FascismPub Date : 2023-12-13DOI: 10.1163/22116257-bja10068
Eleftheria Ioannidou
{"title":"Performative Mo(nu)ments: Re-enacting Classical Antiquity in the Theaters of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany","authors":"Eleftheria Ioannidou","doi":"10.1163/22116257-bja10068","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22116257-bja10068","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The forms of popular and mass theater developed in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany reached back to classical antiquity to reinvent theater as a secular rite. At first glance, the use of the theatrical medium is at odds with the classicizing monumentality that characterized the cultural expression of fascist regimes. Theatrical performances are by their very nature ephemeral events; unlike monuments, they do not leave their mark on civic space, and can barely provide a testament to generations to come. Drawing on performance theory and cultural history, the author argues that these antiquity-inspired performances provided powerful sites of re-enacting the myth of national rebirth. Fascist regimes used open-air theaters and forms modelled on Greek theater, whilst also tapping into the notions of performance that had been developed within the traditions of the theatrical vanguard to offer the experience of a reborn past. These performances brought forth grandiose visions of classical antiquity through living bodies and helped to embed the imagined past into a mythicized present. The intertwining between the theatrical medium and classical reception allow us to demonstrate the significance of embodied practices in shaping fascism’s political radicalism.</p>","PeriodicalId":42586,"journal":{"name":"Fascism","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138683511","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
FascismPub Date : 2023-12-13DOI: 10.1163/22116257-bja10059
Pantelis Michelakis
{"title":"The Antelope and the Lioness: Ancient Greece in the Prologue of Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia","authors":"Pantelis Michelakis","doi":"10.1163/22116257-bja10059","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22116257-bja10059","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The aim of this article is to show that readings of Riefenstahl as an artistic genius with full control over all aspects of her work have closed off more complex readings of the prologue of her film <em>Olympia</em> (1938). The author argues that we cannot begin to appreciate the density of this section of the film and its complex attitude toward ancient Greece without taking a closer look at the troubled collaboration between Leni Riefenstahl and Willy Zielke as two filmmakers with different visions, preoccupations, methods of work, and degrees of involvement in the making of the prologue. Attention is drawn to the hermeneutic difficulty of policing the boundaries between different types of aesthetics and different types of politics as they are played out in this section of <em>Olympia</em>. The article also teases out some of the difficulties around the question of how to situate the different themes and practices of the prologue within broader cinematic and extra cinematic histories of fascist aesthetics as they intersect with issues of classicism and modern subjectivity.</p>","PeriodicalId":42586,"journal":{"name":"Fascism","volume":"3 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138686087","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
FascismPub Date : 2023-12-13DOI: 10.1163/22116257-bja10056
Dimitris Plantzos, Vasileios Balaskas
{"title":"Reinventing Romanitas: Exchanges of Classical Antiquities as Symbolic Gifts between Italy and Spain (1933–1943)","authors":"Dimitris Plantzos, Vasileios Balaskas","doi":"10.1163/22116257-bja10056","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22116257-bja10056","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Based on fresh archival research this article examines the exchange of Romanizing statuary between Italy and Spain during the <em>ventennio fascista</em>. Between 1933 and 1943, Italy and Spain exchanged copies of Roman statues as symbolic gestures, to substantiate their claims to a shared classical heritage of ‘imperial greatness’. Using press reports and documentary film excerpts the article reconstructs public events that took place in Merida, Tarragona, Palma, and Zaragoza and assesses their impact. Behind these exchanges, and public ceremonies staged on their occasion, lay the Fascist concept of <em>romanità</em>: an archaeologically and aesthetically charged discourse placing Late-Republican and Early-Imperial Roman heritage in the epicentre of Fascist identity politics. Through improvised public performances of <em>romanità</em>, classical materialities, monumental as well as spatial, were imbued with Fascist dynamics, as the past turned into the present and projected into the future. Through individual and collective performance these ceremonies embodied a primeval Fascist ideal that appeared at once spectacular and modern.</p>","PeriodicalId":42586,"journal":{"name":"Fascism","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138682627","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
FascismPub Date : 2023-12-13DOI: 10.1163/22116257-bja10062
Han Lamers, Bettina Reitz-Joosse
{"title":"Spectacular Latin: The Role of the Latin Language in Political Spectacles under Italian Fascism","authors":"Han Lamers, Bettina Reitz-Joosse","doi":"10.1163/22116257-bja10062","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22116257-bja10062","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article explores the role of the Latin language in the context of political performance and spectacle under Italian Fascism. We investigate the different ways in which Latin words, phrases, and texts are used as visual and symbolic elements of Fascist performances and how they are staged in contemporary media coverage. Specifically, this article focuses on three case studies: first, human mosaics of the word <span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">DVX</span>; second, the use of a tapestry bearing a Latin motto in the context the fourteenth anniversary of Fascism; and finally, the role of a Latin foundation deposit in an inauguration ceremony for building works at the <em>Esposizione Universale di Roma</em>. Two main arguments connect the three case studies. First, we argue that the Latin language does not simply gesture towards Roman antiquity, but that it is used to evoke several different pasts at the same time. Second, we show that the Latin language has a range of affordances for diverse audiences, which are tied closely to the visuality, materiality, and symbolism of Latin during the <em>ventennio fascista</em>.</p>","PeriodicalId":42586,"journal":{"name":"Fascism","volume":"56 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138682859","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
FascismPub Date : 2023-12-13DOI: 10.1163/22116257-bja10054
Jonathan Spellerberg
{"title":"Enacting the Mythical through Architecture: Nazi Assembly Architecture as Performative Practice","authors":"Jonathan Spellerberg","doi":"10.1163/22116257-bja10054","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22116257-bja10054","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The beginning of the Third Reich saw the construction of large architectural structures to host and aesthetically frame Nazi mass events. The significance of these buildings cannot be understood without the propaganda and mass performances that constituted their contemporary frame of reception. This article discusses the <em>Gauforum</em> project in Weimar, constructed from 1937 until 1944. Combining an analysis of common architecture-related propaganda tropes with an examination of architectural design and a reading of the ceremony of laying the first foundation stone, it shows how these elements performed the longed-for <em>Volksgemeinschaft</em>. By framing construction works as the expression of national achievement and an ongoing revolutionary renewal of the nation, Nazi-era architecture propaganda discursively primed the ground for interplay between the material arrangements of architecture and events that afforded an experience of the mythical spatiotemporality of the <em>Volksgemeinschaft</em>. In this way, Nazi architectural propaganda played an efficacious part in the politics of mass events.</p>","PeriodicalId":42586,"journal":{"name":"Fascism","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138693314","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
FascismPub Date : 2023-12-13DOI: 10.1163/22116257-bja10063
Giovanna Di Martino
{"title":"The Living Archive: Archiving and Documenting Classical Performance during Fascism","authors":"Giovanna Di Martino","doi":"10.1163/22116257-bja10063","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22116257-bja10063","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article discusses the practices of documentation and archiving related to classical performance in the Italian Fascist regime, and their implications for the study of fascist art and culture more widely. The first part discusses a number of institutions as the sites of Italian Fascism’s archiving of classical performance. The second part, drawing on the work of Eric Ketelaar and Amalia G. Sabiescu, considers how Italian Fascism made use of the historically connoted ‘cultural tools’ of ancient Greek theatre as ‘living archives’. It discusses the aesthetic means that came to characterize all classical performances as living archives and considers the use of ancient Greek and Roman sites all over the peninsula and in colonized Libya as the archival sites of the classical performances. In the conclusion, it argues that the combination of performance and archives empowered these cultural tools to become the means for the reconstruction and transmission of Fascism’s newly crafted social memory and identity of the Italian nation.</p>","PeriodicalId":42586,"journal":{"name":"Fascism","volume":"34 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138683454","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
FascismPub Date : 2023-12-13DOI: 10.1163/22116257-bja10064
Sara Troiani
{"title":"The Classical Performances at the Temples of Agrigento and Paestum (1928–1938): From Performances of Ancient Drama to the Re-enactment of Myths and Rituals in Archeological Sites","authors":"Sara Troiani","doi":"10.1163/22116257-bja10064","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22116257-bja10064","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article surveys and analyzes classical performances staged between 1928 and 1938 in the archeological areas of Agrigento and Paestum, and underlines similarities and differences between them to evaluate the impact of Fascist ideology on their organization. Indeed, these performances were much more concerned with staging ancient poetry recitations, pantomimes, choreographies, and parades rather than entire plays, as these were effective conduits for Fascism’s visual aesthetics, which was aimed at enhancing the archeological settings that hosted them. The events organized in Agrigento were meant to extend the presence of classical performances in ancient theaters and monuments other than Syracuse under the supervision of the National Institute of Ancient Drama (<span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">INDA</span>) and other national and international artists, while the performances staged in Paestum were intended to promote international tourism in Italy, which included the programmatic restoration and renovation of ancient monuments.</p>","PeriodicalId":42586,"journal":{"name":"Fascism","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138685827","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
FascismPub Date : 2023-09-07DOI: 10.1163/22116257-bja10055
Eliah Bures
{"title":"The Intellectual as Culture Warrior","authors":"Eliah Bures","doi":"10.1163/22116257-bja10055","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22116257-bja10055","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract A major development on the European far right since 1945 is the turn to a ‘metapolitics’ supposedly influenced by the Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci. Metapolitics, in this sense, deemphasizes electoral politics in favor of intellectual activism and the pursuit of ‘cultural hegemony’ as a prelude to seizing political power. This article examines the metapolitics of the European New Right ( ENR ) from a new theoretical and historical perspective. It argues that the literature of the US ‘culture wars’ better explains the ENR ’s practice than any reception of Gramsci. And it presents ENR metapolitics not as the strategic reformulation of interwar fascism but as part of a broad transatlantic backlash against the leftist successes of the 1960s. This approach better accounts for ENR intellectuals’ function as ‘culture warriors’ specializing in demonization and mastery of the tools of public discourse.","PeriodicalId":42586,"journal":{"name":"Fascism","volume":"56 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135047865","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
FascismPub Date : 2023-09-07DOI: 10.1163/22116257-bja10057
Michelangelo Borri
{"title":"Creating the ‘New Fascist Man’","authors":"Michelangelo Borri","doi":"10.1163/22116257-bja10057","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22116257-bja10057","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The creation of the Fascist New Man was one of the primary objectives of the Mussolini regime. This article aims to examine the theme by way of a specific case study of the physician and Fascist party official Giorgio Alberto Chiurco. A Fascist ‘of the first hour’ and faithful follower of Mussolini, Chiurco expressed his commitment to the project of creating a new Italian man with activity in various sectors. In medicine and sports, by promoting the training of new generations that would be healthy and athletic. In eugenics, by promoting the defense of the national genetic heritage from the ‘peril’ of contamination. In politics and culture, by promoting the so-called fascistization of schools and universities. All this activity shows, on the one hand, the important contribution made by single individuals to the totalitarian project of the regime and, on the other, the efficacy with which Fascism succeeded in orienting the activities of intellectuals and scientists on a national and international level.","PeriodicalId":42586,"journal":{"name":"Fascism","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135097782","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}