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Christianity, Mass Society, and Cold War, 1945–72

Robert Tobin

in The Minority Voice: Hubert Butler and Southern Irish Protestantism, 1900-1991

This chapter focuses on Butler's writings after the Second World War and his efforts to confront the impact of totalitarian thought on Western society. It offers close readings of some of his most ... More

This chapter focuses on Butler's writings after the Second World War and his efforts to confront the impact of totalitarian thought on Western society. It offers close readings of some of his most prominent post‐war writings, and in the process, introduces his preoccupation with exposing the compulsory conversion campaign waged against Orthodox Serbs in Croatia during the war. It accounts for how this concern led to the most traumatic experience of his public life, the so‐called ‘Papal Nuncio Incident’ of 1952. It explores his concern with the creeping anonymity of modern life, exploited by totalitarian regimes before and during the war but also evident after the war in the capitalist West. His travels in China in the fifties, as well as in Europe and the USA in the sixties, confirmed for him this assessment.Less

Beyond the Blues: The Racial Unconscious and Collective Memory

Eli Zaretsky

in Political Freud: A History

This chapter examines the radical African American and Afro-Caribbean intellectuals who drew on the Freudian critique of the father complex, in the form of the master-slave relationship, in order to ... More

This chapter examines the radical African American and Afro-Caribbean intellectuals who drew on the Freudian critique of the father complex, in the form of the master-slave relationship, in order to build a collective memory in the Black community. Psychoanalytic thought was central to three great episodes of African American and Afro-Caribbean radicalism that preceded the civil rights movement: the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, the Popular Front of the 1930s, and the existentialist-inflected anticolonial and postcolonial paradigm that emerged after World War II. In each case, political Freudianism aimed less at a theory of racism than at uncovering the memory of the slave experience and its aftermath. In each case an African American or Afro-Caribbean intellectual was drawing on Freud not just to probe the damage to the inner world left behind by slavery and colonialism but to turn that reconstructed memory toward politics.Less

In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Rereading Freud’s Moses

Eli Zaretsky

in Political Freud: A History

The third chapter, on Freud’s Moses and Monotheism (1938), interrogatesan idea crucial to the Freudian approach to history, the idea of regression. Against the standard approach, which contrasts ... More

The third chapter, on Freud’s Moses and Monotheism (1938), interrogatesan idea crucial to the Freudian approach to history, the idea of regression. Against the standard approach, which contrasts progress with decline or decadence, political Freudians posited that history unfolds at different levels and at different timescales, that there are points in the past to which we regress, predispositions, stages, or conflicts to which we “return.” Written on the eve of World War II, and in the shadow of the Nazi terror, Moses and Monotheism used the idea that there are unconscious processes in history to analyze the founding of monotheism in ancient Egypt, the accompanying creation of the Jewish people, and the subsequent rise of anti-Semitism. It was the question of progress or, more starkly, survival that animated Freud’s interest in Jewish identity. Moses and Monotheism is at bottom a reflection on the history of psychoanalysis centered on Freud’s preconscious identification of psychoanalysis with Judaism. Less

The Ego at War: From the Death Instinct to Precarious Life

Eli Zaretsky

in Political Freud: A History

This chapter examines political Freudian thinking concerning war during World War I, World War II, and the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Freud believed that aggression was a normal and healthy part of ... More

This chapter examines political Freudian thinking concerning war during World War I, World War II, and the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Freud believed that aggression was a normal and healthy part of civilization, but only insofar as its roots in vulnerability, dependence, and in the continued presence of infantile states in the adult mind were recognized. The century’s earliest approach to war rested on the warrior ethic associated with such ideals as glory, honor, and self-sacrifice. The shell shock incident of World War I led Freud to formulate his theory of the ego, which challenged those ideals. Hence the political Freudian tradition reflects a shift from the classical Cartesian or Kantian view of the rational, independent, “bounded” ego to the view that the ego is formed through recognition, object relations, and language. While this shift deepened the Freudian interrogation of vulnerability, it also threatened to lose the focus on ego autonomy that gave psychoanalysis its critical force.Less

Afterword—Freud in the Twenty-First Century

Eli Zaretsky

in Political Freud: A History

Written on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Freud’s birth, the afterword asks whether psychoanalytic thought is relevant in today’s world or is merely of historical interest. In its heyday, ... More

Written on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Freud’s birth, the afterword asks whether psychoanalytic thought is relevant in today’s world or is merely of historical interest. In its heyday, it argues, Freudianism was a synthesis, combining a theory of the mind, a new paradigm for interpreting culture, and an ethical commitment to self-reflection. During the 1970s, with the waning of the traditional, family-centered culture of restraint, the three currents came apart. The theory of the mind gave way to neuroscience. The approach to culture found a home in the university, especially in cultural studies, women’s studies, queer theory, postcolonial theory, and film studies. But the fate of the ethical commitment to self-reflection, like the fate of political Freudianism as such, remains in doubt.Less

Elements for a Public Critique of the Catholic Discourse of Anti-Relativism

Carlo Invernizzi Accetti

in Relativism and Religion: Why Democratic Societies Do Not Need Moral Absolutes

This chapter provides an analytical discussion of some of the salient elements of the contemporary religious discourse of anti-relativism, focusing in particular on the use made of five key terms: ... More

This chapter provides an analytical discussion of some of the salient elements of the contemporary religious discourse of anti-relativism, focusing in particular on the use made of five key terms: relativism, truth, authority, freedom and totalitarianism.Less

Why Community?

George Rupp

in Beyond Individualism: The Challenge of Inclusive Communities

To address the dimension of the resistance to individualism that is warranted, its values can and should be integrated into an affirmation of community.

Totalitarian Millennialism: The Bolshevik Apocalypse (1917–1935 ce)

Richard Landes

in Heaven on Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience

This chapter traces how the dynamics of apocalyptic disappointment, led millennial ideologues (Bakùnin, Lenin, and Trotsky) to turn the politique du pire into coercive purity, setting the stage for a ... More

This chapter traces how the dynamics of apocalyptic disappointment, led millennial ideologues (Bakùnin, Lenin, and Trotsky) to turn the politique du pire into coercive purity, setting the stage for a shift from the revolution occurring in the industrial West to the agrarian East. Totalitarianism, in this context, arises from the unintended consequence of an apocalyptic movement that took power, and, with the failure of its expectations of a spontaneous millennium, carved out the “perfect” society from the body politic. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Hannah Arendt's analysis of totalitarianism, the phenomenon of “fellow travelers” as a (post-)apocalyptic phenomenon, and the contribution of apocalyptic paranoia to the spread of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, setting the stage for Hitler's emergence after WWI.Less

Flannery O’Connor and the Fascist Business: Plurality and the Possibility of Community

Alison Staudinger

in Reconsidering Flannery O'Connor

Recognizing O’Connor’s relevance as a political thinker, Political Scientist Alison Staudinger puts O’Connor in dialogue with Hannah Arendt in order to explore O’Connor’s approach to fascism, a ... More

Recognizing O’Connor’s relevance as a political thinker, Political Scientist Alison Staudinger puts O’Connor in dialogue with Hannah Arendt in order to explore O’Connor’s approach to fascism, a pressing subject in the author’s Cold War context, as well as in our contemporary political moment. By engaging Arendt, Staudinger examines O’Connor’s relationship with fascism on three levels—as the practice of the artist, as the worldview of some fictional characters, and as an approach to her personal friendships. Staudinger argues that while O’Connor sees the temptations of fascism, she finally rejects it as a totalizing denial of human plurality. Staudinger suggests that O’Connor falls short of depicting an earthly community that could accept this plurality, especially regarding racial equality; at the same time she points out that O’Connor’s fiction demonstrates how it is the country’s deep-seated racial hierarchy that makes it vulnerable to fascism.Less

“Herself but Black”: Richard Wright, Flannery O’Connor, and the “Near Enemy” of Civil Rights

Rachel Watson

in Reconsidering Flannery O'Connor

Rachel Watson takes up O’Connor’s role as a political thinker and writer by examining issues of racial hierarchy in O’Connor’s fiction and putting her work in conversation with that of Richard ... More

Rachel Watson takes up O’Connor’s role as a political thinker and writer by examining issues of racial hierarchy in O’Connor’s fiction and putting her work in conversation with that of Richard Wright. Watson notes that although O’Connor invokes the “manners” of the Jim Crow South, she does not offer a sentimental or abject form of pity for her characters, regardless of their race. It is in this pity, so often connected with Cold War totalitarianism, that Watson finds a connection between the work of Flannery O’Connor and Richard Wright. This chapter shows the commonality between two authors whose work had previously seemed disparate, as Watson highlights their mutual fear of a racial and economic hegemony. Less

Oakeshott and Totalitarianism¹

Andrew Gamble

in The Western Ideology and Other Essays

This essay explores Oakeshott’s view of totalitarianism through some of his earlier writings including an early essay which was published posthumously, ‘The Politics of Faith and the Politics of ... More

This essay explores Oakeshott’s view of totalitarianism through some of his earlier writings including an early essay which was published posthumously, ‘The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Scepticism’. Oakeshott saw the roots of totalitarianism as lying not in the fascist and communist movements of the twentieth century but much further back, in a disposition towards politics which he called the politics of faith. It arose in the early modern era, associated with thinkers such as Francis Bacon. The counter disposition was the politics of scepticism. Oakeshott favoured the politics of scepticism as an antidote to the politics of faith, but he recognised that without the politics of faith the modern world as we experience it could not have come about.Less

Ezra Pound, Music and Fascism: Towards Canto LXXV

Gemma Moss

in Modernism, Music and the Politics of Aesthetics

Chapter 3 argues that changes in Pound’s approach to music track changes in his politics. The early Pound is interested in music’s ability to communicate emotions, but as his allegiance to fascism, ... More

Chapter 3 argues that changes in Pound’s approach to music track changes in his politics. The early Pound is interested in music’s ability to communicate emotions, but as his allegiance to fascism, hierarchies and ‘certain truth’ intensifies in the 1930s, his approach to music becomes coldly rational. This chapter builds towards a reading of the musical score in Canto LXXV – the second of the Pisan Cantos – by investigating the political implications of Pound’s shifting approach to music, and those who shaped his musical thought, including Remy de Gourmont, Florence Farr, George Antheil, and Théophile Gautier. Attending to Pound’s long study and varied uses of music – an art form so often considered a domain apart from daily life and politics – can illuminate how his politics inform his aesthetic judgements, and how his aesthetics affect his politics.Less

A Lying World Order: Political Deception and The Threat of Totalitarianism

Peg Birmingham

in Thinking in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt on Ethics and Politics

This chapter addresses the question whether totalitarianism is a threat today. It considers one element of totalitarianism that Hannah Arendt was herself very concerned ... More

This chapter addresses the question whether totalitarianism is a threat today. It considers one element of totalitarianism that Hannah Arendt was herself very concerned about—a “lying world order.” At the outset of Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt raises the issue of political deception, considering the difference between the ancient and modern sophists and their relation to truth and reality. She argues that while the ancient sophists were satisfied with “a passing victory of the argument at the expense of truth”, modern sophists want a great deal more, namely, “a lasting victory at the expense of reality itself”. Arendt claims that the characteristic that sets totalitarianism apart from tyrannical and dictatorial regimes is precisely the modern sophistic victory at the expense of reality, a victory that, she argues, institutes a lying world order. Indeed, her discussion of radical evil in the Origins of Totalitarianism cannot be understood apart from her continuing preoccupation with the problem of this particular kind of political deception.Less

‘We Refugees’: Hannah Arendt and the Perplexities of Human Rights

Lyndsey Stonebridge

in The Judicial Imagination: Writing After Nuremberg

Hannah Arendt later adopted Arthur Koestler's uncompromising title in her description of Europe's refugee population in The Origins of Totalitarianism. In Origins, she developed one of the most ... More

Hannah Arendt later adopted Arthur Koestler's uncompromising title in her description of Europe's refugee population in The Origins of Totalitarianism. In Origins, she developed one of the most subtle and complex critiques of how the twentieth century ruptured historical fantasies about the inalienable sanctity of rights to emerge out of the war. Arendt's irony in ‘We Refugees’ both gives vent to the rage of a ‘we’ torn brutally from its language, occupation and memory and, through a subtle ventriloquism, protests against attempts to normalise the position of the refugee. The problem of the refugee for political life, Arendt later argued in Origins, is that her very non-political existence illuminates ‘the dark background of mere givenness’: that is, a life before rights, a non-political existence – the ‘background formed by our unchangeable and unique nature’, which is governed not by law, but by difference.Less

“The Odium of Doubtfulness”: Or the Vicissitudes of Arendt’s Metaphorical Thinking

Martin Blumenthal-Barby

in Inconceivable Effects: Ethics through Twentieth-Century German Literature, Thought, and Film

This chapter focuses on Hannah Arendt’s study of the question of “style” in historiographical narration. It analyzes Arendt’s book, Origins of Totalitarianism, and determines her own style, while ... More

This chapter focuses on Hannah Arendt’s study of the question of “style” in historiographical narration. It analyzes Arendt’s book, Origins of Totalitarianism, and determines her own style, while questioning how its efficacy relates to the problem of understanding totalitarianism. In response to political philosopher Eric Voegelin, a reviewer of Origins, Arendt elaborates on her decision to allocate more historiographical legitimacy to metaphorical thinking than to statistical science. She treats the merits of metaphorical thinking on the basis of a metaphor employed in Origins—that of the Nazi concentration camp as a place of “Hell.” Arendt feels that a heavy reliance on the explanatory power of quantitative material means prolonging the logic of Nazism or, more generally, the biopolitical logic of totalitarian politics.Less

On ideology and totalitarianism

Christopher Adair-Toteff

in Raymond Aron's Philosophy of Political Responsibility: Freedom, Democracy and National Identity

This chapter has two parts: one on ideology and the other on totalitarianism. In the first part, it explores Aron’s adaption of the notion of ideology through Karl Mannheim and Edward Shils and ... More

This chapter has two parts: one on ideology and the other on totalitarianism. In the first part, it explores Aron’s adaption of the notion of ideology through Karl Mannheim and Edward Shils and concludes with a discussion of the “End of Ideology?” debate. In the second part, it clarifies the similarities and differences between Aron’s conception of totalitarianism and that of Hannah Arendt.Less

Explaining Krokodil Magazine and the Soviet Media System

John Etty

in Graphic Satire in the Soviet Union: Krokodil's Political Cartoons

This chapter offers an analysis of the Soviet media environment in which Krokodil functioned, as well as the dominant "propaganda paradigm" and totalitarian interpretations of it. It outlines two ... More

This chapter offers an analysis of the Soviet media environment in which Krokodil functioned, as well as the dominant "propaganda paradigm" and totalitarian interpretations of it. It outlines two tendencies-selectivity with material from the journal and structuralist approaches-that developed in scholarly criticism of Krokodil magazine between the 1930s and the present, and especially since 1945. These trends, as well as humor theories, have influenced interpretations and limited our understanding of Krokodil.Less