On Sun, 10 Jan 1999, carlos n mancini wrote: > Theweleit in "Maennerkoerper: Zur Psychoanalyse des weissen Terrors" > says that EJ does not write about war. For EJ to produce a text like > a "Storm of Steel" has nothing to do with artisitic self expression > ...The purpose of his writing is to combat the aliveness of experience > to turn into something lifeless. These texts are acts of literary > homicide: their language cannot describe, or narrate, or represent, or > argue" Don't get me started on Theweleit.... the thesis that institutionalised sexual repression is sublimated in Juenger's (and others') writing in an excessive privileging of violence in a sexualised context just doesn't work, IMHO. Especially as he uses the thesis to explain the emergence of fascism in Germany - and as an explanation of the Third Reich is completely inadequate. Maybe the problem with Theweleit is that he comes from the generation which believed it invented sexual liberation and thereby overprivileged it themselves. He certainly looks like an alt-68'er :-) His idea that the dislike of mud in First World War literature is a hidden metaphorical fear of feminine flow, whilst feasible on one level, actually reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of what the War involved. Something tells me he didn't do his time in the Bundeswehr.... The best thing about his book are the pictures, anyway. JK ============================================================================== John King St. John's College GB - Oxford OX1 3JP ==============================================================================
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