Daniel Tércio speaks at the conference ‘21st-Century Art…? Alternative Spaces: Creative Margins’

Fascism in the Age of the Anthropocene

On 20 September 2025 at 3:30 PM, at MAC / CCB, Daniel Tércio, a researcher affiliated with the INET-md Dance Studies group, will address the topic “Fascism in the Anthropocene Era”.

After a general characterization of the terms “fascism” and “Anthropocene,” the first question to be addressed is whether fascism heightens that awareness or, on the contrary, feeds on it. In other words, how does fascism relate to the fact that we live in a geological era for whose emergence we are primarily responsible: by erasing, omitting, or emphasizing it? All evidence suggests that fascism bets on omission, especially when we look at the political arenas where denialist attitudes toward the environmental crisis are generated (Trumpism, Milei, the European far right, etc.).

On the other hand, knowing that fascism coexists comfortably with social and cultural crises and thrives on collective crises of consciousness—and knowing that the very act of naming the Anthropocene implies a radical crisis of the possibility of life on the planet as we know it—we can anticipate a scenario in which fascism would prepare to draw its strength from the environmental crisis, feeding on the perception of powerlessness in the face of survival challenges in the city, and in the face of social inequalities and injustices.

Different scenarios will thus be outlined, based on concrete examples from the cultural and political life of our world and on dystopian projections produced by science fiction.

DANIEL TÉRCIO studied Philosophy, Fine Arts, Art History, and Dance Theory. He was a professor at the Faculty of Human Kinetics, University of Lisbon, and is a researcher at the Institute of Ethnomusicology – Centre for the Study of Music and Dance. He has taught courses in Portugal, Spain, East Timor, Scotland, France, and Brazil. He has published in specialized journals such as Performance Research (UK) and Conception (Brazil) and contributed to anthologies, some of which were released by prestigious publishers such as Peter Lang, SAGE, and Routledge. In Portugal, he is the author of Dança e Azulejaria no Teatro do Mundo (Inapa, 1999) and author/editor of Dançar para a República (Caminho, 2010) and Em torno d’o animal. Pensamento e práticas performativas (By the Book, 2024). He is also a science fiction author published in Portugal and Brazil. With the support of DGArtes and several municipal theaters, he is currently developing the project Linhas de Tensão. Arte, dança e ecologia, which includes the publication of a book and the organization of workshops with guest artists. As a critic, his articles on dance have appeared regularly in the Portuguese press since 2004.