‘The explosion of the non-contemporary’: Conversing about the Far Right, Contemporary Fascism, Ernst Bloch, and the Need for a Decolonizing Marxism

In this conversation, Beat Dietschy—Swiss philosopher, theologian, and collaborator of philosopher Ernst Bloch at Tübingen University—and Ana Cecilia Dinerstein, UK-based Argentinean scholar-activist, open Marxist, and critical feminist theorist—reflect on the potential of Bloch’s analyses of fascism and Nazism to comprehend the present daring political moment of authoritarian expansion by the Far Right in different contexts and degrees, on one hand, and the strengthening of territorial, social, rural, urban, feminist, and indigenous movements to stop the worsening ecological crisis by creating new practices moved by hope, on the other hand. Their dialogue explores Bloch’s notions of noncontemporaneity, nonsimultaneity, multiversum, and multiple dialectics, elaborating on the plural contradictions of present social relations and class struggles (in a broad sense) against and beyond global capitalism. Finally, they enquire what kind of Marxism is required to decolonize current critical praxis and theory while navigating the pessimism of the present.