Queer Theory and the Jewish Question (23 page)

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45. Ibid., 139 and n. 16. 46. Ibid., 140.

  1. Also cf. his letter to an American woman concerned about her son’s homosexuali- ty: “Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness”—but it still remains arrested develop- ment; photocopy in Freud Collection, B4, Library of Congress.

  2. Cf. Freud’s letter to Abraham, 3 May 1908, in Freud and Abraham,
    Psychoanalytic Dialogue
    , 34, on his excitement about Jung and the Swiss school. Sarah Winter,
    Freud and the Institution of Psychoanalytic Knowledge
    (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 235, writes: “Freud also promoted the recognition of psychoanalysis as a discipline by stressing its usefulness to research in other disciplines. In this way Freud solicited academic alliances— ‘conversions’ as well as conquests.” Earlier (215) she cites from Freud’s 1933 lecture “Expla- nations, Applications, and Orientations”: “Since nothing that men make or do is under- standable without the cooperation of psychology, the applications of psycho-analysis to numerous fi of knowledge . . . came about of their own accord, pushed their way to the front and called for ventilation. . . . [Analysts] were no better treated by the experts resident in those fi than are trespassers in general: their methods and their fi in so far as they attracted attention, were in the fi instance rejected. But these conditions are con- stantly improving, and in every region there is a growing number of people who study psycho-analysis in order to make use of it in their special subject, and in order, as colonists to replace the pioneers [als Kolonisten die Pionere abzulösen]” (
    S.E.
    22:144–45).

  3. Cf. Freud’s letter to Blüher 10 July 1912; cit. Neubauer, “Sigmund Freud und Hans Blüher,” 139.

  4. Blüher,
    Werke und Tage
    , 1st ed. (Jena: Eugen Diederichs, 1920), 53: “Moreover one should not forget to which race the overwhelming majority of [third sex sexologists] be- long.”

  5. In the forward to the 1914 edition of
    Die deutsche Wandervogelbewegung als erotis- ches Phänomen,
    Blüher ties Hirschfeldian homosexuals to cultural decadence (
    Verfall der Kultur
    , 10), and describes them as “truly deformed men . . . whose racial degeneracy is marked by an excessive endowment of female substance” (13). Homosexuality runs paral- lel to the decline and bad race-mixing of a people (164 [1918 edition]). By contrast, the physiognomies of the Wandervogel exemplify the noblest racial development (
    edelste Rassenbildung;
    119 [1918 edition]).

  6. On the noncausal relationship between effeminization and homosexualization, see Hans Blüher,
    Die Rolle der Erotik in der männlichen Gesellschaft
    , 2 vols. (Jena: Eugen Diederichs, 1917–18) 1:29; cf. Andrew Hewitt,
    Political Inversions: Homosexuality, Fascism, and the Modernist Imaginary
    (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996).

  7. Blüher,
    Die deutsche Wandervogelbewegung als erotisches Phänomen,
    passim, 2:211, on Jaeger; and Hans Blüher, “Die Drei Grundformen der Homosexualität,”
    Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen
    13 (1913): 326.

  8. Blüher letter to Freud, 13 July 1912; cit. Neubauer, “Sigmund Freud und Hans Blüher,” 142.

  9. Cf. Blüher letter to Freud, 31 July 1913; cit. ibid., 145.

  10. Magnus Hischfeld as editor of the
    Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen
    refused to publish the last two pages of Blüher’s essay because of this characterization. I am grateful to Keith Davies of the Sigmund Freud House, Mansfield Gardens, London, who made these two pages from Freud’s copy available to me.

  11. Hans Blüher,
    Studien zur Inversion und Perversion
    (Schmiden bei Stuttgart: Deck- er Verlag Nachfolger, 1965), 32.

  12. Blüher, “Was ist Antifeminismus,” 91.

  13. See Sigmund Freud, “Some Neurotic Mechanisms in Jealousy, Paranoia and Ho- mosexuality” [1922],
    S.E.
    18:221–33; and Sigmund Freud,
    From the History of an Infan- tile Neurosis
    [1918],
    S.E.
    17:1–123.

  14. Nor are theories which locate the origin in the economy, the spirit [
    Geist
    ], or the herd true either; cf. Blüher,
    Die Rolle
    , 3ff.

  15. While Blüher acknowledged that female-female attraction does exist, there is no fe- male equivalent of the
    Männerheld
    .

  16. Cf. Blüher,
    Die deutsche Wandervogelbewegung als erotisches Phänomen,
    70–71.

  17. Cf. Hewitt,
    Political Inversions
    ; Widdig,
    Männerbunde und Massen
    .

  18. See Freud’s (last) letter to Blüher, 8 September 1913; cit. Neubauer, “Sigmund Freud und Hans Blüher,” 146–47.

  19. In some accounts of Greek mythology Laius is described as the first pederast. In exile from Thebes Laius fell in love with Chryssipus King Pelops’s youngest son; when his banishment had been rescinded Laius abducted the young boy and brought him to Thebes as his catamite. Chryssipus killed himself out of shame, and Pelops put a curse on Laius: that he would be killed by his firstborn son. See Robert Graves,
    The Greek Myths
    , 2 vols. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1957), 2:41–42.

  20. Freud,
    Totem and Taboo
    ,
    S.E.
    13:141–47, cit. from 144.

  21. “The Overview of the Transference Neuroses,” in Freud,
    A Phylogenetic Fantasy: Overview of the Transference Neuroses
    , ed. Ilse Grubrich-Simitis, trans. Axel Hoffer and Peter

T. Hoffer (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 19–20.

68. Ibid., 20.

  1. Blüher continued to draw upon Freud throughout the 1910s. Both the
    Interna- tionale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse
    6 (1920): 180–82 (by M. J. Eisler) and the Freud- founded journal of applied psychoanalysis
    Imago
    [6 (1920): 92–94 (by E. Lorenz)], in which many of Freud’s works—from
    Totem and Taboo
    to the first two essays of
    Moses and Monotheism
    —appeared, welcomed publication of Blüher’s 1917–18
    The Role of the Erotic in Masculine Society
    by crediting him as the first to found a theory of society on Freud’s views. Still neither the editors nor Freud could have been happy that his writings came to be representative of psychoanalytic writings [cf. Kafka’s letter to Brod, mid-November 1917, in
    Letters to Friends, Family, and Editors
    , ed. Max Brod, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Schocken, 1977), 167]. When Erich Leyens, a Jewish member of the youth movement, asked Freud in 1923 how someone like the “now right-wing radical” Blüher could have had been involved with Freud, he responded that Blüher “has nothing to do with analytical science”; cit. Neubauer, “Sigmund Freud und Hans Blüher,” 131.

  2. Blüher,
    Die deutsche Wandervogelbewegung als erotisches Phänomen,
    102ff.

  3. Georg Schmidt, “Nein, nein! Das ist nicht unser Wandervogel,”
    Wandervo- gelführerzeitung
    1 (1913): 47f.; Karl Wilker, “Freieschulgemeinde und Wandervogel,”
    Wandervogelführerzeitung
    1 (1913): 48–50; both cited by Geuter,
    Homosexualität
    , 95.

  4. “Der Wandervogel ist weder ein Ablagerungsplatz für alte Stieffel die ehemals auf Plattbeinen gesessen haben und nach Knoblauch stinken, noch ist der Wandervogel ein Spekulation für Judenunternehmungen.” This passage was cited in the Jüdische Jugendbe- wegung (Jewish youth movement) exhibit at Vienna’s Jüdisches Museum held March-April 2001. The references to garlic and flat feet are common stereotypical allusions to Jews.

  5. See Laqueur,
    Young Germany
    , esp. chapter 9, “The Jewish Question,” 74–83, from which this examples derive.

  6. Blüher,
    Wandervogel
    , 2:241, on the influence of Langbehn, 2:98, on Fischer.

  7. Also see Laqueur,
    Young Germany
    , 21–22.

  8. Benedict Friedlaender,
    The Renaissance of Eros Uranios
    (Berlin: Renaissance, 1904).

  9. Hans Blüher,
    Werke und Tage
    (Munich: List, 1953), 345.

  10. Cf. Blüher,
    Die deutsche Wandervogelbewegung als erotisches Phänomen,
    70–71.

  11. Friedlaender draws upon Karsch’s essay. Ferdinand Karsch(-Haack), “Uranismus oder Päderastie und Tribadie bei den Naturvölkern,”
    Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen
    3 (1901).

  12. Jaeger held that there was a chemical basis to the soul—individuals are constantly emitting these molecules of soul-stuff. Human attraction—and repulsion—is a function of the reception or smell of this soul-stuff. See Gustav Jaeger’s
    Die Entdeckung der Seele
    , 2 vols., 3d ed. (Leipzig: Ernst Günther, 1884).

  13. Blüher,
    Die deutsche Wandervogelbewegung als erotisches Phänomen,
    71.

82. Ibid., 135

  1. Blüher,
    Secessio Judaica,
    19–20.

  2. Blüher, “Drei Grundformen,” 327. In his later memoir,
    Werke und Tage
    (1953 ed.), 346, Blüher writes how the encounter with Schurtz’s writing allowed him to articulate what had been implicit to his first consideration of the bases for male groups.

  3. Jürgen Reulecke, “Das Jahre 1902 und die Ursprünge der Männerbund-Ideologie in Deutschland,” in Völgler and Welck,
    Männerbande. Männerbünde
    , 1:3–7; Thomas Schweizer, “Männerbünde und ihr kultureller Kontext im weltweiten interkulturellen Ver- gleich,” ibid., 1:23.

  4. Heinrich Schurtz,
    Early History of Culture
    (Leipzig/Wien: Bibliographisches Insti- tut, 1900), esp. 93–99: “Anfange der Gesellschaft.”

  5. Schurtz’s
    Altersklassen
    was well received and, for a number of years, frequently cited by Americans like Robert Lowie as well as by German-speaking ethnographers. A few so- ciologists did not have quite so high opinion of his text; Marcel Mauss in 1906 wrote that it had been “too soon declared a classic” (
    Oeuvres
    , vol. 3:
    Cohésion sociale et division de la sociologie
    [Paris: Minuit, 1969], 59). While the Boasian-influenced American anthropolo- gist repudiated its evolutionary and generalizing tendencies, nonetheless, Robert Lowie’s
    Primitive Society
    (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1920), in its classic supersession of all of his predecessors since Morgan’s
    Ancient Society
    , wrote “to Schurtz above all others belongs the glory of having saved ethnologists from absorption in the sib organization and stirred them to a contemplation of phenomena that threatened to elude their purblind vision. . . . His insistence on the theoretical significance of association must rank as one of the most important points of departure in the study of primitive sociology” (257, 258). The almost complete absence of reference to Schurtz after World War II is probably less a function of divergent concerns in anthropology than it is of the appropriation of his term of choice
    Männerbund
    by the Nazi movement and its ideologues such as Alfred Baeumler.

  6. Letter to Freud, 8 August 1913; cit. Neubauer, “Sigmund Freud und Hans Blüher,” 146: “ich plane für den Winter ein Buch über die Rolle der Erotik in der männlichen Gesellschaft.”

  7. Blüher,
    Die Rolle
    , 2:92ff.

  8. Ferdinand Karsch-Haack,
    Das gleichgeschlechtliche Liebesleben bei den Naturvölken

    (Munich: E. Reinhardt, 1911).

  9. Blüher,
    Die Rolle
    , 2:99.

  10. Ibid., 1:6–7; cf. Blüher,
    Die deutsche Wandervogelbewegung als erotisches Phänomen,
    74.

  11. Blüher,
    Die Rolle
    2:170, 171; trans. in Hewitt,
    Political Inversions
    , 123, 125.

  12. Spinoza,
    Tractatus Theologico-Politicus
    , in
    The Political Works
    , trans. A. G. Wernham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958), 63; see Jay Geller, “A Paleontological View of Freud’s Study of Religion: Unearthing the
    Leitfossil
    Circumcision,”
    Modern Judaism
    13 (1993): 49–70.

  13. Blüher,
    Secessio Judaica
    , 49.

  14. Blüher,
    Die Rolle
    , 2:21; trans. in Hewitt,
    Political Inversions
    , 126.

  15. Blüher,
    Die Rolle
    , 2:162; on Freud’s theory that homosexuality is a form of devel- opmental inhibition, cf. ibid., 2:166.

98. Ibid., 2:194–98.

  1. Susanne Zantop,
    Colonial Fantasies. Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770–1870
    (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997).

  2. Cf. Blüher,
    Die deutsche Wandervogelbewegung als erotisches Phänomen,
    12.

  3. Stefanie v. Schnurbein, “Geheime kultische Männerbünde bei den Germanen— Eine Theorie im Spannungsfeld zwischen Wissenschaft und Ideologie,” in Völgler and Welck,
    Männerbande. Männerbünde
    , 2:97–102; and Reinhard Greve, “Die SS als Män- nerbund,” ibid., 1:107–12, esp. 108–9.

  4. See Michael Spöttel,
    Hamiten. Völkerkunde und Antisemitismus
    (Frankfurt/M: Peter Lang, 1996), esp. 113–35.

  5. Greve, “Die SS als Männerbund,” 107–12.

  6. See Jay Geller, “The Godfather of Psychoanalysis: Circumcision, Antisemitism, Homosexuality, and Freud’s ‘Fighting Jew,’”
    Journal of the American Academy of Religion
    67, 2 (1999): 355–85.

  7. Sigmund Freud, “Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year Old Boy” [1909],
    S.E.
    9:17.

  8. Sigmund Freud,
    Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety
    [1926],
    S.E.
    , 20:101–10.

  9. Freud, “Analysis of a Phobia,”
    S.E.
    9:111, 110.

  10. See Jay Geller, “Freud v. Freud: Freud’s Readings of the
    Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken
    ,” in
    Reading Freud’s Reading
    , ed. Sander Gilman, Jutta Birmele, Jay Geller, and Valerie Greenberg (New York: New York University Press, 1994).

  11. Freud,
    From the History of an Infantile Neurosis, S.E.
    17:86. Admittedly, Freud also adds as an apposition that it is also performed on the Jews; nonetheless, Freud’s discussion clearly emphasizes (especially in the German original) Christ’s circumcision.

  12. Since Max Schur’s “Some Additional ‘Day Residues’ of ‘The Specimen Dream of Psychoanalysis,’” in
    Psychoanalysis: A General Psychology—Essays in Honor of Heinz Hart- mann
    , ed. R. M. Loewenstein, L. M. Newman, M. Schur, and A. J. Solnit (New York: In- ternational Universities Press, 1966), and with increased vehemence following Masson’s publication of the complete correspondence, Freud’s relationship to Fliess has been one of the most discussed aspects of Freud’s biography. Among the works addressing the role of homosexuality in their relationship are Wayne Koestenbaum, “Privileging the Anus: Anna

    O. and the Collaborative Origin of Psychoanalysis,” in Wayne Koestenbaum,
    Double Talk: The Erotics of Male Literary Collaboration
    (New York: Routledge, 1989); and Shirley Nel- son Garner, “Freud and Fliess: Homophobia and Seduction,” in
    Seduction and Theory: Readings of Gender, Representation, and Rhetoric
    , ed. Dianne Hunter (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989); and Daniel Boyarin, “Freud’s Baby, Fliess’s Maybe; or, Male Hysteria, Homophobia, and the Invention of the Jewish Man,” in Boyarin,
    Unheroic Conduct
    .

  13. Friedlaender, “Anhang: Nachfolger Gustav Jägers,” in
    The Renaissance of Eros Uranios
    , 49–50.

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