Zoë Roth, Associate Professor of French in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, has been featured in a new documentary from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Ideas programme examining the relationship between the far right, fascism and aesthetics.
In the programme, Zoë discusses how fascist regimes sought to control not only political and public life, but also people’s sensory and aesthetic experiences.
Zoë explores how propaganda could determine what people were able to watch and read, while censorship restricted language and collective rituals shaped and standardised bodily experience.
She describes this process as ‘fascist anaesthesia’: the restriction and homogenisation of sensory experience through which fascist power can affect how people encounter the world around them.
The documentary, produced by CBC’s Ideas, considers how elements of the history and aesthetics of fascism are being revisited and borrowed by the contemporary far right.
Listen to Zoë Roth’s contribution on the CBC website:
CBC Ideas: What the far right is borrowing from history’s fascism and aesthetics
Zoë’s research brings together questions of bodies, aesthetics and political experience. Her work examines how embodied and sensory experience can be shaped by literature, visual culture and political contexts.
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