Zahid R. Chaudhary, Associate Professor of English, Princeton University, will deliver this year's Culler Lecture in Critical Theory Wednesday, March 4, 2026 at 5pm in the A.D. White House. Chaudhary, who received his Ph.D. from Cornell Unviersity, specializes in postcolonial studies, visual culture, and critical theory. His second book, Paranoid Publics: Psychopolitics of Truth was published by Fordham University Press in Fall 2025. This book is a psychosocial account of contemporary cultural politics, including conspiracy cultures, anti-democratic social movements, and new media networks. He has published widely on visual culture, photography, film, and psychoanalysis. More on Chaudhary and his work, can be found on his Princeton faculty profile.
Talk title: "Technofascism"
Abstract: How to understand the contemporary conjuncture of technology and fascism? This lecture will develop a psychosocial account of this conjuncture in light of recent political and economic developments: the rise of platform capitalism, state-sanctioned kidnappings and executions by federal agents in the United States, the global militarization of artificial intelligence, and the proliferation of deepfakes that no longer aim to deceive but to provide enjoyment. From fantasies of libertarian escape to the nihilistic commitments of accelerationism, technofascism amplifies apocalyptic fears and pleasures while eroding legal, ethical, and political limits. Critical theory allows us to consider psychosocial and aesthetic elements of these dynamics alongside their political-economic realities, in order to understand how contemporary forms of power operate through affect, spectacle, and technological efficiency, and are sustained by widening practices of impunity.
Acknowledging the Society for the Humanities’ legacy of promoting the value of critical theory, the Society organizes an Annual Culler Lecture in Critical Theory. The inaugural lecture was offered in 2015-16 by Jonathan Culler (Class of 1916 Professor of English and Comparative Literature), who served as the Director of the Society for the Humanities from 1984 to 1993.
Chaudhary will also offer a lunch workshop for graduate students on Thursday, 3/5/26, from 12-2pm at the A.D. White House (Room 201). Grad students can RSVP to this workshop by contacting Julie McLean (jzm6@cornell.edu). Subscribe to the Society for the Humanities newsletter to stay up to date with this visit, and all Society news.
