Chapter Introduction : IN Book: Transatlantic Practices of Fascism(s) and Populism(s) from the Margins

Abstract

This volume brings together leading international experts in politics, discourse, memory, and culture to examine the complex entanglements of populism(s) and fascism(s) in political thought and cultural productions. The starting point is Argentine historian Federico Finchelstein’s assertion that the dynamics of transnational fascism and populist movements become clearer when viewed from the margins. Indeed, it was in Latin America – not Europe – where fascism and populism first intersected, with Argentine Peronism as the paradigmatic case. Building on this perspective, the volume explores Europe’s political and cultural legacy of fascism within the context of globalised mobilities, linking its totalitarian roots to the Latin American genealogies of populism(s). Adopting an interdisciplinary transnational and transhistorical approach, and cultural transfer as a method, it investigates cultural representations and practices that both reflect and challenge the divisive “Us” versus “Them” rhetoric central to fascist and populist discourses. Particular attention is given to how cultural artefacts and practices memorialise, remediate, and oppose narratives of fascism(s) and populism(s), with the assumption that (anti)fascist art and activism still move along transatlantic trajectories. This book will be of interest to researchers of fascism, populism, social and cultural history, European and Latin American history, literature, art, and activism.