description: A brief yet invaluable reassessment, from one of our most insightful and profound thinkers on the nature of fascism. Co-editor of the Journal of Contemporary History and author of nearly two dozen books, Mosse has helped to shape our contemporary understanding of fascism and consequently of 20th-century history. He has trained dozens of practicing historians, leaving the field indelibly altered. The essays collected here have all appeared previously in academic journals and scholarly volumes. Following the usual convention in which "fascism" refers to the generic phenomenon (while "Fascism" alludes to the Italian manifestation), Mosse examines such various facets as: fascist aesthetics and the avant-garde; fascism and the French Revolution; the nexus between fascism, nationalism and racism; fascism and the role of intellectuals; fascism (specifically, National Socialism) and the occult; and fascism and homosexuality. The author opens his introduction by acknowledging the changing interpretations of fascism over the last five decades. His own method might be described as cultural analysis, or to borrow a term from Clifford Geertz and cultural anthropology, "thick description." To be sure, class analysis, long favored by many Marxist and leftist historians, fails to fully capture fascism's essence. And yet even a cultural approach poses certain inherent difficulties. For, as Mosse and others have pointed out, a paradox lies at the heart of "fascist studies": intellectuals have chosen rational analysis to study and explain a movement that is irrational by its very nature, i.e., inherently hostile to the humanistic tradition. Hardly an introductory work for the novice, but instead a fundamental summation of a lifetime.
language: English
title: The Fascist Revolution: Toward a General Theory of Fascism
titlecomplete: The Fascist Revolution: Toward a General Theory of Fascism
genres: History, Politics
ratings_count: 44
publisher: Howard Fertig