Temptations of Faust: The Logic of Fascism and Postmodern Archaeologies of Modernity by Evelyn Cobley (review)

humanities 281 university of toronto quarterly, volume 73, number 1, winter 2003/4 These arguments were reinforced by D. J. Scollard, Bishop of Sault Saint Marie, who suggested to Archbishop Stagni that >Our French-Canadian friends do not understand Ontario; they fail to realize that five-sixths of the population of Ontario firmly believes that the education of the children belongs wholly to the state, and there should be only the national school system and one national school programme, that the legalized existence of separate schools is a deplorable mistake, and that the separate system militates against national unity and the coalescing of races.= The opposing perspective, supported strongly by the Quebec hierarchy, was expressed to Archbishop Stagni in an equally forceful manner by Senator P. Landry, president of the Association canadienne-française d=éducation d=Ontario: >What we know is that a most unjust persecution against the French element is being led by highly placed ecclesiastics in the Catholic hierarchy ... the leaders of the flock, the shepherds of souls, denounce the use of French, do not allow the faithful in their charge to have French-Canadian priests teach the word of God to French-Canadian audiences, order the banishment of French in those dioceses and persecute in an odious and scandalous manner those priests of theirs who do not want to bend to the demands.= Stagni viewed the division as sufficiently serious and intractable that he requested an intervention from the Holy See. In September 1916 Pope Benedict XV released his letter Commisso divinatus to Canadian bishops urging them to meet and reach a common position. The discussions that ensued resulted eventually in a détente that safeguarded religious instruction through French but did little to reverse the broader linguistic restrictions imposed by Regulation 17. (JIM CUMMINS) Evelyn Cobley. Temptations of Faust: The Logic of Fascism and Postmodern Archaeologies of Modernity University of Toronto Press. xi, 306. $55.00 Fleeing from Nazi persecution in Germany, Theodor Adorno and Thomas Mann found themselves living as exiles in California. Politically very different, Adorno and Mann both devoted considerable energy to reflecting on the rise of fascism, even sharing ideas, most notably over the fate of modern music. This collaboration is the topic of Evelyn Cobley=s Temptations of Faust, a work that explores the genesis of Mann=s novel Doctor Faustus and situates it as part of the >cognitive shift= towards a postmodern selfunderstanding . Cobley calls Doctor Faustus a >parable of fascism= that teaches us to recognize how fascism was not an aberration from modernity, but >an implicit possibility within modernity.= Reading Leverkühn=s musical development as the unfolding of ideological positions in Germany during the interwar period, Cobley decodes the twelve-tone system as an >uncanny combination of total integration and unchecked dissemination.= Though it 282 letters in canada 2002 university of toronto quarterly, volume 73, number 1, winter 2003/4 liberates the individual note from tonal hierarchies, twelve-tone music subjects the note to domination by a more far-reaching, decentred (and fascist) totality. The novel dramatizes, therefore, another version of the dialectic of Enlightenment whereby, instead of liberation, the subject experiences increased domination at the hands of reason itself. Adorno=s Philosophy of Modern Music not only provides Cobley with the deeper understanding of socio-historical conditions, but supplies her with the theoretical connective tissue for linking the emergence of fascism with postmodernity. Interpreting Adorno as a postmodernist avant la lettre, she holds negative dialectics equivalent to Derridean deconstruction, arguing that both are aimed at undermining >foundational categories= and responding to the needs of the >decentred subject.= The result is that Cobley can tack back and forth between her reading of the novel, which teaches that fascism is the incarnation of a postmodern logic, and postmodernist theories as a set of mutually complementary diagnoses of this new historical situation. The author=s claim that Adorno unwittingly >co-authored= the novel, by providing its sociohistorical diagnosis of the relationship between fascism and music, is substantiated by compelling analyses of the characters= theoretical ruminations, and grounded in Cobley=s reading of Leverkühn=s musical development in the context of German history. Though her historical frame of reference...