Chapter IX: The Problem of Conclusion

Andrew Webber

From Sexuality and the Sense of Self in the Works of Georg Trakl and Robert Musil (1990), pp. 183-87, doi:10.59860/td.c48ca40

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Part of the book: Sexuality and the Sense of Self in the Works of Georg Trakl and Robert Musil

Andrew Webber

MHRA Texts and Dissertations 30

Bithell Series of Dissertations 15

Modern Humanities Research Association for the Institute of Germanic Studies

ModernGermanPoetryFictionPhilosophyopen


Abstract.  The passages treated here all attest to the subversion of the hermaphroditic ideal, its recurrent collapse into the 'unnatürlichen Polaritätsspannung' of sexual difference, and the repertory of variations on the 'Lustmord' scenario. Within the more discursive framework of Der Mann one Eigenschaften, the meshing of sexuality and problems of meaning, traced in Törleß's crisis, and in the figure of the 'Vorwand' as disrupting intercourse in Die Vollendung, is taken a step further. The problem of sexual difference provides a paradigm at once for the invasion of difference into the sense of self (dramatised in encounters with the double) and for the denial of a simple signifying integrity in language. In as far as the self constructs its identity vis-à-vis the world through the mediation of language, the inherent difference between the signs deployed by language and the objects they purport to represent must interfere with the quest for identity.

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