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.
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A cultural history of Italian fascism, this work traces the narrative path that accompanied the making of a regime and the construction of Mussolini's power. The author reads fascist myths, rituals, images, and speeches as texts that tell the story of fascism.
Les mer
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
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"An excellent and timely book. The idea of studying Italiam fascism as a 'society of the spectacle' that used symbols, rituals, and a cult of the leader to create itself as it unfolded is a brilliant stroke."—Walter L. Adamson, author of Avant-Garde Florence: From Modernism to Fascism
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"An excellent contribution to the growing number of studies of Fascist political culture and public rituals."
Winner of the 1998 Distinguished Scholarship Award of the Pacific Sociological Association.
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780520226777
Publisert
2000-08-31
Utgiver
Vendor
University of California Press
Vekt
454 gr
Høyde
229 mm
Bredde
152 mm
Dybde
20 mm
Aldersnivå
P, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Forfatter