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Fabio Vighi

Professor Fabio Vighi

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Available for postgraduate supervision

Teams and roles for Fabio Vighi

Overview

My research focuses on critical theory, ideology critique, continental philosophy, theoretical psychoanalysis, and film, with a particular emphasis on the analysis of capitalism and its contemporary transformations. I have published extensively on these themes, including Emergency Capitalism: Financial Hubris, Economic Collapse, and Systemic Manipulation (Sublation Media, 2024), Capitalism and the New Political Unconscious: A Philosophy of Immanence (Bloomsbury, 2023, co-edited with Riccardo Panattoni), Unworkable: Delusions of an Imploding Civilization (SUNY Press, 2022), and Critical Theory and the Crisis of Contemporary Capitalism (Bloomsbury, 2015, co-authored with Heiko Feldner), among others.

I am currently working on the ideology of “emergency capitalism” in relation to global systemic crises of the capitalist mode of production. Alongside my academic work, I publish shorter interventions and reflections on these themes on my Substack (https://fabiovighi.substack.com/) and through The Philosophical Salon (https://www.thephilosophicalsalon.com/author/fabiovighi/).

I am co-director of the “Žižek Centre for Ideology Critique” and welcome enquiries and proposals for postgraduate research in any of the above areas.

Publication

2026

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2012

2010

2009

2008

2007

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2005

2004

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2000

Articles

Book sections

Books

Websites

Research

Recent speaking engagements:

  • 15 May 2026: 'Una forma di vita invecchiata', podcast interview at Cripta Filosofica channel. 
  • 14 May 2026: 'Lacan in Italy', invited talk at book launch, Southampton Centre for Health and Medical Humanities, Southampton University.
  • 25 April 2026: 'Capitalismo catastrofista', invited talk and book launch, Valladolid, Spain.
  • 24 January 2026: 'Unverwertbar. Buchvernissage mit Fabio Vighi', talk and book launch, Lacan Seminar Zurich.
  • 23 January 2026: 'Erfolgreiche Paranoia', public lecture, Volkshaus, Zürich.
  • 21 November 2025: 'Zizek's Conservatism in the Face of Collapse', invited keynote lecture at '"And so on..." How to Make Sense of Slavoj Zizek' conference, Prague, 19-21 November 2025. 
  • 17 October 2025: 'Gloabl Debt and its Discontents', Global Dialogue webinar series, Stanford University, US.
  • 15 October 2025: 'Cinematic Capital: Hollywood and the Libidinal Economy of Financial Crime', Imagining Justice Series, invited public lecture, Stanford University, US.  
  • 14 September 2025: 'Emergency Capitalism', podcast interview with 'What's Left' channel.
  • 15-16 April 2025: 'Dal capitalismo globale all'economia reale: scenari attuali e prospettive future', two invited public lectures at Pont-Saint-Martin and Aosta, Italy. 
  • 16-20 February 2025: invited lectures and podcast interviews at Alliance School of Liberal Arts and Humanities, Bangalore, India.  
  • 14 February 2025: 'The Intersection of Politics and Culture', roundtable discussion at Alliance Literary Festival, Bangalore, India. 
  • 14 February 2025: 'Contemporary Questions, Timeless Ideas', roundtable discussion at Alliance Literary Festival, Bangalore, India. 
  • 14 December 2024: 'Virus economico e pandemia simulata. La deriva totalitaria del capitalismo di crisi', invited paper at ll governo della pandemia. Uno sguardo critico conference, Università di Pisa, Italy. 
  • 4 December 2024: 'Trump's Golden Age?' podcast interview at Sublation Media.
  • 16 November 2024: invited speaker at 12th European Psychoanalytic Film Festival, London, 14-16 November, Institute of Psychoanalysis.
  • 31 October 2024: 'Debt Apocalypse: Surviving Capitalism's Last Hurrah', podcast interview at Parallal Systems.
  • 18 October 2024: 'Do We Need a Paranoid Politics?', podcast interview at Sublation Media.
  • 27 September 2024: 'Zizek and Emergency Capitalism', podcast interview at Sublation Media.
  • 14 June 2024: 'How Wars are Propping Up the System', podcast interview at Sublation Media.
  • 17 May 2024: 'Is Western Finance to Blame?', podcast interview at Sublation Media.
  • 29 March 2024: 'Why is Everything Suddenly an Emergency?', podcast interview at Sublation Media.
  • 1 December 2023: Interview at Byoblu TV, '7 notizie in 7 giorni'.
  • 27 November 2023: 'Letters from Lockdown', invitated paper at Supportive Practices? Letters to Social Movement Activists conference, University of Vienna.
  • 24 November 2023: 'Le ragioni dell'emergenza permanente', invited talk at Dall’emergenza alla catastrofe? Il futuro, la guerra e la fine dell’informazione conference (Commissione DuPre), University of Rome, La Sapienza. 
  • 27 September 2023: 'Chocking on Credit & the Final Days of Capitalism', podcast interview for Parallel Systems.
  • 31 May 2023: 'Inflation and the Controlled Demolition of Society', podcast interview at Sublation Media with Doug Lain.
  • 27 May 2023: 'Crisis Capitalism', keynote at International Congress of the Free Left, Vienna, 27-29 May 2023.
  • 25 March 2023: 'The political and economic case against the WEF', invited paper at The Left case against the World Economic Forum conference, London (panel with CJ Hopkins). 
  • 3 February 2023: 'Am Leben erhalten. Implodierender Kapitalismus und die Barbarei der Notlage' (in English with German simultaneous interpretation), invited public lecture organised by Linksbündig group, Volkshaus, Zurich.
  • 23 November 2022: 'Meta-emergenza e distruzione controllata di un mondo', invited paper at Poli-Covid-22: Salute, Società, e Scienza alla prova della Pandemia conference, Turin University (21-25 November 2022).
  • 22 June 2022: 'Capitalismo emergenziale: la vera crisi e le sue simulazioni', invited lecture at Il governo della pandemia summer school, Napoli, 20-23 June 2022.
  • 9 June 2022: Podcast interview at Italia che cambia channel.
  • 24 May 2022: Podcast interview at Persone da raccontare channel.
  • 1 May 2022: 'A cosa serve lo stato di emergenza?', invited talk at Il nostro primo maggio public event, Terni.
  • 11 April 2022: 'Macerie su macerie: iperrealtà', podcast interview at Radio Black Out.
  • 7 April 2022: Podcast interview and debate at Visione TV.
  • 6 April 2022: 'Lockdown per sempre', podcast interview at www.money.it
  • 1 April 2022: 'A colloquio con Fabio Vighi', podcast interview at Il pensiero che c'è channel.
  • 25 March 2022: 'Seamless continuity editing in the emergency capitalist movie', podcast interview with Rusere Shoniwa at Holding the Line channel.
  • 4 March 2022: 'Pasolini 2022: Power, Otherness, and the Rise of Emergency Capitalism', keynote at One Hundred Years of Pasolini conference, California State University.
  • 2 March 2022: online webinar with Prof Ulrike Guerot at Spaesamento channel.
  • 16 Feb 2022: 'The Tyranny of Big Money', podcast interview for The Aubrey Marcus Podcast.
  • 13 Feb 2022: Podcast interview and debate at Come don Chisciotte channel.
  • 4 Feb 2022: TNT Radio podcast interviews (regular guest on fortnightly/monthly basis).
  • 25 Jan 2022: 'Was Covid a Cover up?' podcast interview with Ashely Frawley, Diet Soap Media.
  • 16 Jan 2022: Podcast interview at post-Orthodoxy channel.
  • 11 Jan 2022: 'Die öhonomische Logik hinter Covid-19', podcast interview with Markus Antler at allesaufdentisch.tv.
  • 27 Dec 2021: 'Kontrollierte Zerstörung und der Wunsch, nicht zu wissen'. Interview with Uwe Alschner. Im Klartext (English with German subs).
  • 14 Dec 2021: 'Monetary Long Covid', podcast interview with Geoff Shullenberger at Outsider Theory.
  • 12 Dec 2021: 'A krízis, pánik és örök félelem kora', podcast interview at Szkeptikuskerekasztal channel.
  • 15 Oct 2021: 'Capital, control, and the political economy of Covid', podcast interview with Max Blumenthal’s Rokfin channel.
  • 7 Oct 2021: 'The unspoken truth behind the Covid crisis', podcast interview and debate at Resistance TV.
  • 30 Sept 2021: 'Which Covid discourse? Lacan, Emergency Capitalism, and Successful Paranoia', at Lacan in Scotland seminar. 
  • 13 Sept 2021: 'The political economy of Covid', podcast interview and debate at Black Power Media channel.
  • 25 Aug 2021: 'Systemic Collapse and Pandemic Simulation', podcast interview at The Crossroads channel.
  • 19 Dec 2020: 'Jean Baudrillard and the Ideology of Simulation', invited paper at Controversy and Construction of Contemporary Aesthetics Symposium, Zhejiang University.
  • 7 June 2020: 'Critique of Surplus-Value', podcast interview at Todd McGowan's channel.
  • 18 February 2020: 'Da plusvalore a plusgodere', invited talk for seminar series Al di là del principio di piacere. Politica, economia e clinica del godimento, Università La Sapienza, Roma.
  • 28 Oct 2019: 'Capitalism without Labour. Hegel, Marx and the Vanishing Dialectic of Capital', invited lecture at University of Vermont, Burlington.
  • 4 Mar 2019: 'L'estraneità: cinema e psicoanalisi', talk organised by Jonas Onlus Monza, Capital Cinema, Monza, Italy.
  • 28 Nov 2018: 'Critical Theory and the Movies', invited lecture at John Felice Rome Centre, Loyola University Chicago.
  • 12 June 2018: 'The value of Marx, 200 years after his birth', at National Assembly for Wales, organised by Gorwel Think-Tank.
  • 26 May 2018: 'Da movimento a istituzione', at Periferie dell'inconscio e legami sociali conference, 24-26 May, Florence.
  • 10 May 2018: 'Technological rationality and socio-economic crisis: determinism or dialectics?', at 11th International Critical Theory conference, John Felice Center of Loyola University Chicago, Rome, 10-12 May.
  • 23 Nov 2017: 'The Feminine Gaze in Michelangelo Antonioni's Cinema', at Chapter Arts Centre, Antonioni Day, Italian Film Festival Cardiff 2017, Cardiff.
  • 6 Oct 2017: 'Psicoanalisi e Istituzioni', at Jonas Centre (Psychoanalytic Clinic for New Symptoms), Milan.
  • 14-15 July 2017: 'Capitalism Forever! A Socio-Analytical Perspective on the 2008 Crisis and its Aftermath', at 6th International Marxist Aesthetics Forum, Cardiff University (with Heiko Feldner).
  • 25-26 Oct 2016: ‘Utopia in a time of crisis: the perverse core of Homo Economicus' at Practicing Utopia in the Intercultural Present conference, Università Statale di Milano, Milan.
  • 23-25 Sept 2016: ‘The finitude of capitalism and the perverse charm of utopian denial’, at 5th International Marxist Aesthetics Forum, Zhejiang University (with Heiko Feldner).
  • 26 Sept 2016: ‘The Great Denial: Finitude of Capitalism and the Necessity of Work', public lecture, ‘School of Media and Communication’, Zhejiang University (with Heiko Feldner).
  • 1-2 June 2016: ‘Crisis: as it happened’ at Thinking of(f) Crisis conference, University of Ljubljana (with Heiko Feldner).
  • 22-23 Apr 2016: ‘The Great Denial’, at Psychoanalysis and Freedom conference, Colorado Springs (with Heiko Feldner).
  • 7 Apr 2016: ‘'C'è un vuoto nel cosmo': Pasolini tra Adorno e Lacan’; public lecture, Universita' Statale di Milano, Milan.
  • 15 Mar 2016: ‘Pasolini as a critic of modernity’; public talk, Sussex University.
  • 9 Mar 2016: ‘Critical Theory and the Crisis of Contemporary Capitalism’, seminar, Cardiff University (with Heiko Feldner).
  • 27-28 Oct 2015: ‘Pasolini e la crisi della modernità’, at Senza Pasolini conference, Universita' di Messina, Italy.
  • 5-6 June 2015: ‘Enjoy your commitment: reading impegno between the lines’, at What Commitment? Reshaping Impegno in Contemporary Italy conference, University of Kent.
  • 8 Apr 2015: ‘Discorso del capitalista e plusgodere’; public talk and debate with Italian psychoanalyst Massimo Recalcati, Università di Padova, Padua.
  • 19 Mar 2015: ‘Zizek and exclusion’, at Zizek, exclusion, migration workshop, Brunel University.
  • 20-22 Nov 2014: ‘Digging its own grave: Marx, Lacan and the exhaustion of the capitalist drive’, at Karl Marx and Crisis conference, Universita' La Sapienza, Rome.
  • 13 Nov 2014: ‘Lacan and discourse theory’; seminar, Cardiff University, Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory.

Teaching

Modules and subjects routinely taught (UG and PGT):

  • European cinema
  • Italian cinema
  • Psychoanalytic theory
  • Postwar Italian culture & society
  • Adaptations from literature to film
  • Ideology critique
  • Critiques of capitalist globalisation
  • Psychoanalysis & translation

Biography

I came to Cardiff University in September 2000 from the University of Portsmouth, where I was lecturer in Italian Studies. I obtained my PhD at Reading University in 1999. I graduated at the University of Bologna (Italy) in 1994.

Supervisions

I am interested in supervising students in the following areas:

  • Critical theory (esp. Frankfurt School)
  • Continental philosophy
  • Marxism and post-Marxism
  • Psychoanalysis (esp. Lacan)
  • Critiques of contemporary capitalism (esp. value criticism) 
  • Film studies

Current supervision

Yuhao Mu

Yuhao Mu

Contact Details

Email [email protected]
Telephone +44 29208 75605
Campuses John Percival Building, Floor 5, Room 5.04, Colum Drive, Cardiff, CF10 3EU

External profiles