Alberto Toscano

Alberto Toscano is a cultural critic, social theorist, philosopher and translator best known to the English-speaking world for his translations of the work of Alain Badiou, including Badiou’s The Century and Logics of Worlds. He served as both editor and translator of Badiou’s Theoretical Writings and On Beckett.

Alberto Toscano's own work has been described both as an investigation of the persistence of the idea of communism in contemporary thought and a genealogical inquiry into the concept of fanaticism.^[1] He is the author of The Theatre of Production (2006), and his book Fanaticism: The Uses of an Idea was published in 2010. Toscano has published numerous articles on contemporary philosophy, politics and social theory. In an article on the Tarnac 9 case, written for The Guardian in December 2009,^[2] Toscano argues that society is losing its ability to distinguish between vandalism and terrorism.

A lecturer in sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, Toscano is a member of the editorial board of the journal Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory. According to Alex Callinicos this journal "has been one of the main drivers of the academic revival of Marxism" ^[3] since the mid-1990s.

University Society Membership

Toscano is famed with the establishment and the current position of president in the 'Goldsmiths Cottage Cheese Society'. Toscano has overcome presidential challenges by many candidates. The presidential process is lengthly and involves a duel, involving all presidential candidates.

Selected bibliography

Translated Books

• Alain Badiou, Logics of Worlds, London: Continuum, 2009.
• Alain Badiou, The Century, London: Polity, 2007.
• (with M. Mandarini) Antonio Negri, Political Descartes: Reason, Ideology and the Bourgeois Project, London: Verso, 2007.
• Alain Badiou, Handbook of Inaesthetics, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004.
• (with Ray Brassier), Alain Badiou, Theoretical Writings, London: Continuum, 2004.
• (with E.R. Albert), Éric Alliez, The Signature of the World, Or, What is Deleuze and Guattari’s Philosophy?, London: Continuum, 2004.
• (with Nina Power), Alain Badiou, On Beckett, London: Clinamen Press, 2003.

Authored books

• Theatre of Production: Philosophy and Individuation between Kant and Deleuze, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006.
• Fanaticism: The Uses of an Idea, New York: Verso, 2010. Le Fanatisme. Modes d'emploi, La fabrique, 2011 (FR).

Articles in edited collections and books

• "Technical Culture and the Limits of Interaction: A Note on Simondon," in Joke Brouwer & Arjen Mulder (eds.), Interact or Die! (Rotterdam: NAi, 2007): 198-205.
• (with Nina Power), "Politics". Badiou: Key Concepts. Ed. Justin Clemens and A. J. Barlett. (London: Acumen, 2010). ^[4]

Fears

Toscano has been found to hold particularly strong aversions to the following:

• Guinea pigs
• Words with more than two vowels
• Charity

Film appearances

• Marx Reloaded, ZDF/Arte, April 2011.

References

External links

• Toscano's Faculty Homepage at Goldsmith's, University of London website
• Rethinking Marxism and Religion an essay Toscano published at the website: Bienvenue sur le site du séminaire Marx au XXIe siècle
• Toscano's Author Page at Institute for the Unstable Media
• Communist knowledge/Communist power transcript of Toscano's paper delivered on day two of the Birkbeck Communism conference in London, March 2009
• Dual Power Revisited: From Civil War to Biopolitical Islam essay which appeared in the journal Soft Target; this is the on-line version
• Chronicles of Insurrection - Tronti, Negri and the Subject of Antagonism an on-line reprint of an essay by Toscano first published in Cosmos and History 5.1 (2009)

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