Kitsch and Right Totalitarianism: The Anthropological Foundations of Particular Alliance Cover Image

Kič i desni totalitarizam: antropološke osnove jednog savezništva
Kitsch and Right Totalitarianism: The Anthropological Foundations of Particular Alliance

Author(s): Mirjana Radojičić
Subject(s): Aesthetics, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, Fascism, Nazism and WW II, Sociology of Art
Published by: Hrvatsko Filozofsko Društvo
Keywords: kitsch; art; Nazism; Fascism; political culture; aesthetics;

Summary/Abstract: This text deals with aesthetic aspects of right totalitarian ideologies, or more precisely, the function that kitsch as pseudoart has in their origin and maintenance. As affinity towards kitsch, which was established by art theoreticians a long time ago, is a characteristic of a complex structure of human experience and view of the world, the author also explores the ways in which it was exploited or manipulated in other, strictly speaking non-aesthetic spheres of life in Germany and Italy of the 1930s. Political symbolism, language of politics, offered forms of political identification and mobilization towards the projected political goal are the subject of her analysis in the central part of the text, which analysis is derived from that angle of research. The author concludes that the alliance between kitsch and totalitarian political regimes is not accidental, but that it is, on the contrary, founded on common and firm anthropological bases.

  • Issue Year: 36/2016
  • Issue No: 03/143
  • Page Range: 595-608
  • Page Count: 14
  • Language: Croatian