Dr. Sara Minelli | Associate Postgraduate

Former Member
Critical Thinking in the Plural. Conceptual Approaches in Research in the Social Sciences
Centre Marc Bloch, Friedrichstraße 191, D-10117 Berlin
Email: saraminelli55  ( at )  gmail.com Tel: +49(0) 30 / 20 93 70700

Home Institution : EHESS | Position : Associated Researcher | Disciplines : Philosophy , Political Science |

Biography

2022: PhD thesis: "Politics of Myth in the Twentieth Century, between Fascism and Critique" (EHESS). 

Associated researcher at the Centre Marc Bloch since 2017. Since June 2019: wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin at the University of Kiel (CAU), in Political Theory, History of Ideas and Political Culture.

Research interests: philosophies of myth, Critical Theory, history of fascism.


 

CV File
Title of thesis
Politics of Myth in the Twentieth Century, between Fascism and Critique
Summary of thesis

The thesis focuses on the politicisation of myth in the early twentieth century. The notion of myth appears massively in political language at the turn of the century, starting with Romanticism, and is then embraced by the Fascist regimes in Italy and Germany: according to the propaganda, the issue is how to incarnate the myth of the nation, of the “race”, or of the “Third Reich” in social life. Far from being an illusion or a fable, as during the Enlightenment, the myth is now a political reality. The politicisation of the notion of myth coincided with what could be considered a mythisation of politics under fascism, i.e. the setting up of mass gatherings in the form of liturgies, the use of symbols and rites, and the heroisation of the leader. The use of myth as a means to arouse the enthusiasm of the masses, first theorised by Georges Sorel in 1906, thus seems to be the essential element of a new form of politics.Hitherto attributed to the “others”, the so-called “primitives”, and representing the opposite of modern thinking, the myth now expresses, right at a time when the masses are acquiring unprecedented political importance, the imaginary and affective dimension of collective action. At the same time, it is placed at the heart of the fascist ideology, elaborated by intellectuals close to the regimes, from Carl Schmitt to Julius Evola. By tracing the history of the notion of myth, the aim of the present work is to reveal this ambivalence, from its emergence to the philosophical critique developed by several authors - from Ernst Bloch to Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, or Ernst Cassirer - who seek to understand the mechanisms behind the totalitarian domination over the masses through the use of myth. Based on what Furio Jesi calls the “mythological machine”, I show how myth tends to be hypostasised as a force acting on the “masses”, who then replace the so-called “primitives”. The critique of myth is therefore necessary to understand its role in contemporary history, without at the same time succumbing to its fascination.

Institution of thesis
EHESS
Supervisor
Pierre Bouretz/Paula Diehl
Organisation of Events

10-12. 11. 2022 | « Die Zeit des Populismus », avec Brigitte Bargetz, Paula Diehl, Nina Elena Eggers, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel (DVPW, en coopération avec la Fondation Heinrich-Böll et l’Institut français de Kiel)

08-09. 04. 2022 | « Penser à partir de ruines : dialectique et politique dans l’idéalisme allemand et la théorie critique », avec Yasmin Afshar, Nicolas Lema, Ernesto Ruiz-Eldredge, Paris 1 Sorbonne, Paris (en coopération avec le Centre Marc Bloch et l'Université de Poitiers)

09-11. 06. 2021 | « Masse und Individuum in der kapitalistischen Moderne / Masse et individu dans la modernité capitaliste / Mass and Individual in Capitalist Modernity », avec Yasmin Afshar, Nicolas Lema, Ernesto Ruiz-Eldredge, Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin (en coopération avec l'Université de Kiel et de Poitiers)

Publications

Mito, utopia e propaganda : Linguaggio di verità o tecniche di manipolazione?, in Thomas Project. A border journal for utopian thoughts , n.3, “Utopia as a form of life”, 2020. http://www.thomasproject.net/current-issue/

Qu’est-ce qu’un mythe en politique ? Quelques remarques sur l’histoire d’une relation ambiguë, in Trajectoires, 13/2020. http://journals.openedition.org/trajectoires/5156

Freud, Adorno: estudios sobre la estructura pulsional del individuo en la masa, traduction du français de Ernest Ruiz- Eldredge, in R. Prado, J. A. Paz, E. Ruiz-Eldredge (hrsg.), Iconoclasia. Investigaciones sobre y desde Marx, Lima, 2018.