THE BEAUTY OF KILLING FASCISM 

We invite scholars to submit an abstract to ACLA (American Comparative Literature Association), which is an academic society of scholars that focuses on cross-cultural literary studies to promote interactions between literature and other forms of study, such as the arts, sciences, philosophy, and cultural artifacts. 

The conference will take place at the Palais des congrès de Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada 

During February 26 - March 1, 2026.

We will begin accepting abstracts between August 26th - October 2, 2025.

This seminar, entitled THE BEAUTY OF KILLING FASCISM, focuses on the intersection between Aesthetics and Fascism. 

Here is a direct link to this seminar: https://www.acla.org/seminar/2c07a29c-80ca-4533-8431-660ba868b8dd

Abstracts need to be submitted via the website: www.acla.org

DESCRIPTION: 

We invite contributions that address the liminal space of theatre as a place for interrupting Fascism. 

Leading up to Fascism’s stronghold, Europe witnessed the restoration of Greek and Roman open-aired amphitheaters, accommodating between 20,000 to 100,000 spectators. With ritual in mind, Furio Jesi theorizes the Fascist state as a “mythological machine” that fabricates “false memories” by turning history into a myth of blood, homeland, origin, and a golden past. Roger Griffin argues that Fascism forcefully generates the myth of “rebirth.” Theatre’s kinetic force therefore plays an integral part in Fascism's germination through the aestheticization of politics. 

Amidst the fragile boundary between aesthetics and politics, Walter Benjamin believes that theatre gives strength to “Fascism’s attempts to organize the newly proletarianized masses.” For Benjamin, “such is the aestheticizing of politics, as practiced by Fascism. Communism replies by politicizing art.” Drawing from Bertolt Brecht’s verfremdungseffekt (“alienation effect”), Benjamin claims that theatre is a place where “thinking suddenly comes to a stop in a constellation saturated with tensions. ” The “stop” is Benjamin’s Jetztzeit (now-time), a moment ripe for a “revolutionary chance in the fight for the oppressed past.” It allows the actor’s and the audience’s “double role” as a critic to serve as a “cutting” of the “here” and “now.” 

Fascism’s fear of the “now” is witnessed in Mussolini, who associated closely with playwrights such as Gabriele D’Annunzio. From D’Annuzio’s play Glory, Mussolini coins his famous line, “Chi si ferma a e perduto” [“He who stops is lost”], thereby signifying his fear of arresting time. In fact, this panel’s title is inspired by a similar moment of arrest from Tiago Rodrigues’ Portuguese play, Catarina e a beleza de matar fascistas [Caterina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists]. Here, a woman stands on stage pointing a gun at a fascist but hesitates to pull the trigger. On stage, immediate, unpredictable change can ricochet into uncharted territory, where, regardless of the prescribed script the audience can at any point regain control and even dare to take center stage. 

This panel welcomes theories on the liminalities of theatre where pauses give way to new methodologies of killing Fascism. 

We seek works from antiquity to contemporary, Baroque theatre, Epic theatre, plays written during Fascism, philosophies on myth and poetry, or other aesthetics. 

• What is the role of a country's National Theatre?
• How might aesthetics arrest Fascism's mythic regeneration?
• Is Fascism gendered, in which case, how can it be used as an anti-authoritarian methodology?
• Does Fascism possess a kinetic energy that diametrically opposes a potential energy of arrestation?
• What would Fascism's arrest in time and space entail? 

Afterall, if theatre played a pivotal role in Fascism’s birth, perhaps it can prescribe a script for its beautiful death.