CLC 2119B
Literature and Cultures of Fascism
Winter Term 2016 (Tentative Syllabus)
Instructor: TBD
Office Hours: TBD
Phone (dept.): 519-661-3196
Email: TBD
“The strategic adversary is fascism... the fascism in us
all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the
fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the
very thing that dominates and exploits us.” (Michel
Foucault)
This course examines the historical, political, and ideological developments of the fluid and
multifaceted phenomenon of fascism. While there is no dearth of material about it, fascism as
a concept has continued to inspire debates about such issues as its ontology as a unique
ideology, its globality, and its place in modernity. This course will provide opportunities for
students to consider conceptual issues of fascism, such as the mobilization of culture in the
service of race/nation, palingenesis, and the totalitarian state, in light of specific geopolitical
instances that gave rise to the fascist movement.
Given how fascism has time and again resisted definition, this course will approach fascism
not from a purely historiographic point of view, but by combining an inquiry of its historical
context with a critical examination of intermedia sources (literature, film, art, etc.) to provide
insight about the intellectual origins, socio-political-cultural impact, and contemporary legacy
of the fascist phenomenon. Some of the questions that this course will contend with include:
Who is a fascist? Was fascism an exclusively war-time movement? Is fascism an ideology or a
political behaviour? What is the fascist aesthetic? How can we interrogate the cultural
imagination of the fascist perpetrator and the fetishization/commodification of his victims in
modernity? How do we reconcile Hannah Arendt’s concept of the “banality of evil” with what
Susan Sontag calls our fascination with fascism? What critical intersections does fascism have
with sexuality and gender, race and nation, and globalization—and what kinds of liminal
spaces do these intersections create?
Course Objectives
By the end of the course, students should be able to:
1. historicize the geographic, intellectual, and sociopolitical origins of fascism;
2. discuss key concepts of fascism;
3. analyze seminal literary, artistic, and philosophical artifacts that informed or
demonstrate fascist ideals;
4. develop an informed and critical stance on the issues surrounding fascism by
synthesizing primary and secondary texts;
5. enhance their ability to express themselves both orally (through in-class presentations)
and in writing (through quizzes and examinations).
Course Requirements
Class Participation / Attendance:
Weekly Blitzes (short answer):
Class Presentation:
Midterm Exam:
Final Exam:
20% (10%/10%)
15%
20%
20%
25%
A. Class Participation
In the spirit of discourse, all students are expected to (1) complete all reading assignments
and (2) participate in class discussions. Being a critical reader, manifested in an ability to
dialogue with assigned texts and formulate questions, is a skill that this class will try to foster.
Attendance will be checked at the beginning of each class. University policy on absences and
accommodations for legitimate reasons will be observed.
B. Weekly Blitzes
Weekly blitzes are short-answer response quizzes given for ten minutes at the beginning of
class. The questions will either be on the day’s assigned readings, or relating those readings
to other material taken up in previous classes. The blitz questions can be used as prompts for
the discussion for the day. No blitz will be given until the previous week’s quiz has been
returned.
C. Class Presentation
Each student is expected to give a fifteen-minute presentation on a topic to be decided in
consultation with the instructor. These presentations can be on one of the day’s assigned
readings or a supplementary material approved and circulated beforehand. A general outline
must be submitted prior to the day of the presentation. The expected content of the
presentation is NOT a summary of the readings, but an analysis that paves the way for a
critical discourse. Students may thus be asked to facilitate a discussion after their
presentation.
D. Midterm and Final Exams
Both the midterm and the finals comprise identification- and essay-type questions.
Tentative Texts and Readings
Anderson, Benedict. “Imagined Communities”. Nations and Nationalism. Ed. by Philip
Spencer and Howard Wollman. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2005.
Antliff, Mark. “Cubism, Futurism, Anarchism: The ‘Aestheticism’ of the ‘Action d’art’ Group,
1906-1921.” Oxford Art Journal 21(2)(1998): 101-120.
Connor, Walker. “A Nation is a Nation, is a State, is an Ethnic Group, is a…”. Nationalism.
NY: Oxford UP, 1994.
Kallis, Aristotle. The Fascism Reader. NY: Routledge, 2003.
o Gilbert Allardyce, “Generic Fascism: and ‘Illusion’”
o Juan Linz, “Fascism as ‘latecomer’: An ideal type with negotiations”
o Roger Eatwell, “A Spectral-Syncretic Approach to Fascism”
o Stanley Payne, “”Fascism as a ‘generic’ concept”
o Zeev Sternhell, “Fascist Ideology: A Dissident Revision of Marxism?”
o Mark Neocleous, “Racism, fascism and nationalism”
Larsen, Stein Ugelvik. Fascism Outside Europe: The European Impulse Against Domestic
Conditions in the Diffusion of Global Fascism. East Europen Monographs, 2002.
o Albrecht Hagemann, “The Diffusion of German Nazism”
o Emilio Gentile, “I fasci italiani all’estero. The ‘Foreign Policy’ of the Fascist Party”
o Stein Ugelvick Larson, “Was there Fascism outside Europe? Diffusion from Europe
and Domestic Impulses”
Around Fascism
Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art…”
Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
Martin Heidegger, “The Self-Assertion of the German University” (in Wollin, ed., The
Heidegger Controversy)
Ernst Jünger, “Total Mobilization” (in Wollin, ed., The Heidegger Controversy)
Orwell on the Spanish Civil War
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism / Eichmann in Jerusalem
Susan Sontag, “Fascinating Fascism.” Under the Sign of Saturn
Berthold Hinz, Art in the Third Reich (1979)
David Carroll, French Literary Fascism: Nationalism, Anti-Semitism, and the Ideology of
Culture. Princeton UP, 1988
Literary texts
Marinetti, “The Futurist Manifestoes”
Elias Canneti, Die Blendung/Auto-da-Fe
___, Masses and Power (essays)
Th. Mann, Dr. Faustus
Robert Musil The Confusions of Young Master Törless (early fascism)
Alberto Moravia, La Ciociara
Grass, The Tin Drum
Antonio Buero Vallejo
Carmen Laforet, Nada/Nothing (1945)
Dámaso Alonso, Hijos de la ira / Sons of Wrath (1946)
Luis Martín Santos, Tiempo de silencio / Time of Silence (1962)
Elsa Morante, La storia: Romanzo (1974; History: A Novel, 1977)
German Camps
Imre Kertész, Sorstalanság / Fateless (1975)
Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz
Elie Wiesel, La Nuit (1958; Night, 2006)
W.G. Sebald, Die Ausgewanderten (1993; The Emigrants, 1996)
Gulag
Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Tales
Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
Ann Applebaum, The Gulag. A History
Films
Leni RIefensthal, Triumph of the Will; A. J. P. Taylor, Mussolini; Pastrone, Cabiria; Bertolucci,
The Conformist; Rosi, Christ Stopped at Eboli; Rossellini, Paisà; John Davis, Italian Fascism:
Interview with Denis Mack Smith; Guillermo del Toro, Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)…
General Course Guidelines
Students are expected to be both physically and mentally present in class; participation is
integral to the learning experience.
Please ensure that your UWO student account is in order; email correspondences will be sent
often, and the OWL page will be updated regularly.
Plagiarism
“Students must write their essays and assignments in their own words. Whenever students take
an idea or a passage of a text from another author, they must acknowledge their debt both
by using quotation marks where appropriate, and by proper referencing such as footnotes
and citations. Plagiarism is a major academic offense (see Scholastic Offense Policy in the
Western Academic Calendar). The University of Western Ontario uses plagiarism checking
software. Students may be required to submit their written work in electronic form for
plagiarism checking.”
Absenteeism
Students seeking academic accommodation on medical grounds for any missed tests, exams,
participation components and/or assignments must apply to the Academic Counseling office
of their home Faculty and provide documentation. Academic accommodation cannot be
granted by the instructor or department.
UWO’s Policy on Accommodation for Medical Illness
https://studentservices.uwo.ca/secure/index.cfm
Downloadable Student Medical Certificate (SMC):
https://studentservices.uwo.ca under the Medical Documentation heading