Staging Work in the Corporatist State. Visual Propaganda in Fascist Italy and Peronist Argentina (1922-1955)

Starting in 1922, Benito Mussolini (1922-1943) reformed Italian labour relations by adopting corporatism. As such, he served as a model for many other heads of state in search of ways out of economic crisis. When the corporatist model spread throughout Latin America in the 1930s and 1940s, the Argentine president Juan Domingo Perón (1946-1955) drew significantly on the Italian precedent. Adhering to an aestheticised concept of politics and making use of modern mass media, both regimes advertised corporatism in their respective visual propaganda, in which the worker came to play a prominent role. The article analyses parallels and differences in the formation of political identities in fascist and Peronist visual media that under both corporatist regimes centred around work. Comparing different role models as they were designed for different members of society, I argue that – apart from gender roles where Peronism resorted to similarly traditional images – Peronist propaganda messages were more future-oriented and inclusive. Racist exclusions of parts of the population from the central worker identity that increasingly characterised fascist propaganda over the course of the 1930s were not adopted in Argentina after 1945. Instead, in state visual media the category of work in its inclusionary dimension served as a promise of belonging to the Peronist community.

A Night in Cyprus (Verg. Aen. 1.657-697)

In a short and unprecedented episode of Book 1, the Aeneid has Venus swap Iulus and Cupid: the goddess transfers Iulus to Cyprus for one night only, and has Cupid impersonate Iulus at the court of Carthage. This paper examines the reasons why the model of Cleopatra and Caesarion is relevant to the episode, in particular via the political significance of the Cypriot location and the reference to Cleopatra’s visual propaganda.

‘Why Was He Videoing Us?’: The ethics and politics of audio-visual propaganda in child trafficking and human trafficking campaigns

This paper is a critical reflection on the ethical and political issues associated with the creation and dissemination of unsettling images and videos for child trafficking and human trafficking abolitionist campaigns. The paper acknowledges efforts by anti-trafficking campaigners to address accusations of poverty porn, stigmatisation, and sensationalism directed at such visual propaganda. However, it also observes that these remedial measures have had very little impact. Anti-child trafficking and anti-human trafficking campaigns are still dominated by sensational spectacles of victimhood, abjection, pain, and suffering. The paper attributes this inertia to campaigners’ fears that radical deviation from the use of emotive or ‘biting’ visuals may undermine their established narratives, campaign goals, and even credibility. It supports this conclusion using path dependence theory and the findings of research with residents of remote island communities on the Lake Volta in Ghana who have been the focus of extensive anti-child-trafficking raids and campaigns over the last decade.

Ethnic minorities of Ukraine in the 20s–30s of the XX century in the soviet information and visual space (according to the materials of scientific report at the meeting of the Presidium of NAS of Ukraine, December 23, 2020)

Through the prism of the media, the content of the ethno-national policy of the Bolshevik leadership of the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s is revealed. The direction of the policy of indigenization, the formation of national administrative-territorial entities, policy in the field of culture and education of national minorities and their ideological support by means of visual propaganda are covered. It’s noted that the intensification of the activities of ethnic minorities in Ukraine has led to the curtailment of indigenization and mass repression against their activists.

Globalization of the Internal Enemy Image in the Soviet Visual Propaganda during the Early Cold War (1946–1953)

The present research featured a generalized historical experience in the formation and development of a particular segment of Soviet propaganda during the early Cold War (1946–1953). The authors focused on the visual propaganda as a component of ideological impact. The study involved 240 propaganda posters and over 2,000 magazine and newspaper caricatures published in 1946–1953. The reconstruction of events was part of content analysis of the ideological and propaganda campaigns that the USSR waged as its confrontation with the West began to escalate. The concept of Soviet patriotism was the key idea in the state ideology. The analysis made it possible to specify some features of the symbolic language of visual propaganda. It also revealed the relationship between international and domestic political scenarios through certain varieties of the enemy image. The authors assessed the effectiveness of propaganda in terms of social and political attitude expressed by Soviet citizens. The authors revealed a complex of various means, which included official publications, posters, and cartoons and was used to influence the mass consciousness and form certain ideological attitudes.

Alexander Lobanov: The Reception of the Political in Soviet Outsider Art

The analysis of the oeuvre of the outsider artist Alexander Lobanov (1924–2003) reveals the mechanisms of influence of Soviet visual propaganda. This article examines the total influence of ideology and visual narratives on an artist even when they seem to have been completely excluded from artistic life (in Lobanov’s case, due to his deaf mutism). The author refers to Irving Goffman’s self-presentation theory, the works on political power and its influence by Boris Groys, and the works of psychologists on the peculiarities of compensatory activity in the deaf and mute. The work is relevant as it reflects the importance of outsider artists as part of the art process. The author mostly refers to works by Lobanov in non-Russian and Russian private and institutional collections, as well visual propaganda from the Soviet period. Works by Lobanov and other Soviet outsider artists have not been studied from the perspective chosen by the article’s author. The artist’s oeuvre is examined by Élisabeth Anstett from the discourse point of view, connected with visual images from Soviet propaganda. The author of the article singles out the peculiarities of the appropriation by the outsider artist of the ideological visual narrative, the circle of borrowed images (militarism, hero, Stalin – “the father of nations”), and certain approaches (recurrence, ornamentality, and the presence of text). As a result of an artistic and formalist analysis, the author reveals specific borrowings of approaches and stylistics from the Soviet art (poster, illustration, and easel painting) of the 1930s to the mid‑1950s. Additionally, an important aspect of the study is that the author reveals the peculiar intellectualisation of compensatory mechanisms in the construction of social representation addressing the dominant images of visual Soviet propaganda. The interdisciplinary approach of the research, with certain exceptions, could be used to analyse the creative work of other Soviet outsider artists.

Visual Performativity of Violence: Power and Retaliatory Humiliation in Islamic State (is) Beheading Videos Between 2014 and 2017

The significance of visual propaganda in war has never been as debated as since the Islamic State (IS) started gaining global attention for its sophisticated media campaigns in 2014. Although IS propaganda contains several narratives, the videos of beheadings have for years been at the centre of attention. This graphic violence involves deliberate choices in terms of image composition, lighting, camera-angles, and overall editing techniques deployed to reach maximum effects its targeted audiences. These videos are not only evidence of tactical choices in hybrid warfare, but also mediated communicative artefacts. This chapter aims to dissect this mediation of performative violence: the visualization of beheadings as multi-layered media artefacts, produced with the dual objective to incite fear among adversaries and strengthen the in-group identity of the organization. How videos of IS beheadings are designed is crucial to understand the role of visual propaganda in IS contemporary warfare. The chapter is based on qualitative visual analysis of beheading videos produced by IS official media wings between 2014 and 2017 with particular focus on image composition and sequencing, contextualized through a theoretical discussion about how power and retaliatory humiliation are constructed through the visual performativity of violence.