Suchergebnisse

By bringing to life the cultural imaginaries and practices of the past, Fascism, the War, and Structures of Feeling in Italy, 1943-1945 raises ostensibly intractable questions on the epochal impact of what often appears as inconsequential: the typically unseen and seemingly banal power of everyday experiences

From 1937 to 1939, a group of French intellectuals of diverse origins and disciplines gathered under the leadership of Georges Bataille and Roger Caillois to form the Collège de Sociologie. Inspired by Durkheim's theory of the sacred as the symbolic found.

This book examines the link between waste and consumption through a cultural approach that integrates environmental concerns with reflections on the role that consumption has come to occupy in our contemporary capitalist societies. The mutual relationship between capitalism and consumption is addressed along with early critiques of industrialization that exposed environmental problems. Toxic waste and its illegal dumping are examined, along with the problem of abuse of poorere areas and nations when it comes to disposing of toxic material. The question of solutions to the problems created by c

"From 1937 to 1939, a group of French intellectuals of diverse origins and disciplines gathered under the leadership of Georges Bataille and Roger Caillois to form the Collège de Sociologie. Inspired by Durkheim's theory of the sacred as the symbolic foundation of community, and having witnessed the importance of symbolic aesthetics in the rise of fascism during the interwar years, the short-lived but profoundly innovative Collège examined the possibilities for social bonds in the modern secularized era. Rethinking the Political demonstrates that the Collège de Sociologie's quest to create a new place for the sacred in modern collective life ostensibly entailed avoiding the theorization of both aesthetics and politics. While the Collège condemned manipulation by totalitarian regimes, its understanding of community also led to a rejection of democratic and communist forms of political organization, leaving the group open to accusations of flirting with fascism. Acknowledging these political ambiguities, the author goes beyond a narrow ideological reading to reveal the Collège's important contribution to our thinking about the relationships between community formation, politics, aesthetics, and the sacred in the modern world. She expands her historical account of the members' thought, including their relationship to Surrealism, beyond the group's dissolution, and shows how the work of Claude Lefort extends, but also resolves, many of the Collège's key theoretical insights. A fascinating study of some of the twentieth-century's most daring thinkers, Rethinking the Political offers crucial insights into the contradictions at play in modern notions of community that still resonate today."--Publisher's website.

At the end of October 1922, in a whirlwind of events and unexpected circumstances, Benito Mussolini became prime minister of Italy. For the next twenty years, he dominated Italy as a cult hero and the duce of fascism and, later, founder of the empire. This richly textured cultural history traces the narrative path that accompanied the making of the fascist 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 style of rule to the shaping of the regime's identity, she finds that in searching for symbolic means and forms to represent its political novelty, fascism actually created its own power, its own happening, its history.

This paper explores the issue of the Italians' relationship to democracy against the theoretical background of Jürgen Habermas's notion of the modern public sphere. After introducing the basic tenets of Habermas's theory of democracy as founded on public opinion, open to dialog and exercising reason, the paper examines the state of the Italian public sphere in the wake of the Berlusconi era. The paper summarizes several perspectives by prominent Italianists on the different aspects of the Italian public sphere and draws conclusions about the limits and potential of the Italians' commitment to democracy.

Can the concept of ecstasy explain some of the rationale of dictatorships, and more specifically of fascism? And can the concept of ecstasy be connected to manipulation? These are the two central questions I would like to raise and explore in this paper, although there are also other questions that will emerge in my discussion which I hope will help clarify the relationship between ecstasy and manipulation