The question of fascism: towards a sociology of reception

Abstract

This work is based on the publication of an article by Georges Bataille in book form entitled The Psychological Structure of Fascism. It proposes to read this editorial event in Argentina as a counterpart to the emergence of the question of fascism in Argentine society, a symptom of the current climate, subsidiary to the democratic erosion observable in the West and Latin America, which would seem to be one of the effects of the structural changes in the social physiognomy operated by late capitalism. The work will be structured as follows: an initial characterization of the state of affairs; an approach to the process by which the people (the main social actor) reaffirm themselves through democracy, exploring their social heterogeneity, together with an investigation into democratic erosion; and, finally, an attempt at the sociology of reception that we propose here through not only the theoretical framework and qualitative methodology that will be used throughout the work, but also quantitative research that brings us closer to an empirical approach. We will use the theoretical framework provided by Georges Bataille, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Émile Durkheim, E.P. Thompson, Gabriel Kessler, and Gabriel Vommaro, among others. We hope to partially show the effects of democratic erosion on Argentine society and propose a theoretical framework for the sociology of reception.