The conference will assess the impact of transnational brokers in establishing global fascist networks. Whereas most previous research has focused on global importation and adaptation of European fascisms, this conference aims to overcome such one-sided processes. Instead of discussing the traditional approach to the reception of political ideas and practices, it asks how fascist brokers from Latin America, the Middle East, or Asia, influenced European fascisms and established multi-directional global flows of fascism. We intend to locate the lives of fascist brokers in both time and place as well as consider processes of social mobility and professionalization. Which aspects of the self-and external-perception of these agents of exchange fostered or impeded the network formation and its stability? How and to which extent brought they together fascist regimes, organizations, groups, or movements? What was their impact on political, economic, and military decisions in fascist regimes? Our aim is to develop a typology of transnational fascist intellectuals, travelling writers and journalists, militarists and officers, artists, diplomats and politicians, youth leaders, or religious figures who mediated and conciliated between European and non-European fascisms.
The conference was organized thanks to the generous support of the "Gastwissenschaftlerprogramm"of the Federal State Baden-Württemberg (Germany) and the Excellence Cluster “Cultural Foundations of Integration and Disintegration” at Konstanz University.
Programme
Wednesday, May 10
15-15.15 Welcome
15.15-16 Opening remarks:
Sven Reichardt (Universität Konstanz)
Federico Finchelstein (The New School for Social Research, New York)
16-18 Panel I: Italian Fascism abroad
Giulia Albanese (Università degli Studi di Padova)
"La lezione italiana”: Representing and promoting fascism abroad in the 1920s
Valeria Galimi (Università degli Studi di Milano)
Enlisted Muses. French Intellectuals and the Idea of a Fascist Europe: networks, circulations and exchanges across the European continent
Commentator: Bianca Gaudenzi (Universität Konstanz)
18.30 Dinner (Restaurant Brigantinus)
Thursday, May 11
10-12 Panel II: Japan’s Empire
Janis Mimura (Stony Brook University, New York)
Axis Entrepreneurs and Mass Mobilization in Wartime Japan
Reto Hofmann (Tokio University and Monash University, Melbourne)
Shimoi Harukichi, Youth, and the Aesthetics of Fascism
Commentator: Victoria De Grazia (Columbia University, New York)
12-14 Lunch Break (Restaurant Brigantinus)
14-16 Panel III: East Asia
Benjamin Zachariah (Universität Heidelberg)
Inchoate internationalist or fascist middleman? The career of Benoy Kumar Sarkar
Maggie Clinton (Middlebury College)
Anti-Colonial Circuits through Red Canton: Returned Students and National Renaissance in Interwar China
Commentator: Daniel Leese (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg)
17-18 Keynote lecture (Universität Konstanz, Room A 702)
Ulrich Herbert (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg)
Deutsches Europa und Großgermanisches Reich: Supranationale Perspektiven der Nationalsozialisten (in German)
19 Dinner (Restaurant Wessenberg)
Friday, May 12
9-12 Panel IV: Fascist “Hispanidad”
Xosé M. Núñez Seixas (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)
From "National Resurrection" to "Welfare State": Nazi Germany´s Image of Spanish Travellers and Blue Division Volunteers, 1933-36 and 1941-45
Antonio Costa Pinto (Universidade de Lisboa)
Intellectual-politicians and the diffusion of corporatism between Europe and Latin America
Luis Herran Avila (New School for Social Research, New York)
Reaccionarios y revolucionarios: right-wing nationalism and the fascist persuasion in 20th century Mexico
Commentator: Michael Goebel (Freie Universität Berlin)
12-12.30 Final discussion and end of workshop