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American intellectuals and the concept of totalitarianism, 1960–2009

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posted on 2023-06-09, 22:46 authored by Sophie Louise Joscelyne
This thesis engages with one of the most influential and misused concepts in American intellectual life, ‘totalitarianism’. As a malleable and powerfully evocative concept, totalitarianism has been frequently mobilised in the service of wide-ranging political ends, shaping and policing the boundaries of political discourse in the United States for nearly a century. While a relatively large body of scholarship exists pertaining to anti-totalitarianism as a rationale for the Cold War, this thesis provides a new perspective by focusing on the lasting effects of totalitarianism as a concept in the second half of the twentieth century and after the millennium. I consider: 1960s uses of ‘totalitarianism’ as a justification strategy for the radical politics of the New Left; the role of totalitarianism in the neoconservative reaction against radicalism in the 1970s and 80s; and the re-emergence of totalitarianism discourse after the end of the Cold War, employed as a rationale for supporting the ‘war on terror’. I argue that during these years the fundamental connection between totalitarianism and the state – in both meanings of the state as an externally sovereign entity and the state as internal government – was contested and challenged. In the 1960s, radical intellectuals turned totalitarianism inwards to criticise trends in American politics and society and, in doing so, experimented with ‘soft’ or ‘cultural’ readings of totalitarianism which de-emphasised the centrality of state control. While in the 1960s non-terroristic formulations of totalitarianism were advanced, the 1980s witnessed the re-centring of terror and violence at the heart of totalitarianism. In this decade, understandings of the ‘terrorist’ and the ‘totalitarian’ became fused. This period also saw a crucial shift from state ‘terror’ to international ‘terrorism’. The implications of the purported link between totalitarianism and terrorism were revealed in the post-2001 ‘war on terror’ which saw the concept of totalitarianism mobilised in support of a war against complex networks of decentralised and stateless terrorist organisations, representing the detachment of totalitarianism from its traditional association with the nation-state.

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  • Published version

Pages

274.0

Department affiliated with

  • American Studies Theses

Qualification level

  • doctoral

Qualification name

  • phd

Language

  • eng

Institution

University of Sussex

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  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2021-01-20

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