The Final Countdown: Fascism, Jazz, and the Afterlife

Authors

  • Lidija Šumah Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3986/fv.43.2.03

Keywords:

Adorno, alienating effect, anti-Semitism, critical race theory, exception, fascism, Freud, identity, music, psychoanalysis, racism, women’s rights movement

Abstract

The general question underlying this article is whether it is possible to turn a paradox into a productive principle. The article approaches this question through Adorno’s and Dainotto’s analyses of the jazz movement in fascist Italy. Jazz was marked by a specific paradox: on the one hand, it was banned due to its African American roots, and as such did not adhere to or glorify the Italian tradition; on the other hand, jazz served very well to protect the nationalist interests in the light of the nascent mass movements. Against the backdrop of these analyses, the article proposes two distinct paradigms of exception: the logic of count till all and the logic of count till none.

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References

Adorno, Theodor W., “Commitment”, New Left Review, 1/87–88 (1974), no pagination, https://newleftreview.org/issues/i87/articles/theodor-adorno-commitment.

Adorno, Theodor W., Prisms, trans. S. Weber and S. Weber Nicholsen, Cambridge (MA), MIT Press, 1981.

Adorno, Theodor W., “Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda”, in A. Arato and E. Gebhardt (eds.), The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, New York, Continuum, 1982, pp. 118–137.

Bataille, Georges, “The Psychological Structure of Fascism”, in Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939, A. Stoekl (ed.), Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1985, pp. 137–160.

Ben-Ghiat, Ruth, Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922–1945, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2001.

Buch, Esteban, Beethoven’s Ninth: A Political History, trans. R. Miller, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Crouter, Richard, Friedrich Schleiermacher: Between Enlightenment and Romanticism, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Dainotto, Roberto, “The Saxophone and the Pastoral. Italian Jazz in the Age of Fascist Modernity”, Italica, 85 (2–3/2008), pp. 273–294.

Dolar, Mladen, A Voice and Nothing More, Cambridge (MA) and London, MIT Press, 2006.

Dolar, Strel sredi koncerta, Ljubljana, Cankarjeva založba, 2012.

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Published

2023-03-23

How to Cite

Šumah, L. (2023). The Final Countdown: Fascism, Jazz, and the Afterlife. Filozofski Vestnik, 43(2). https://doi.org/10.3986/fv.43.2.03

Issue

Section

Emergency