Fascism, Fashion, and the Plasticity of Gender

Abstract

Abstract This article develops an account of the relationship between fascism and gender's plasticity as instantiated by practices of cross‐dressing. It centers on Gerhard Fritsch's novel Fasching (1967), which narrates a dual betrayal of fascism and masculinity that issues into a precarious fugitivity subjected to recapture and containment. By drawing on contemporary Black Studies as well as queer and trans studies, the article proposes that cross‐dressing and indeed clothing more broadly (the “dress imperative” developed here) contain a doubled potential as both a site of fascistic violence and a contrivance for freedom. The article concludes by considering how photography and Carnival figure in the account of the fashion/fascism nexus that Fritsch's novel proposes.