Description: Fascism tends to be relegated to a dark chapter of European history, but what if new forms of fascism are currently returning to the forefront of the contemporary political scene? In this book, Nidesh Lawtoo furthers his previous diagnostic of crowd behavior to account for the growing shadow cast by authoritarian leaders who have taken possession of the digital age. In the process, Lawtoo joins forces with various mimetic theorists to show that (new) fascism reloads the old problematics of mimetic contagion, community, and myth via new media that have the disquieting power to turn politics itself into a fiction.
Brief description:
Nidesh Lawtoo is professor of Modern/Contemporary European Literature and Culture at Leiden University, Netherlands. He previously led the ERC project Homo Mimeticus: Theory and Criticism, and he is the author of several books inaugurating a new theory of mimesis at the intersection of philosophy, literature, and politics, including The Phantom of the Ego (2013), Conrad's Shadow (2016), (New)Fascism (2019), and Violence and the Oedipal Unconscious (2023).
Review Quotes: "Calmly, carefully, and courageously, Nidesh Lawtoo examines the rise of a 'reloaded' fascism in the United States and Europe. His diagnosis--whose key figures include mimesis, myth, Girard, contagion, Bataille, Connolly, community, phantom egos, Dionysian identification, partage, Apollonian dream-states, and sacrifice--is both lucid and fascinating. The book is a testament to the power of reasoning to unmask and resist cruel forms of affective contagion, even as it opens the door to the project of composing generous and laudable admixtures of pathos and logos. A bracing and elegant book very much worth reading."
--Jane Bennett, Professor, Department of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University, and author of Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things