Conceptual Labyrinths. For as many concepts of totalitarianism as you know, so many times are you a revisionist?
Abstract
The article offers an insight into the intellectual history of theories of totalitarianism and deals in an innovative way with the conflict between several approaches to totalitarianism on one hand, and the so-called revisionists on the other. The article attempts at a brief overview of the quite labyrinthine and, on both sides, very diversified debates and struggles.
The authors deal with intellectual, societal and political preconditions of the theories of totalitarianism and offer their periodization divided into two waves and in the important national contexts (Germany, Italy, France, U.S.A.). They also put an emphasis on the fact that more than often the term "totalitarianism" is the only aspect that connects the completely different traditions.
The authors identify the sources of this striking incoherence in the different mixes of academic and non-academic genres, in the unclear relation between the theory and empirical cases (some political regimes, systems, movements etc.), or in the different methodology and concept formation adopted by the theoreticians of totalitarianisms (the unclear relation between the term, the academic concept/empirical type/ideal type and the theory). The article focuses on the "rises and falls" in the popularity of the concept of totalitarianism with special attention to some debates that have recently appeared in the Central European academic milieu.
The article emphasises the fact that the persistence of the totalitarian concepts is caused, counterintuitively, among other things, by the so-called new revisionists' writings which claim to be challenging the vaguely defined, if defined at all, "totalitarian paradigm". The paradoxicality of this alleged controversy became obvious in the recent debates on communist past which only exposed the fact that at the core of this academic and political argument lies a serious misunderstanding reflected in two crucial aspects.
First, the new revisionists argue against the largely undefined "totalitarian paradigm", often called by them "a history from above". Second, they more than often apparently refute this "paradigm" (undefined and non-existent) using, paradoxically, such kinds of arguments that rather confirm than dispute the core of some of the theories of totalitarianism.
In this way, the article concludes that the differences and disputes within the broad spectrum of the theories of totalitarianism have been broader and more acute, than between this "paradigm" and the "new revisionists".