TOTalitarian ARTs: The Visual Arts, Fascism(s) and Mass-society

Mark Epstein · Fulvio Orsitto

maalis 2017 · Cambridge Scholars Publishing

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This collection represents a tool to broaden and deepen our geographical, institutional, and historical understanding of the term totalitarianism. Is totalitarianism only found in ‘other’ societies? How come, then, it emerged historically in ‘ours’ first? How come it developed in so many countries either in Western Europe (Italy, Germany, Portugal, and Spain) or under implicit Western forms of coercion (Latin America)? How do relations between individual(s), mass and the visual arts relate to totalitarian trends? These are among the questions this book asks about totalitarianism.

The volume does not impose a ‘one size fits all’ interpretation, but opens new spaces for debate on the connection between the visual arts and mass-culture in totalitarian societies. From the Mediterranean to Scandinavia, from Western Europe to Latin America, from the fascism of the early 20th century to contemporary forms of totalitarian control, and from cinema to architecture, the chapters included in TotArt bring expertise, historical sensibility and political awareness to bear on this varied range of phenomena.

This collection offers international contributions on visual, performing and plastic arts. The chapters range from examination of comics to study of YouTube videos and American newsreels, from Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Uruguayan cinemas to more contemporary American films and TV series, from painters and sculptors to the study of urban spaces.

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Mark Epstein is a Test Rater for Educational Testing Service and a translator. He is on the editorial boards of Bionomina and Sinestesieonline and has published many essays and book chapters on Italian literature, culture, criticism, cinema and philosophy.

Fulvio Orsitto is Associate Professor and Director of the Italian and Italian American Program at California State University, USA. He has published extensively on Italian literature and on Italian and Italian American cinema.

Andrea Righi is Assistant Professor of Italian and Coordinator of the Italian Studies Program at Miami University, USA. He is the author of Italian Reactionary Thought and Critical Theory: An Inquiry into Savage Modernities (2015).