Books by Barbara Spackman

Barbara Spackman here examines the ways in which decadent writers adopted the language of physiological illness and alteration as a figure for psychic otherness. By means of an ideological and rhetorical analysis of scientific as well as literary texts, she shows how the rhetoric of sickness provided the male decadent writer with an alibi for the occupation and appropriation of the female body.

Exploring different conceptions of virility - as well as the reproductive fantasies they produce - in a selection of Italian political manifestos and political writings, this study exposes the relation between fascist rhetoric and ideology.