French Literary Fascism

by David Carroll

This is the first book to provide a sustained critical analysis of the literary-aesthetic dimension of French fascism--the peculiarly French form of what Walter Benjamin called the fascist "aestheticizing of politics." Focusing first on three important extremist nationalist writers at the turn of the century and then on five of the most visible fascist intellectuals in France in the 1930s, David Carroll shows how both traditional and modern concepts of art figure in the elaboration of fascist ideology--and in the presentation of fascism as an art of the political.


Carroll is concerned with the internal relations of fascism and literature--how literary fascists conceived of politics as a technique for fashioning a unified people and transforming the disparate elements of society into an organic, totalized work of art. He explores the logic of such aestheticizing, as well as the assumptions about art, literature, and culture at the basis of both the aesthetics and politics of French literary fascists. His book reveals how not only classical humanism but also modern aesthetics that defend the autonomy and integrity of literature became models for xenophobic forms of nationalism and extreme "cultural" forms of anti-Semitism. A cogent analysis of the ideological function of literature and culture in fascism, this work helps us see the ramifications of thinking of literature or art as the truth or essence of politics.

Genres: History, European History, France, Literary Criticism, 20th Century, Nonfiction

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1994

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Reviews

[Mir · Rating 3 out of 5]

Carroll argues that French fascism's foundations were laid before the Great War by nationalist writers who denounced the politics of the Third Republic and called for an “aestheticization” of politics.
French fascism is therefore of internal origin and not due to Italian or German influence. He views fascism as growing from fin-de-siecle nationalism taking a form that was primarily literary and characterized by an anti-semitism that was aesthetic and cultural rather than racial or biological, belief in a unified "National Will" that was organic to France, and a desire to apply literary aesthetics to politics.

Maurice Barrès became a Figure with the publication of his 1888 Cult of the Self (Le Culte Du Moi) and quickly parlayed his new popularity into an election to the Chamber of Deputies in 1889 as a Boulangist (making, I feel, Carroll's characterization of him as an intellectual a trifle disingenuous). He became Barrès close to Charles Maurras, founder of Action Française, who dreamed of rebuilding a Royalist France with strong cultural connections to classical Greece, which for him represented ideals of order and beauty. He viewed German and Jewish ideas as threats and rejected democracy on the grounds that it was disordered and without beauty. "France should be defended because France is beautiful," Maurras argued.

Barrès likewise saw his nation as unique, defined by culture while others, in his view, were defined by race. French culture was rooted in "land and the dead" and constituted a national self that must be always on guard against contamination by foreign influences.

Carroll's third figure, Charles Péguy, was on the contrary a passionate supporter of the republic -- or at least of an idealized republic that would exist once the "Republican race" had, again, gotten rid of those foreign contaminations. Then politics could be remade in the image of art. For Peguy race was derivative of culture, shared experience, and religion. Republican mysticism was incompatible with "Oriental Judaism." Despite being a prominent Dreyfusard, Peguy believed that the Jewish population would always remain separate from the body of France.

These three figures advocated totalizing, if not totalitarian, politics, and produced texts which created intellectual foundations for political and literary fascism. Unfortunately, Carroll never explains more precisely or pragmatically what sort of fascism he has in mind or how these ideas may have later been actualized.

[Jacob Mulliken · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a solid corrective to narratives that confine fascism to the realm of force and brutishness. There were, Carroll shows, plenty of soft-boy fascists too; and it was precisely their 'softness' that drove them to fascism. Luckily, such narratives are, I think, some 30 years out-of-date. Carroll's thesis thus reads as a bit obvious in 2025—but that might be a testament to his success.