forces like a Harry Potter fanfic writer turned AI cult leader. Or that crackpot software developer who thinks that the Glorious Revolution should be undone and the House of Stuart restored to the throne. And the cyberpunk nihilist philosopher who did a little too much meth, went crazy, and became a neo-nazi. It’s worth staring at them, pointing your finger, and laughing. Really. It’ll liven up the few years before we all die in a terrible fascism-fueled climate apocalypse.”
This talk will look at how and why the cult classic book Neoreaction a Basilisk happened, at how its aged in the seven years since it was written, and at other fun activities you can do while you wait for the food ladder to collapse from underneath you.
Elizabeth Sandifer is a writer living in Ithaca, New York. In addition to Neoreaction a Basilisk she writes the comic series Britain a Prophecy, along with several other projects, some of which do not rip their title structure off from William Blake.
Maya Vinokour is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Russian & Slavic Studies at NYU. Her work centers on Stalinist labor culture, late- and post-Soviet science fiction, post-Soviet media, and the global New Right.