The fascist new man in France, 1919-1945

Abstract

The fact that interwar France was apparently saturated with ‘new men’ forces us to reconsider how we understand the meaning of this construction. What does it say for the presumptive link between the ‘new man’ and totalitarian politics that The chapter’s starting point is the recognition that the ‘new man’ travelled widely in France, as a term and as a concept. It flourished during the years of interwar democracy and under the authoritarian Vichy regime (1940-1944). Indeed, it was not restricted to the radical right, nor even to political radicalism, and the most overt articulation of an ‘ideal type’ came from scientific eugenicists critical of totalitarianism. In pointing to these other variants—Catholic, imperialist, liberal, conservative—the chapter shows how the ‘new man’ imagined in the rhetoric of the radical right was forged out of inherited cultural resources and elements of normative masculinity. This plurality is telling: it makes us reconsider the relationship between the ‘new man’ and the radical right altogether, and it opens up the possibility of thinking more generally about how the aesthetics and rituals around manliness might have functioned politically in this era.

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