In The Domestication of Derrida, Lorenzo Fabbri argues that Rorty's powerful reading protocol is motivated by the necessity to contain the risks of Derrida's critique of Western philosophy and politics. Rorty claims that Derrida reduces philosophy to a production of private fantasies that do not have any political or epistemological relevance. Fabbri challenges such an aberrant appropriation by investigating the two key features of Rorty's privatization of deconstruction: the reduction of deconstructive writing to an example of merely autobiographical literature; and the idea that Derrida not only dismisses, but also mocks the desire to engage philosophy with political struggle. What is ultimately questioned in The Domestication of Derrida is the legitimacy of labelling deconstruction as a post-modern withdrawal from politics and theory. By discussing Derrida's resistance against the very possibility of theoretical and political ascetism, Fabbri shows that there is much more politics and philosophy in deconstruction than Rorty is willing to admit.

A deep dive into Italian cinema under Mussolini’s regime and the filmmakers who used it as a means of antifascist resistance   Looking at Italy’s national film industry under the rule of Benito Mussolini and in the era that followed, Cinema Is the Strongest Weapon examines how cinema was harnessed as a political tool by both the reigning fascist regime and those who sought to resist it. Covering a range of canonical works alongside many of their neglected contemporaries, this book explores film’s mutable relationship to the apparatuses of state power and racial capitalism.    Exploiting realism’s aesthetic, experiential, and affective affordances, Mussolini’s biopolitical project employed cinema to advance an idealized vision of life under fascism and cultivate the basis for a homogenous racial identity. In this book, Lorenzo Fabbri crucially underscores realism’s susceptibility to manipulation from diametrically opposed political perspectives, highlighting the queer, Communist, Jewish, and feminist filmmakers who subverted Mussolini’s notion that “cinema is the regime’s strongest weapon� by developing film narratives and film forms that challenged the prevailing ethno-nationalist ideology.    Focusing on an understudied era of film history and Italian cultural production, Fabbri issues an important recontextualization of Italy’s celebrated neorealist movement and the structural ties it shares with its predecessor. Drawing incisive parallels to contemporary debates around race, whiteness, authoritarianism, and politics, he presents an urgent examination into the broader impact of visual media on culture and society.     Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.