By

Abstract

Under the shade of escalating violence and fundamentalism, our epoch's diffused aura of liberalism supposedly tolerates difference, by exorcising the evil phantasms of totalitarianism, in favour of a liberal and humane post-modem order. Consequently, behind contemporary versions of evil, one demonises modem 'fascists', 'totalitarian threats', and 'Hitlers'. As if not obscure enough, fascist evil has been equivocally linked with perversion. Considering this link a tenebrous enigma, my thesis suggests that psychoanalysis can successfully elucidate its problematic and feeble basis, by re-appraising previous narratives from a number of different discourses that inscribe the liaison between fascism and perversion in their representational stage. In a first approach, the present study dissects texts as heterogeneous, as film, social theory, political philosophy, and psychoanalysis. This is to show that, despite the divergent speculative angle that each discourse espouses, perversion is a common exegetic thread, intertextually sewing their narratives. The objective of my criticism that goes through psychoanalysis, without, however, exempting it from this criticism, is to reveal that both fascism and perversion implicate the non-symbolisable kernel in politics, which become