Product details
Biographical note
Klaus Theweleit earned his Ph.D. in German Literature at the University of Friebourg and is now a freelance writer working in West Germany. He is the author of both Male Fantasies (Polity Press, 1987) and Male Fantasies, Volume 2 (Polity Press, 1989).'This is the first book to provide an original and imaginative interpretation of the image of women in the collective unconscious of the fascist "warrior" ... Already a classic in Germany, it has been enormously influential and has had a wide impact on an audience that goes well beyond the academic community." <br /> <i>Anson Rabinbach, Cooper Union</i> <p>'Possibly the most stimulating German-language publication of the year. Theweleit is always informative.... A lavish analysis of a culture of male dominance and conquest.' <i>Rudolf Augstein, Der Spiegel</i></p>
This is much more than a book about culture of warfare: it is about sexuality and power, about gender, representation and violence. It is a document of our times which will be of interest to anyone concerned with modern history, contemporary politics and social, political and literary theory.
Chapter 1: The Mass and Its Counterparts. .
The Mass as Embodiment of a Specific Unconsciousness * Contagious Lust * The Alien within as 'Primitive Man' * Aspects of the Masses in Reality * Women to the Fore * The Uncanny * Blackout, and Loss of Fleshly Reality: Decomposition with the Mass * The Mass and the Culture: The 'Upstanding' Individual * Culture and the Army * Undefeated in the Field? * The Mass and the Race * The Nation * The People * The Whole * Excursus: The Sexualization of Language * A Forerunner on the Road to the Reich * Ths Speech * The Eyes.
Chapter 2: Male Bodies and the 'White Terror.
Sexuality and the Drill * The Body Reconstructed in te Military Academy * The Troop as a Totality-Machine * The Totality-Component: Figure of Steel * Preliminary Comments on the Agency of the Ego * Blackouts * The Absorbtion of Sexual Desire * Prussian Socialism * Battle and te Body * Speed and Explosions: Contact with the 'Object' * The Site of War * The Soldierly Body, the Technological Machine, and the Fascist Aesthetic * The Ego of the Soldier Male * Fragmented Armor * The Ego and Maintainance Mechanisms * Ego-Disintegration and Work * Collected Observations on the Ego of the Not-Yet-Fully-Born * Fascism and the Family * Regression * Susceptability to Analysis * Conciousness * Memory * 'He Has It in Hand...' * Projection * Aids to Full Birth * The Aggressive Nature of Human Beings * Mountains of Corpses.
Chapter 3: The White Terror as Bounding and Maintainance of the Self * Three Perceptual Identities Associated with the 'Undifferentiated Objects of the Drives' * Black White Red * The Whip * Ritual Flogging and the Look * Homosexuality and the White Terror * Homosexuality and Sado-Masochism * Homosexual Desire * Controvesy * Socarides's Overt Homosexual * Anal Intercourse as an Act of Maintainance * Homosexuality in the Military Academy * Transsexuality as Regulated Play * The Attractiveness of Men as a Social Quality * Freud and History * The Struggle for Power as a Struggle between the Homosexual and the Anti-Homosexual * Double Double Blind *.
Conclusion.
Notes.
Bibliography.
Index.
This is much more than a book about culture of warfare: it is about sexuality and power, about gender, representation and violence. It is a document of our times which will be of interest to anyone concerned with modern history, contemporary politics and social, political and literary theory.