[Reader-list] A DISCUSSION ON Fascism and Aesthetics

[Marxist Institute]

INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MARXIST STUDIES
(DELHI CHAPTER)
E-Mail: iims_delhi at hotmail.com

A DISCUSSION ON
Fascism and Aesthetics
FACILITATOR: POTHIK GHOSH

"When fascism aestheticises politics, communism responds by politicising 
art."
Walter Benjamin, 'Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction'
The highest form of aestheticised politics, to cite Benjamin once again, is 
war. And don't we know that well enough! The belligerence on our borders 
with Pakistan--the Indian army well turned-out in its menacing regalia with 
its array of ordered sophisticated weaponry (artillery, tanks, et al). That 
is the beauty of militarised order. Something the khaki shorts of the RSS 
brilliantly embody--in the domain of 'civil society' and now, with the 
BJP-led NDA in the saddle, in the realm of state power. There is but a thin 
line that separates Praveen Togadia's trishul diksha, the orderly, 
disciplined and 'aesthetic' drill at the shakhas and the Saraswati Shishu 
Mandirs and the orchestrated and organised dance macabre of the Bajrangi and 
Sanghi death squads on the streets of Gujarat, post Godhra. It is this 
fascist spirit--of its obsession with aesthetic beauty, going to the extent 
of aestheticising its violent credo--that was so tellingly captured by Leni 
Riefenstahl's 'artistic' films, which relied heavily on its footage of the 
militarised, (and I am sure all will agree) murderous Nazi order on German 
streets.
The ascendancy of the Hindu Right continues unabated and its fascist 
credentials, particularly with regard to its politics-aesthetics kinship, is 
rather well emphasised by the fact that we have a poet Prime Minister who is 
also the liberal facade of the rightwing BJP. It's here that we, as 
practising Marxists, need to intervene and discover what aesthetic 
sensibilities are all about.
Fascism, as a form of bourgeois regime, thrives on the synchrony it achieves 
with the petty-bourgeois fascistic tendencies that are present in a society 
where various forms and stages of capitalism co-exist. Consequently, 
violence remains no longer merely a function of the repressive state 
apparatus (Althusser), but extends itself into the domain of ideology and 
'civil society'. This movement is actually dialectical and the other half of 
this dialectic is the ideologisation of the polity that is essentially 
constituted by the various repressive state apparatuses. This perhaps 
explains how a fascist regime manufactures consent for its politics. And 
it's precisely at this juncture that we need to understand the bourgeois 
ideological moorings of art and aesthetic sensibilities so that we 
comprehend the process of ideological consensus-generation at work vis-à-vis 
our own home-grown variety of fascism.
We will try to examine and bring to light the ideological character of what 
is commonly perceived and accessed as art. In the process, we will also 
attempt to lay bare the ideological reifications inherent in the 
preponderant aesthetic sensibility of our times by treating it in 
historical-materialist terms. That said, we will then try to come up with a 
formulation what art and aesthetics can mean in Marxist praxis in a fascist 
conjuncture.
GANDHI PEACE FOUNDATION (Basement),
Deendayal Upadhyaya Marg (Near ITO), New Delhi
3.00-6.00 PM, 11TH MAY 2003 (Sunday)

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