Research Article
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Estetiği Politikleştirmek ve Politikayı Estetize Etmek: Totalitarizm Bağlamında Estetik İlkeleri

Year 2024, Volume: 23 Issue: 2, 711 - 753, 30.09.2024
https://doi.org/10.20981/kaygi.1492605

Abstract

Bu makale, sanat, toplum ve güç arasındaki karmaşık etkileşimi, özellikle Hitler’in Nazi Almanya’sı ve Stalin’in Sovyetler Birliği gibi totaliter rejimlerin kullandığı estetik stratejilere odaklanarak inceliyor. Her iki rejim de ideolojilerini yaymak ve muhalefeti bastırmak için estetikten yararlandı. Nazi Almanya’sı, politikayı ırksal saflık ideolojilerini teşvik etmek amacıyla estetize ederken, Sovyetler Birliği estetiği politize ederek Sosyalist Realizm aracılığıyla proletaryayı ve Sovyet devletini yüceltti. Rejimlerin estetiği manipüle etmesi, sanatın otoriter kontrolü dayatmada ve halkın duyguları manipüle ederek kamu algısını şekillendirmede nasıl araçsal hale gelebileceğini ortaya koyuyor. Makale, totaliter rejimler tarafından kullanılan ortak estetik ilkeleri daha ayrıntılı olarak inceleyerek, politikayı estetize etme ve estetiği politize etme uygulamaları hakkında farkındalık yaratmayı ve konuyu günümüzün çalkantılı dönemlerinde de geçerli kılmayı amaçlıyor. Makale, sanatın siyasi söylem ve kamu davranışlarını etkilemeye devam ettiği dijital çağda bu stratejilerin çağdaş önemine dikkat çekiyor. Sanatın politikadaki etik boyutlarıyla eleştirel bir şekilde ilgilenmeye çağıran ve sanatsal özgürlüğü destekleyerek sanatın sessizlerin güçlendirilmesi, totalitarizme karşı direnç ve olumlu sosyal değişim için bir araç olarak hizmet etmesini savunan makale, tarihsel ve çağdaş perspektifler aracılığıyla sanatın hem baskıcı hem de özgürleştirici çift potansiyelini vurguluyor ve toplumda etik kullanımını sürdürme ihtiyacının altını çiziyor.

References

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  • Ades, D., Benton, T., Elliott, D. & Whyte, I. B. (eds.) (1995). Art and Power: Europe under the Dictators 1930-45. London: Thames and Hudson.
  • Arendt, H. (1962). The Origins of Totalitarianism. 1951. London: Allen & Unwin.
  • Aristotle. (1961). Aristotle’s Poetics. New York: Hill and Wang.
  • Babel, I., Babel, N., Constantine, P. & Ozick, C. (2001). The Complete Works of Isaac Babel. Transl. Peter Constantine. London: W. W. Norton & Company.
  • Barthes, Roland. (1972). Mythologies. Transl. by Annette Lavers. New York: Hill and Wang.
  • Benjamin, W. (1969). “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, in Illuminations. Edited by Hannah Arendt, Transl. by Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books.
  • Bonnell, V. (1997). Iconography of Power: Soviet Politician Posters under Lenin and Stalin. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Braun, E. (1988). Meyerhold: A Revolution in Theatre. 1979. Methuen Drama.
  • Brooker, P. (2000). Non-Democratic Regimes: Theory, Government and Politics. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
  • Brooks, J. (2000). Thank You, Comrade Stalin: Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
  • Brzezinski, Z. K. (1962). Ideology and Power in Soviet Politics. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Inc.
  • Buck-Morss, S. (1992). “Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Walter Benjamin’s Artwork Essay Reconsidered”. October, 62 (Autumn, 1992): 3-41.
  • Conquest, R. (1968). The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purge of the Thirties. New York: Macmillan.
  • Eagleton, T. (1991). The Ideology of the Aesthetic. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
  • Ezrow, N. and Frantz, E. (2011). Dictators and Dictatorship: Understanding Authoritarian Regimes and Their Leaders. New York: Continuum.
  • Feinstein, E. (2005). Anna of All the Russia: The Life of a Poet under Stalin. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
  • Freud, S. (1949). Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. Transl. by James Strachey, Edited by Ernest Jones. London: Hogarth Press.
  • Friedrich, C. J., and Brzezinski, Z. K. (1965). Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
  • “Folk.” Def. 2. (2012). Oxford Dictionary Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Harkins, W. (1998). “Russian Aesthetics: Social Realism”, Overview in Encyclopaedia of Aesthetics. Michael Kelly. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Heller, S. (2008). Iron Fists: Branding the 20th-Century Totalitarian State. New York: Phaidon Press Inc.
  • Gandhi, J. (2008). Political Institutions under Dictatorship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Gilloch, G. (2002). Walter Benjamin: Critical Constellations. Cambridge: Polity Press.
  • Gleason, A. (1995). Totalitarianism: The Inner History of the Cold War. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Groys, B. (2008). Art Power. Cambridge: MIT Press.
  • Groys, B. (1992). The Total Art of Stalinism: Avant-Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond. Transl. by Charles Rougle. Oxford: Princeton University Press.
  • Gutbrod, P. (2010). Otto Dix: The Art of Life. Ostfldern: Hatje Cantz.
  • Günther, H. (ed.) (1990). The Culture of the Stalin Period. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Günther, H. (2006). ‘The Totalitarian State as an Artistic Synthesis’. Ceska Literatura. 4 (2006): 106-118.
  • Henze, W., Grisebach, L., Roske,Y. & Sadowsky, T. (2019). Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: Imaginary Travels. Edited by Katharina Beisiegel. Munich: Prestel.
  • Hoffmann, D. (2003). Stalinist Values: the Cultural Norms of Soviet Modernity, 1917- 1941. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
  • Huntington, S. P. (1968) Political Order in Changing Societies. New Haven: Yale University Press.
  • Johnson, P. (1983). A History of the Modern World: From 1917 to the 1980’s. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson.
  • Linz, J. J. (2000). Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
  • Kershaw, I. (2001). The Hitler Myth: Image and Reality in the Third Reich. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Koonz, C. (2003). The Nazi Conscience. Cambridge, London, Massachusetts: HUP.
  • Kracauer, S. (2005). The Mass Ornament. Transl. by Thomas Y. Levin. USA: Harward University Press.
  • Lang, B. (1998). “Marxism: Historical and Conceptual Overview”, in Encyclopaedia of Aesthetics. Michael Kelly. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Malia, M. (1994). The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917-1991. New York: The Free Press.
  • Mandelstam, N. (1999). Hope Against Hope: A Memoir. 1970. Transl. by Max Hayward. New York: Atheneum.
  • Marcuse, H. (1989). “Philosophy and Critical Theory”, in Critical Theory and Society: A Reader. Edited by Stephen Eric Bronner and Douglas MacKay Kellner, New York; London: Routledge.
  • Milne, L. (1990). Mikhail Bulgakov: A Critical Biography. Cambridge: CUP.
  • Orlow, D. (1967). “The Conversion of Myths into Political Power: The Case of the Nazi Party, 1925- 1926”. The American Historical Review. 72 (3): 906-924.
  • O’Sullivan, N. (1984). Fascism. London: J M Dent & Sons Ltd.
  • Pipes, R. (1994). Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime. New York: Vintage Books.
  • Riefenstahl, L. (1935). Triumph of the Will. Germany: Reichsparteitag-Film.
  • Rieff, P. (1953). “Aesthetic Functions in Modern Politics”. World Politics. 5 (4): 478-502.
  • Rosenthal, B. (2002). New Myth, New World: From Nietzsche to Stalinism. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University.
  • Shirer, W. (1990). The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. New York: Simon & Schuster.
  • Sontag, S. (1974). “Fascinating Fascism”. The New York Review of Books, February 6, 1975. Republished in Under the Sign of Saturn. (New York, 1980): 73-105.
  • Speer, A. (1970). Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs by Albert Speer. New York: Simon & Schuster.
  • Spotts, F. (2004). Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics. New York: Overlook Press.
  • Sturken, M. (1998). “Monuments: Historical Overview”, in Encyclopaedia of Aesthetics. Michael Kelly. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Svolik, M. W. (2012). The Politics of Authoritarian Rule. Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Delhi, Mexico City: Cambridge University Press.
  • Traverso, E. (2019). The New Faces of Fascism: Populism and the Far Right. Transl. by David Broder. London, New York: Verso.
  • Wilson, E. (2006). Shostakovich: A Life Remembered. 1994. Princeton, New Jersey: PUP.
  • Wintrobe, R. (1998). The Political Economy of Dictatorship. Cambridge, New York and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.
  • Young, J. (1998). “Monuments: Twentieth-Century Counter Monuments”, in Encyclopaedia of Aesthetics. Michael Kelly. New York: Oxford University Press.

Aestheticizing Politics and Politicising Aesthetics: Principles of Aesthetics in the Context of Totalitarianism

Year 2024, Volume: 23 Issue: 2, 711 - 753, 30.09.2024
https://doi.org/10.20981/kaygi.1492605

Abstract

This article examines the complex interplay between art, society, and power, focusing on the aesthetic strategies employed by totalitarian regimes, particularly Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union. Both regimes harnessed aesthetics to propagate their ideologies and suppress dissent. While Nazi Germany aestheticized politics to promote their ideology of racial purity, the Soviet Union politicised aesthetics to glorify the proletariat and the Soviet state through Socialist Realism. The regimes’ manipulation of aesthetics reveals how art can become instrumental in enforcing authoritarian control and shaping public perception through manipulating emotions. The paper further examines common aesthetic principles utilised by totalitarian regimes, aiming to raise awareness about practices of aestheticizing politics and politicising aesthetics, which makes the topic relevant in contemporary turbulent times. The article thus underscores the contemporary relevance of these strategies in the digital age, where art continues to influence political discourse and public behaviour. It calls for a critical engagement with the ethical dimensions of art in politics and advocates for supporting artistic freedom to ensure that art serves as a tool for empowerment of the silenced, resistance against totalitarianism, and positive social change. Through historical and contemporary lenses, this study highlights the dual potential of art to both oppress and liberate, emphasising the need for vigilance in maintaining its ethical use in society.

References

  • “Aestheticize.” Def. 1. (2012). Oxford Dictionary Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Ades, D., Benton, T., Elliott, D. & Whyte, I. B. (eds.) (1995). Art and Power: Europe under the Dictators 1930-45. London: Thames and Hudson.
  • Arendt, H. (1962). The Origins of Totalitarianism. 1951. London: Allen & Unwin.
  • Aristotle. (1961). Aristotle’s Poetics. New York: Hill and Wang.
  • Babel, I., Babel, N., Constantine, P. & Ozick, C. (2001). The Complete Works of Isaac Babel. Transl. Peter Constantine. London: W. W. Norton & Company.
  • Barthes, Roland. (1972). Mythologies. Transl. by Annette Lavers. New York: Hill and Wang.
  • Benjamin, W. (1969). “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, in Illuminations. Edited by Hannah Arendt, Transl. by Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books.
  • Bonnell, V. (1997). Iconography of Power: Soviet Politician Posters under Lenin and Stalin. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Braun, E. (1988). Meyerhold: A Revolution in Theatre. 1979. Methuen Drama.
  • Brooker, P. (2000). Non-Democratic Regimes: Theory, Government and Politics. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
  • Brooks, J. (2000). Thank You, Comrade Stalin: Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
  • Brzezinski, Z. K. (1962). Ideology and Power in Soviet Politics. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Inc.
  • Buck-Morss, S. (1992). “Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Walter Benjamin’s Artwork Essay Reconsidered”. October, 62 (Autumn, 1992): 3-41.
  • Conquest, R. (1968). The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purge of the Thirties. New York: Macmillan.
  • Eagleton, T. (1991). The Ideology of the Aesthetic. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
  • Ezrow, N. and Frantz, E. (2011). Dictators and Dictatorship: Understanding Authoritarian Regimes and Their Leaders. New York: Continuum.
  • Feinstein, E. (2005). Anna of All the Russia: The Life of a Poet under Stalin. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
  • Freud, S. (1949). Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. Transl. by James Strachey, Edited by Ernest Jones. London: Hogarth Press.
  • Friedrich, C. J., and Brzezinski, Z. K. (1965). Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
  • “Folk.” Def. 2. (2012). Oxford Dictionary Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Harkins, W. (1998). “Russian Aesthetics: Social Realism”, Overview in Encyclopaedia of Aesthetics. Michael Kelly. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Heller, S. (2008). Iron Fists: Branding the 20th-Century Totalitarian State. New York: Phaidon Press Inc.
  • Gandhi, J. (2008). Political Institutions under Dictatorship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Gilloch, G. (2002). Walter Benjamin: Critical Constellations. Cambridge: Polity Press.
  • Gleason, A. (1995). Totalitarianism: The Inner History of the Cold War. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Groys, B. (2008). Art Power. Cambridge: MIT Press.
  • Groys, B. (1992). The Total Art of Stalinism: Avant-Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond. Transl. by Charles Rougle. Oxford: Princeton University Press.
  • Gutbrod, P. (2010). Otto Dix: The Art of Life. Ostfldern: Hatje Cantz.
  • Günther, H. (ed.) (1990). The Culture of the Stalin Period. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Günther, H. (2006). ‘The Totalitarian State as an Artistic Synthesis’. Ceska Literatura. 4 (2006): 106-118.
  • Henze, W., Grisebach, L., Roske,Y. & Sadowsky, T. (2019). Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: Imaginary Travels. Edited by Katharina Beisiegel. Munich: Prestel.
  • Hoffmann, D. (2003). Stalinist Values: the Cultural Norms of Soviet Modernity, 1917- 1941. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
  • Huntington, S. P. (1968) Political Order in Changing Societies. New Haven: Yale University Press.
  • Johnson, P. (1983). A History of the Modern World: From 1917 to the 1980’s. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson.
  • Linz, J. J. (2000). Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
  • Kershaw, I. (2001). The Hitler Myth: Image and Reality in the Third Reich. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Koonz, C. (2003). The Nazi Conscience. Cambridge, London, Massachusetts: HUP.
  • Kracauer, S. (2005). The Mass Ornament. Transl. by Thomas Y. Levin. USA: Harward University Press.
  • Lang, B. (1998). “Marxism: Historical and Conceptual Overview”, in Encyclopaedia of Aesthetics. Michael Kelly. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Malia, M. (1994). The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917-1991. New York: The Free Press.
  • Mandelstam, N. (1999). Hope Against Hope: A Memoir. 1970. Transl. by Max Hayward. New York: Atheneum.
  • Marcuse, H. (1989). “Philosophy and Critical Theory”, in Critical Theory and Society: A Reader. Edited by Stephen Eric Bronner and Douglas MacKay Kellner, New York; London: Routledge.
  • Milne, L. (1990). Mikhail Bulgakov: A Critical Biography. Cambridge: CUP.
  • Orlow, D. (1967). “The Conversion of Myths into Political Power: The Case of the Nazi Party, 1925- 1926”. The American Historical Review. 72 (3): 906-924.
  • O’Sullivan, N. (1984). Fascism. London: J M Dent & Sons Ltd.
  • Pipes, R. (1994). Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime. New York: Vintage Books.
  • Riefenstahl, L. (1935). Triumph of the Will. Germany: Reichsparteitag-Film.
  • Rieff, P. (1953). “Aesthetic Functions in Modern Politics”. World Politics. 5 (4): 478-502.
  • Rosenthal, B. (2002). New Myth, New World: From Nietzsche to Stalinism. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University.
  • Shirer, W. (1990). The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. New York: Simon & Schuster.
  • Sontag, S. (1974). “Fascinating Fascism”. The New York Review of Books, February 6, 1975. Republished in Under the Sign of Saturn. (New York, 1980): 73-105.
  • Speer, A. (1970). Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs by Albert Speer. New York: Simon & Schuster.
  • Spotts, F. (2004). Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics. New York: Overlook Press.
  • Sturken, M. (1998). “Monuments: Historical Overview”, in Encyclopaedia of Aesthetics. Michael Kelly. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Svolik, M. W. (2012). The Politics of Authoritarian Rule. Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Delhi, Mexico City: Cambridge University Press.
  • Traverso, E. (2019). The New Faces of Fascism: Populism and the Far Right. Transl. by David Broder. London, New York: Verso.
  • Wilson, E. (2006). Shostakovich: A Life Remembered. 1994. Princeton, New Jersey: PUP.
  • Wintrobe, R. (1998). The Political Economy of Dictatorship. Cambridge, New York and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.
  • Young, J. (1998). “Monuments: Twentieth-Century Counter Monuments”, in Encyclopaedia of Aesthetics. Michael Kelly. New York: Oxford University Press.
There are 59 citations in total.

Details

Primary Language English
Subjects Ethics
Journal Section Research Article
Authors

Henrieta Krupa 0000-0003-3066-8813

Early Pub Date September 28, 2024
Publication Date September 30, 2024
Submission Date May 30, 2024
Acceptance Date September 1, 2024
Published in Issue Year 2024 Volume: 23 Issue: 2

Cite

APA Krupa, H. (2024). Aestheticizing Politics and Politicising Aesthetics: Principles of Aesthetics in the Context of Totalitarianism. Kaygı. Bursa Uludağ Üniversitesi Fen-Edebiyat Fakültesi Felsefe Dergisi, 23(2), 711-753. https://doi.org/10.20981/kaygi.1492605
AMA Krupa H. Aestheticizing Politics and Politicising Aesthetics: Principles of Aesthetics in the Context of Totalitarianism. Kaygı. September 2024;23(2):711-753. doi:10.20981/kaygi.1492605
Chicago Krupa, Henrieta. “Aestheticizing Politics and Politicising Aesthetics: Principles of Aesthetics in the Context of Totalitarianism”. Kaygı. Bursa Uludağ Üniversitesi Fen-Edebiyat Fakültesi Felsefe Dergisi 23, no. 2 (September 2024): 711-53. https://doi.org/10.20981/kaygi.1492605.
EndNote Krupa H (September 1, 2024) Aestheticizing Politics and Politicising Aesthetics: Principles of Aesthetics in the Context of Totalitarianism. Kaygı. Bursa Uludağ Üniversitesi Fen-Edebiyat Fakültesi Felsefe Dergisi 23 2 711–753.
IEEE H. Krupa, “Aestheticizing Politics and Politicising Aesthetics: Principles of Aesthetics in the Context of Totalitarianism”, Kaygı, vol. 23, no. 2, pp. 711–753, 2024, doi: 10.20981/kaygi.1492605.
ISNAD Krupa, Henrieta. “Aestheticizing Politics and Politicising Aesthetics: Principles of Aesthetics in the Context of Totalitarianism”. Kaygı. Bursa Uludağ Üniversitesi Fen-Edebiyat Fakültesi Felsefe Dergisi 23/2 (September 2024), 711-753. https://doi.org/10.20981/kaygi.1492605.
JAMA Krupa H. Aestheticizing Politics and Politicising Aesthetics: Principles of Aesthetics in the Context of Totalitarianism. Kaygı. 2024;23:711–753.
MLA Krupa, Henrieta. “Aestheticizing Politics and Politicising Aesthetics: Principles of Aesthetics in the Context of Totalitarianism”. Kaygı. Bursa Uludağ Üniversitesi Fen-Edebiyat Fakültesi Felsefe Dergisi, vol. 23, no. 2, 2024, pp. 711-53, doi:10.20981/kaygi.1492605.
Vancouver Krupa H. Aestheticizing Politics and Politicising Aesthetics: Principles of Aesthetics in the Context of Totalitarianism. Kaygı. 2024;23(2):711-53.

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