Answering the Call: Telephonic Fascism and Faulkner’s Angel of History

Nutt Auditorium

What connects telephones, fascism, and Faulkner? As this talk will argue, quite a bit. More importantly, it suggests that in linking them, we can better understand our current conjuncture. Since Donald Trump’s election, the term fascism has witnessed a resurgence. But the term’s meaning is anything but clear, largely because of its capture by U. S. Cold War ideology. Faulkner is often implicated in this capture. As Faulkner moved from a Popular Front figure to a cultural Cold Warrior, his work helped shift fascism’s meaning from a term inculpating capitalist imperialism to one referring to political regimes operating outside of or against free (market) individualism. This talk aims to interrupt the free-market-Faulkner connection by excavating a counter-Cold War and telephonic Faulkner who can provide the critiques of post-war modernization necessary to understand how fascism could so easily answer the call of neoliberalism, and perhaps how we can disconnect that call.