Sex Drives

[Dave Monroe]

On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 10:17 AM, Dave Monroe
<against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:

> SEX DRIVES
> Fantasies of Fascism in Literary Modernism
> Laura Frost
>
> http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=3715> http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/toc/Frost.sex.toc.pdf

"Introduction: 'Fascinating Fascism'" (pp. 1-15)

>
> Table of Contents
>

"... to understand why fascism, with its history of brutality and
hatred, became improbably associated with exotic eroticism and sexual
deviance.  Rather than begin with the common premise that fascism is
an especially libidinal politics or that sexuality is a key to
understanding fascism, I will examine how that premise came to be
widely shared, if not openly recognized." (p. 3)

   "Studies of fascist modernism usually demonstrate how these writers
reflect the oppressive ideology of fascism.  Yet these studies do not
explain the large number of writers who do not subscribe to fascist
politics but nevertheless produce fictions of eroticized fascism ....
These authors quite strikingly adopt many of the same tropes as the
'fascist modernists,' but they do so alongside a rejection of fascist
politics." (p. 4)

"I take these representations of nonfascist eroticized fascism as my
focus, reading them not as idiosyncratic eruptions of bad taset, but
rather as a consistent literary theme that expressess a major
reevaluation of sexuality and politics in the period." (p. 5)

"It seems to me that the best way to pursue the question of fascism's
realtionship to sexuality is not to take that realtionship for granted
but rather to look at how the assumption that fascism can reveal the
nature of sexual interests and investments was produced.  My primary
questions are: Where do images of eroticized fascism come from (that
is, where and why are they produced); what do they mean in relation to
tehir particular historical context; and what puposes do they serve
for a particular author?" (pp. 5-6)

"I contend that fictions of eroticized fascism are part of an
antifascist culture that persistently sexualizes fascism, and that
these fictions point to a democratic insitence that fascism be
construed as sexually deviant.  I will build on George L. Mosse's
argument in Nationalism and Sexuality that a culturally shared idae of
'respectablity' is central in the construction of modern European
national identity and that the designation of certain sexual
identities as 'deviant' or 'abnormal'  is pivotal in the
solidification of respectability." (p. 6)

"... specific nationalisms were often ecxlipsed  in atifasscist
discourse by an international ideology of democracy.  In the Allied
nations, a selected form of sexuality--heterosexuality founded on
equality, respect, and nonviolence--was validated as a reflection of
democratic national ideals, while particular sexualities that did not
fall into line with this norm were designated 'fascist.'
Sadomasochistic eroticism, for example,  was not supposed to be  a
part of democratic or socialist politics, where the peaceful,
nonviolent treatment of everyone was ostensibly the norm.  Fascism,
therefore, with its institutions of oppression and domination, became
the sadomasochistic politics par excellence.  Male homosexuality was
also, in these discourses of respectable, democratic national
sexuality, frquently associated with fascism." (pp. 6-7)

"In some respects, eroticized fictions of fascism appear to be
modernist business as usual--the shock of the new--but in other ways
they necessitate a revision of our understanding of modernist literary
concerns.   These renderings of fascism are part of the modrnist
assault on bourgeois values and  on the faith in rationality and
humanism ....  These authors often aestheticize fascism, but they also
establish a clear historical frame that emphasizes the violence of
fascism." (p. 9)

"These authors literalize the most lurid metaphors of propaganda,
turning the discourse of prohibition into one of provocation.  The
particular motivations behind such transformations vary from author to
author, but, inevitably, eroticized images of fascism touch on
prohibitions around nationalism, political partisanship, and sexual
politics (specifically, prohibitions surrounding homosexuality,
sadomasochism, and gender stereotypes." (p. 12)

   "Second, the depictions of fascism in most of these texts function
according to the logic of fetishism.... thsese authors suggest they
know very well facsism's murderous history, but they still imagine
fascism as erotic.  Third and  most important, the fantasies in these
fictions are sadomasochistic.  The represnetatioon of dsadomasochism,
however, is quite different from how sadomasichsim is commonly
understood, as a pathology conflated with fascism." (p. 12)