IJLLC | ‘Politics of fear’: An analysis of the effects of divisive political propaganda in Nazi Germany and Cold-War America as reflected in Nabokov’s “Signs and Symbols” (1958) and Nena’s “99 Red Balloons” (1985)

Indexing and Abstracting

‘Politics of fear’: An analysis of the effects of divisive political propaganda in Nazi Germany and Cold-War America as reflected in Nabokov’s “Signs and Symbols” (1958) and Nena’s “99 Red Balloons” (1985)

Naduni Dinesha Thebuwana

International Journal of Language, Literature and Culture (IJLLC), Vol-1,Issue-2, September - October 2021, Pages 21-30, 10.22161/ijllc.1.2.3

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Article Info: Received: 11 Aug 2021, Received in revised form: 03 Sep 2021, Accepted: 11 Sep 2021, Available online: 22 Sep 2021

Abstract:

Nabokov’s “Signs and Symbols” (1958) is a short story that baffled its readers when it was first published in The New Yorker in 1948 and continues to be an enigma to many readers. The compact style, lack of plot and backstories, and the enigmatic mental disorder of the protagonist largely constitute this enigma, and makes the short story a writerly text open to multiple interpretations. While it has been interpreted from diverse perspectives for the past seventy years, its engagement with the ‘politics of fear’ in Nazi Germany and Cold-War America has not been subjected to critical scrutiny. ‘Politics of fear’ is a theory developed by Wodak (2015) to conceptualize right-wing political discourses and strategies. This paper uses this theory as a critical perspective to analyze how the protagonist’s mental disorder, ‘referential mania,’ reflects the nationalist and divisive right-wing political strategies of German and American populists of World War II and the Cold War. It also compares this portrayal with the reflection of ‘politics of fear’ in “99 Red Balloons” (1985), a protest song produced by Nena in Cold-War Germany.

Keywords:

Cold-War, Nazi Germany, politics of fear, Signs and Symbols, 99 Red Balloons

References:

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