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<p>My dissertation, Fascist Fiction: Inventing the Lesser Evil in Italy and Brazil,
accounts for the resilience of fascism by tracing the rhetoric of the “lesser evil”—a
discursive practice constitutive of fascism—through contemporary politics and literature
in Italy and Brazil. By invoking the looming presence of a graver, more insidious
threat the rhetoric of the lesser evil legitimizes fascist violence against dissidents
and vulnerable populations. Through an analysis of texts by fascist philosopher Giovanni
Gentile and his Brazilian counterpart Miguel Reale, I reveal that the rhetoric of
the lesser evil is a constitutive part of fascist discourse and that in Italy and
Brazil this aspect of fascist doctrine met a favorable combination of subjective and
objective conditions which has allowed it to thrive within democratic structures.
Finally, I argue that when moral claims such as the lesser evil work to obfuscate
the understanding of traumatic and violent events within the public sphere, novels––precisely
because of their putative fictionality––can offer persuasive counter-histories that
re-contextualize fascist crimes and sometimes provoke acts of reparative justice by
the State. My dissertation advances scholarship on the transcultural reach of fascist
ideology: it contributes to an understanding of fascism’s place within a broader tradition
of right-wing thought that continues to shape present-day politics in Europe and the
world, and enriches our perception of the powers of literary forms.</p>
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