Dante and the Shoah

2021 ◽  
pp. 650-667
Author(s):  
Lino Pertile
Keyword(s):  
Fascist Regime ◽  
Dialectic Of Enlightenment

The appropriation of Dante by the Fascist regime in support of the racial laws (1938) did not diminish his popularity after WWII, when Dante’s Inferno became a template for describing the experience of the death camps. In Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man, Dante restores, though fleetingly, the belief in, and practice of, humanity that the Nazis are intent on crushing: far from being a medieval ancestor of the camp, the poem works as an antidote to it. The notion that Dante and humanistic culture may have been complicit, albeit unwittingly, in the Nazi genocidal scheme ignores the poet’s warnings on the misuse of intelligence. For Dante actually anticipates Horkheimer and Adorno’s discourse on the advances of thought and technology, and his story of Ulysses’ death could serve as an opening for Dialectic of Enlightenment. The chapter considers also Dante’s presence in Peter Weiss’s theatre and Giorgio Pressburger’s novels.

The Thanatosis of Enlightenment

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 83-106
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Reasoning ◽  
Phenomenological Theory ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Unsuccessful Attempt ◽  
Trace Back ◽  
Methodological Errors ◽  
Psychological Models ◽  
History Of ◽  
Living Nature ◽  
Dialectic Of Enlightenment

The article analyzes methodological errors Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, particularly their incorrect use of the concepts of mimicry and mimesis. The author of the article maintains that the leaders of the Frankfurt School made a mistake that threatens to undermine their argument when they juxtaposed mimesis and the attraction to death, which has led philosophers to trace back to mimesis the desire for destruction that is found in a civilization constructed by instrumental reasoning. The author reviews the arguments of the Dialectic of Enlightenment and emphasizes the unsuccessful attempt to fuse Freudian and Hegelian methods, which exposes the instability of opposing scientific reasoning to “living” nature. Some amusing quotations from Roger Caillois, who refused to think of mimesis as something entirely rational, are also brought to bear. As Brassier gradually unfolds Adorno and Horkheimer’s thesis, he indicates the consequences of their mistake, which confined thinkers to the bucolic dungeon of “remembering” the authentic nature that they cannot abandon because they have denied themselves access to both reductionist psychological models and to phenomenological theory as such. Brassier delineates the boundaries of this trap and notes the excessive attachment of the Dialectic of Enlightenment to the human. Brassier goes on to describe the prospects for a civilization of enlightenment: a mimesis of death in both senses (death imitates and is imitated) finds its highest expression in the technological automation of the intellect, which for Adorno and Horkheimer means the final implementation of the self-destructive mind. However, for Brassier it means the rewriting of the history of reason in space. This topological rewriting of history, carried out through an enlightenment, reestablishes the dynamics of horror more than mythical temporality: it will become clear that the human mind appears as the dream of a mimetic insect.

scholarly journals The Birth of a Business Icon through Cultural Branding: Ferrari and the Prancing Horse, 1923–1947

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
Paolo Aversa ◽  
Katrin Schreiter ◽  
Filippo Guerrini
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Consumer Culture ◽  
Institutional Support ◽  
World War ◽  
Military Aviation ◽  
Distinct Process ◽  
Fascist Regime ◽  
Cultural Branding

This article examines the origin of the “Prancing Horse” symbol and its role in helping the racing team Ferrari survive under the fascist regime in Italy. Enzo Ferrari, the company’s founder, adopted the coat of arms of Francesco Baracca, the most renowned Italian military aviator during World War I, as the logo of his new racing team. By repurposing it from military aviation to motorsport, he benefitted from powerful cultural associations and strong political and cultural endorsement of Baracca’s persona. Drawing from scholarship on cultural branding and consumer culture, this study shows how new companies can establish powerful business icons by borrowing symbols connected to populist worlds and national ideologies, and transferring them to various industries. Strategic repurposing thus emerges as a distinct process within cultural branding to obtain institutional support and establish powerful brand identities in challenging contexts.

Venice Between Fascism and International Tourism, 1911–45

Modern Italy ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
R.J.B. Bosworth
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Political History ◽  
International Tourism ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Italian City ◽  
Fascist Regime ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

SummaryThis article uses Venice as a case study of the ‘cultural revolution’ urged by some historians as a feature of the totalitarianizing ambition of the Fascist regime. But Bosworth finds a Venice which, though plainly affected by Fascism, nonetheless preserved much that was its own and much that expressed a continuity with the liberal era before 1922 and the liberal democratic one after 1945. He shows that many of the rhythms of Venetian life moved in ways which were different from those of political history, and argues that such differences ensured that Fascism scarcely instituted an all-controlling and completely alienating totalitarian society, at least in this Italian city.

scholarly journals VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN Y LA RACIONALIDAD INSTRUMENTAL = VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN AND THE INSTRUMENTAL RATIONALITY

2020 ◽  
pp. 223
Author(s):  
Ana Pinel Benayas
Keyword(s):  
Instrumental Rationality ◽  
Dialectic Of Enlightenment

<p>En este artículo se pretende hacer una relectura de <em>Frankenstein o el moderno Prometeo</em> (1818) desde la tesis planteada en la <em>Dialéctica de la Ilustración</em> (1944) de los filósofos Adorno y Horkheimer, intentando mostrar que Victor Frankenstein es un esclavo de la racionalidad instrumental.  </p><p>This article is intended to make a rereading of Frankenstein; o, The Modern Prometheus (1818) from the thesis presented in Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944) and Eclipse of Reason (1947) of the philosophers Adorno and Horkheimer, trying to prove that Victor Frankenstein is an instrumental´s rationality slave.</p>

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