Fascist Spectacle - The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini′s Italy

1. Auflage 2000
ISBN: 978-0-520-22677-7
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, Band 28, 314 Seiten, Trade Paperback, Format (B × H): 154 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 454 g

Reihe: Studies on the History of Society and Culture

This richly textured cultural history of Italian fascism traces the narrative path that accompanied the making of the regime and the construction of Mussolini's power. Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi reads fascist myths, rituals, images, and speeches as texts that tell the story of fascism. Linking Mussolini's elaboration of a new ruling style to the shaping of the regime's identity, she finds that in searching for symbolic means and forms that would represent its political novelty, fascism in fact brought itself into being, creating its own power and history.

Falasca-Zamponi argues that an aesthetically founded notion of politics guided fascist power's historical unfolding and determined the fascist regime's violent understanding of social relations, its desensitized and dehumanized claims to creation, its privileging of form over ethical norms, and ultimately its truly totalitarian nature.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Falasca-Zamponi, Simonetta

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Ideologien Faschismus, Rechtsextremismus
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Militärwesen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION

Narrative and Representation

Aesthetics and Politics

1. MUSSOLINI' S AESTHETIC POLITICS

The Politician as Artist

From Art to Violence

2. MUSSOLINI THE MYTH

Mussolini in the Culture of Personality

Mussolini and the Party

The Deification of Mussolini

3· THE POLITICS OF SYMBOLS: FROM CONTENT TO FORM

The Myth of Rome

The Discourse on Style

4· BODILY ECONOMY: CORPORATIVISM AND CONSUMPTION

Disembodying the Body

Material! Consumption

Mimetic Economy

Spectacle and Desire

5· WAR AND MELODRAMA
The Politics of Land

The Politics of War

CONCLUSIONS

Notes

Bibliography

Photograph Credits

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi is Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara.