Male Fantasies, Volume 2
Psychoanalyzing the White Terror
1. Auflage September 1989
536 Seiten, Softcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
This is the second volume of Theweleit's extraordinary study of the
fantasies of some of the men centrally involved in the rise of
Nazism. The author develops his account by focusing on the
representation of masculinity and homosexuality and their relation
to the preparations for and conduct of war. He offers a
psychoanalytic interpretation of the role of warfare as a search
for sensation without desire or pleasure, leading to an image of
the body which emphasizes hardness, self-discipline and,
ultimately, violence.
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.
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."
Anson Rabinbach, Cooper Union
'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.' Rudolf Augstein, Der
Spiegel