Imagining Alternative Worlds

Far-Right Fiction and the Power of Cultural Imaginaries

Christoffer Kølvraa, Bernhard Forchtner

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN: 9781040222799
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Fascism & Totalitarianism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Imagining Alternative Worlds explores how the far right employs fictionality as a powerful political tool in the 21st century.

It does so by examining the far right's own cultural production and commentary through a large collection of its novels, novellas, short stories, and film reviews, illustrating how the 'alternative worlds' articulated in such cultural products convey its ideology. More specifically, the book identifies and analyses four distinct far-right cultural imaginaries – a 'primordial', a 'nostalgic', a 'promethean', and a 'nihilist' one – that each subtly conveys different yet linked ideas about space, time, 'race', gender, and heroic identity. By drawing attention to the cultural heterogeneity of the contemporary far right, Imagining Alternative Worlds offers key insights into the dreams, identities, and norms such actors hope will define our future.

The book will be of interest to researchers of the far right, of literary, media and communication studies, and of social and cultural history.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Endorsements Page
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Content Warning
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: Literature, Movie Reviews, and the Cultural Imaginaries of the Far Right
• 2 Worlds Apart: Safe Spaces, Non-Places, and Beyond
• 3 Right on Time: Temporality, History, and Change
• 4 Skin in the Game: Racism Suffered and Imposed
• 5 Significant Others: Women, Sex, and Gender
• 6 Manning Up: Heroic Agency and Political Utopia
• 7 Concluding Remarks: Cultural Imaginaries and Far-right Subjectivities
• Appendix 1: Far-Right Fiction
• Appendix 2: Far-Right Movie Reviews
• Index