Modernism and Totalitarianism

Shorten, Richard

doi:10.1057/9781137284372

Cited by 14 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…They are incapable of offering a normative framework capable of guiding every aspect of their employees' lives. Exit then becomes an alternative to 'loyalty' (Shorten, 2012;Palpacuer and Seignour, 2019). Such, we argue, was the case within Theranos.…”

Section: Countervailing Forcesmentioning

confidence: 87%

Despotic Leadership and Ideological Manipulation at Theranos: Towards a theory of hegemonic totalism in the workplace

Tourish

Willmott

2023

Organization Studies

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This paper addresses despotic leadership and ideological manipulation in the workplace, and explores their detrimental consequences for employees and other stakeholders. The notion of ‘hegemonic totalism’ is advanced to account for how employees are often subordinated to the will of powerful elites. Our argument is illustrated through a case study of Theranos, a high prolife Silicon Valley bio-tech company that promised a revolution in healthcare diagnostics but which was declared bankrupt in 2018. Its once much feted founding CEO, Elizabeth Holmes, has been sentenced to eleven years in prison for fraud. Analysis of empirical material on the company illustrates how business leaders may engage in despotic practices, while simultaneously invoking apparently positive ideals to enforce the performance of consent by employees. Following an exploration of the paradoxes and pathologies of hegemonic totalism, our study identifies three primary countervailing forces that act to limit its effects.

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Section: Countervailing Forcesmentioning

confidence: 87%

Despotic Leadership and Ideological Manipulation at Theranos: Towards a theory of hegemonic totalism in the workplace

Tourish

Willmott

2023

Organization Studies

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“…but last. A striking case in point is the concept of "totalitarianism", which had been seminal to the rhetoric of Fascism and National Socialism 40 and is, still, a technical term of political science-a concept employed, not least, to differentiate an economically detrimental form of rule from economically productive authoritarianism. 41 Such unwitting transmission of justifications of mass violence is a result also of the second strategy of distancing I want to highlight.…”

Section: Auf Ihrem Weg Trafen Sie Auf Verlassene Bauernhäuser Aufgela...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Complicity at a distance: commemorating problematic involvement in perpetration in contemporary Central and Eastern European literatures

Prade-Weiss¹

2022

Open Res Europe

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Background: In the twenty-first century, literatures from Central and Eastern Europe are marked by a boom of documentary fiction portraying complicity Nazi perpetration, Soviet terror, or other instances of 20th century mass violence and totalitarianism. Since understanding the past serves requirements of the present, the boom prompts the question: Why the interest in past complicities now? My hypothesis is that the texts address convergences between involvements in past acts of mass violence and current forms of participation in wrongdoings in neoliberalism. While these issues differ profoundly, they are related: structurally, both present the challenge of forming a nuanced notion of participation. Historically, they are related since justifications of past involvements have established the terminology, narratives, and heuristics in which terror, repression, and mass violence are subsequently discussed, thus forming the frame for negotiating current problematic involvements. Method: Critical discourse analysis is used to scrutinize the legal concept of complicity and combined it with close readings of passages from four literary texts to outline how attention to reciprocity in language can enhance our understanding of problematic involvement. Results: Literary portrayals of historical complicity are ambivalent; they can help to find models for comprehending issues of the present in cultural memory, but they can also serve to establish distance between present and past to appease the sense that all is not quite well, even after the demise of Nazi and Soviet terror. The article outlines two modes of distancing: a) spacio-temporal distancing of the commemorating point of view in ‘the West’ from the portrayed violence in ‘the East’, and b) moral distancing that casts the audience as superior to complicit characters. Conclusion: By pressing for analytic or consoling distance, both strategies of distancing amount to a complicity with the transmission of discourses that justify, excuse, or deny mass violence and totalitarian terror.

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“…A major shortcoming of political religion theory lies in its skepticism of traditional religions' response to liberal aspects of modernism. Griffin's approach to political religion – which is based on Peter Berger's ‘sacred canopy’ – ‘the creation and sustaining of a distinctly “human world” or “culture”’ – indicates the enlightenment's role in dismantling the unified Christian perspective in the West, which in turn fostered the 19th century's deep need for meaning, a vacuum which opened the door to finding meaning in movements such as fascism and Stalinism (Shorten , 63). However, the more important concern, raised by David Roberts, is the extent to which political religion can explain totalitarianism's departure and its variations.…”

Section: Fascism: a Syncretic Coalition Between Political And Politicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Between Political Religion and Politicized Religion: Interwar Fascism and Religion Revisited

Assoudeh

2015

Religion Compass

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The following article surveys the relationships between fascist ideology and religion in interwar Europe. First, it provides a working definition for the term 'clerical fascism' through the exploration of 14 case studies presented at the 2006 international workshop on Clerical Fascism in interwar Europe. Next, it argues that fascism, understood as a syncretic coalition between political and politicized religion, improves the analytical understanding of how fascist movements and religious entities extended collaborations. This approach enables us to study not only how fascist and religious forces respond to political opportunities but also how these collectivities reshape political context in their favor and create new opportunities. In most cases, battles over two key factions, the 'custody of youths' and the 'rebirth of nations', provided both political and politicized camps with opportunities to cooperate or struggle.

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Modernism and Totalitarianism

Cited by 14 publications

References 0 publications

Despotic Leadership and Ideological Manipulation at Theranos: Towards a theory of hegemonic totalism in the workplace

Despotic Leadership and Ideological Manipulation at Theranos: Towards a theory of hegemonic totalism in the workplace

Complicity at a distance: commemorating problematic involvement in perpetration in contemporary Central and Eastern European literatures

Between Political Religion and Politicized Religion: Interwar Fascism and Religion Revisited

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