Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction

Literature, Culture, Fascism 3

PART ONE: THE FATHERS OF FRENCH LITERARY FASCISM 17

One

The Use and Abuse of Culture: Maurice Barrès and the Ideology of the Collective Subject 19

The Cult of the Self 19

Cultural and Racial Typologies 27

The Aesthetics of the Collective Subject 31

Two

The Beautiful Community: The Fascist Legacy of Charles Péguy 42

Aesthetic Socialism 42

Antimodernism and the Spiritualization of History 52

Nation, Culture, Race 62

Three

The Nation as Artwork: Charles Maurras and the Classical Origins of French Literary Fascism 71

Antiromantic Organicism 71

Integral Nationalism, Anti-Semitism, and the Aesthetic Power of the Monarch 87

PART TWO: LITERARY FASCISTS 97

Four

Fascism as Aesthetic Experience: Robert Brasillach and the Politics of Literature 99

Nationalism, Fascism, and the Defense of Literature 99

Fascist Joy and the Aestheticizing of Experience 114

Five

The Fascist Imagined Community: The Myths of Europe and Totalitarian Man in Drieu la Rochelle 125

The Modernist Political Imagination 125

The Ideal of Total Art 131

The Fascist Imagination and the Myth of Europe 136

Aesthetic Ideals and Collaborationist Politics 139

Apocalyptic Fictions 142

Six

Literary Fascism and the Problem of Gender: The Aesthetics of the Body in Drieu la Rochelle 147

The Gender (s) of Fascism: Sartre, Adorno, Theweleit 147

The Fascist Aesthetics of the Body 158

The Trouble with Gender and the Ambivalence of Desire 164

Seven

Literary Anti-Semitism: The Poetics of Race in Drumont and Céline 171

The Aesthetic Totalization of the Other 171

Style and Race 180

The Politics of Language and the Poetics of Race 186

Eight

The Art of Anti-Semitic Rage: Lucien Rebatet's Aesthetics of Violence 196

Aesthetic Sensibility and Anti-Semitism 196

The Aesthetic Final Solution 207

Nine

A Literary Fascism beyond Fascism: Thierry Maulnier and the Ideology of Culture 222

Classicism, Humanism, Fascism 223

Tragedy, Violence, and the National Revolution 229

The Spirtitual Revolution and the Ideal of Culture 235

Afterword

Literary Fascism and the Case of Paul de Man 248

Notes to the Chapters 263

Index 295