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In Search of an Ideological Archetype of Fascism: Sternhell’s Interpretation of Fascism and Its Critiques

Jang Moon Seok 1

1서울대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This essay tries to evaluate the works about the French fascism and the fascist ideology left behind by Zeev Sternhell, a Polish-born Israeli historian and political scientist, and identifies some interpretative issues regarding fascist studies. To this end, his studies are considered, divided into three themes of the origin, nature and genealogy of fascism. Critical attention is paid to his famous theses on the birth of fascist ideology in France before the World War I, the ‘Neither Right nor Left’ synthesis which was based on the revolutionary ‘third way’, and the relationship between fascism and the Anti-Enlightenment tradition that dates back to the eighteenth century. A careful look at his theses reveals that they have grown out of the method and perspective of the intellectual history which attempted to search for the ideological archetype of fascism. Sternhell’s studies in the French fascism and the fascist ideology set up a criterion for comparing the fascist phenomena and offered the possibility of understanding their interactions by extending the scope of the previous fascist studies based on the national histories of Italy and Germany. However, it seems that he interpreted the history of fascism exclusively through the prism of thoughts and ideas without situating them in the specific historical contexts and political situations. In short, in order to develop his scholarly legacy, what we need is more political, more social history, or, at least, the intellectual historical approach a little bit closer to social history.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.