The Political Aesthetics of ISIS and Italian Futurism

Thorsten Botz-Bornstein

Through empirical analysis and theoretical reflection, this book shows that the aesthetics and politics of the Islamic State is “futurist.” ISIS overcomes postmodern pessimism and joins the modern, techno-oriented, and optimistic attitude propagated by Italian Futurism in the early twentieth century. The Islamic State does not only excel through the extensive use of high-tech weapons, social media, commercial bot, and automated text systems. By putting forward the presence of speeding cars and tanks, mobile phones, and computers, ISIS presents jihad life as connected to modern urban culture. Futurism praised violence as a means of leaving behind imitations of the past in order to project itself most efficiently into the future. A profound sense of crisis produces in both Futurism and jihadism a nihilistic attitude toward the present state of society that will be overcome through an exaltation of technology. Futurists were opposed to parliamentary democracy and sympathized with nationalism and colonialism. ISIS jihadism suggests a similarly curious combination of modernism and conservative values. The most obvious modern characteristic of this new image of fundamentalism is the highly aestheticized recruiting material.

Lexington Books

Pages: 228 • Trim: 6 x 9½

978-1-4985-6436-6 • Hardback • December 2018 • $117.00 • (£90.00)

Subjects: Social Science / Islamic Studies, Social Science / Future Studies, Political Science / Terrorism, Political Science / Propaganda, Political Science / World / Middle Eastern

The Political Aesthetics of ISIS and Italian Futurism

Hardback

Summary

Through empirical analysis and theoretical reflection, this book shows that the aesthetics and politics of the Islamic State is “futurist.” ISIS overcomes postmodern pessimism and joins the modern, techno-oriented, and optimistic attitude propagated by Italian Futurism in the early twentieth century. The Islamic State does not only excel through the extensive use of high-tech weapons, social media, commercial bot, and automated text systems. By putting forward the presence of speeding cars and tanks, mobile phones, and computers, ISIS presents jihad life as connected to modern urban culture. Futurism praised violence as a means of leaving behind imitations of the past in order to project itself most efficiently into the future. A profound sense of crisis produces in both Futurism and jihadism a nihilistic attitude toward the present state of society that will be overcome through an exaltation of technology. Futurists were opposed to parliamentary democracy and sympathized with nationalism and colonialism. ISIS jihadism suggests a similarly curious combination of modernism and conservative values. The most obvious modern characteristic of this new image of fundamentalism is the highly aestheticized recruiting material.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 228 • Trim: 6 x 9½

978-1-4985-6436-6 • Hardback • December 2018 • $117.00 • (£90.00)

Subjects: Social Science / Islamic Studies, Social Science / Future Studies, Political Science / Terrorism, Political Science / Propaganda, Political Science / World / Middle Eastern

Author

Thorsten Botz-Bornstein is associate professor of philosophy at Gulf University for Science and Technology.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Islamic Futurism? A Study in Political Aesthetics

Chapter 1: ISIS and Futurism: An Impossible Comparison?

Chapter 2: The Futurist Aesthetics of ISIS

Chapter 3: From Cyberpunk back to Futurism: The Trajectory of ISIS

Chapter 4: Fascism, ISIS, and Futurism

Chapter 5: Islam

Chapter 6: Terrorism and Cyberpunk

Chapter 7: The Real Machine vs. the Virtual Machine

Conclusion: Artificial Optimism Then and Today

Epilogue

Reviews

Joyfully tearing down the compartment walls that conventionally separate fascist studies from research into jihadism, and gleefully crossing the boundaries between aesthetics and politics, Botz-Bornstein challenges, or rather provokes, the reader to reconfigure the space that fascist and terrorist destructiveness occupy in the contemporary media, party-political and historical imaginations. Not afraid to alienate experts in both fields of study, his book creates new connections and suggests fresh juxtapositions with futurist abandon. Though the ludic may prevail over the academic, The Political Aesthetics of ISIS and Italian Futurism exposes the veins of a perversely politicized brand of modernism that throb just under the surface of two ideologies that claim to be rooted in an imperial or religious tradition, and which expresses itself in deliberately staged acts of spectacularly aestheticized destruction.
— Roger Griffin, author of The Nature of Fascism

The Political Aesthetics of ISIS and Italian Futurism

Thorsten Botz-Bornstein

The Political Aesthetics of ISIS and Italian Futurism

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