Lawrence Contra (New) Fascism

Abstract

This article revisits D. H. Lawrence's political novels from a genealogical perspective that is attentive to the mimetic power of authoritarian leaders to induce affective contagion among crowds. Rather than simply condemning the authoritarian principles dramatized in post-War novels like Aaron's Rod, Kangaroo, and The Plumed Serpent as fascist, or attempting to defend D. H. Lawrence against the charge of fascism, this article situates the political novels in a Nietzschean genealogy of fascism that reveals their theoretical potential to fight contra (new) fascism in the twenty-first century. In particular, this genealogy revisits Lawrence's fin-de-siècle concerns with crowd psychology, hypnotic dispossession, and affective contagion in light of the growing realization of the affective and infective efficacy of contemporary leaders who rely on a mimetic, all too mimetic rhetoric—disseminated by new media—to trigger fascist contagion. Thus reframed, my wager is that Lawrence's political novels might help us diagnose why (new) fascist leaders have the disquieting (will to) power to make humans desire what Michel Foucault calls "the very thing that dominates and exploits us."