Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s Italy

Description

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. Cover......Page 1 Title......Page 2 Title - series......Page 3 Title - complete......Page 4 Copyright......Page 5 Dedication......Page 6 Contents......Page 8 Illustrations......Page 10 Acknowledgments......Page 12 Introduction......Page 14 1. Mussolini's Aesthetic Politics......Page 28 2. Mussolini the Myth......Page 55 3. The Politics of Symbols`......Page 102 4. Bodily Economy......Page 132 5. War and Melodrama......Page 161 Conclusions......Page 196 Notes......Page 208 Bibliography......Page 280 Photograph Credits......Page 308 Index......Page 310