同性恋神秘主义

IF 0.2 3区 文学 0 LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS GERMAN QUARTERLY Pub Date : 2024-05-03 DOI:10.1111/gequ.12436
Ervin Malakaj
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No wonder, then, that their epistemic practices and broader advocacy work take center stage in scholarship on late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century queer German studies. But when it comes to occult discourse, which has likewise presented epistemic frameworks by which to define and engage queer life, queer German studies has often been somewhat hesitant to engage it seriously.</p><p>My sense is that the occult's epistemological foundations, which directly compete with and reach beyond the purview of Enlightenment epistemologies, rendered occultism as a cultural practice too fringe, even ridiculous, to warrant serious scholarly engagement. But such a view keeps scholars from a rather sizable cultural archive replete with information about how queer people navigated their lives, defined their relation to others, and conceived of how to engage with the world on terms often radically different than those that come into view when studying the history of sexuality through sexology. 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The inclusion of Freimark's book in a sexological periodical then suggests a complicated relationship between sexology and occult practice, even if practitioners on both sides frequently and vehemently disagreed with one another's practices. Studying the sites of convergence and divergence, how occult thought shaped some sexological writing and how sexology informed occult practitioners, would be an exciting avenue for future research in queer German studies.</p><p>Theorists of the queer occult such as Freimark articulated frameworks for understanding queer life in non-sexological terms. But their methods are not without fault. Occultists at times drew on orientalist, racist, and otherwise exclusionary and harmful discursive practices in order to articulate their fascination with and dedication to divinatory practice. As such, their craft—and the occult as a phenomenon overall—warrants rigorous interrogation. 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引用次数: 0

摘要

弗赖马克(Freimark)等同性恋神秘学理论家阐明了从非性别角度理解同性恋生活的框架。但是,他们的方法并非没有错误。神秘主义者有时会借鉴东方主义、种族主义以及其他排斥性和有害的话语实践,以表达他们对占卜实践的迷恋和奉献。因此,他们的技艺--以及神秘学作为一种现象的整体--需要严格的审视。但是,这种质疑必须与这样一个事实相平衡,即神秘主义--也许并非如此反直觉--从来都不是少数人的专属。它吸引了一群渴望找到工具来帮助自己阐明与世界的有意义关系的人。例如,第一本关于塔罗牌的德文书籍《Der Tarot-die kabbalistische Methode der Zukunftsforschung als Schlüssel zum Okkultismus》(1920 年)由神秘主义者恩斯特-特里斯坦-库尔扎恩(Ernst Tristan Kurtzahn)构思并撰写。作者坚持为塔罗牌的使用方式和使用对象制定明确的理论,但对他预计的偏离其规定的做法表示遗憾,因为他已经看到其他塔罗牌使用者在公共场合使用塔罗牌(Kurtzahn 84)。尽管该书以权威的口吻出现,作者也有深奥的倾向,这使得他的部分系统难以遵循,但该书再版后在国内外广受好评。无论用户的背景如何,这些卡片都具有生成功能。事实上,塔罗牌的符号顺序引发了人们的猜测,这种猜测与任何规范主义都是背道而驰的。在塔罗牌的使用过程中,主流话语被修正和动摇,从而与以前敌对的对象建立起新的关系。在这方面,神秘学思想似乎很容易受到萨拉-艾哈迈德(Sara Ahmed)所说的 "同性恋使用"(queer use)的影响,即当一个对象被用于 "与'最初意图''截然不同'的目的 "时(艾哈迈德,199)。事实上,神秘学实践者可能会通过这些实践做出非常古怪的事情,这些现象当然值得德国同性恋研究的学者们关注。
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Queer occultism

The rise of German sexology in the nineteenth century coincides with the rise of occult discourse and practice. The former has always maintained an important status in queer German studies. Scholars have historically turned with great interest to the works of, among others, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Albert Moll, and Magnus Hirschfeld, in order to advance the famous Foucauldian notion that the homosexual was born in the clinic. And with good reason: early sexologists produced frameworks through which to study queer life, generated discursive strategies to define and analyze it, and turned to various forms of media engagement including scientific writing and popular pamphleteering to disseminate their work to the public. No wonder, then, that their epistemic practices and broader advocacy work take center stage in scholarship on late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century queer German studies. But when it comes to occult discourse, which has likewise presented epistemic frameworks by which to define and engage queer life, queer German studies has often been somewhat hesitant to engage it seriously.

My sense is that the occult's epistemological foundations, which directly compete with and reach beyond the purview of Enlightenment epistemologies, rendered occultism as a cultural practice too fringe, even ridiculous, to warrant serious scholarly engagement. But such a view keeps scholars from a rather sizable cultural archive replete with information about how queer people navigated their lives, defined their relation to others, and conceived of how to engage with the world on terms often radically different than those that come into view when studying the history of sexuality through sexology. Occult practitioners did not favor empiricism. They instead pursued “unreasonable” methods that drew on divination, sensing, and speculation to glean information about the world. And, in so doing, they most certainly engaged queer methods and drew participation from queer people. That occult practice and queerness have a strong connection in our times today is no secret—see, for instance, Nathan Snaza's exciting new scholarship on queer feminist esotericism and contemporary liberation movements. But the connection between queer people and occult practice has a longer history, one that is particularly rich in the German-language context around 1900.

One site for scholarly engagement on matters of queer occultism in German studies is Hans Freimark's remarkable study Okkultismus und Sexualität (1909). For Freimark, the rise of the occult during his time is a phenomenon directly tied to a depreciation of empiricism as a guiding mechanism by which to know the world. In his assessment, occultists provided the public what science could not: access to deeper understandings of phenomena that reach beyond the capacities of scientific tools. These phenomena pertain to various discourses on human spirituality, psychic depth, and mystical forces said to connect all life together. What they have in common is that they are all in some way “übersinnliche Vorgänge und Vorkommnisse” particularly of interest to queer people (Freimark 3). In fact, in his ethnographic accounts, Freimark repeatedly makes the point that people whose sexual practices deviated from the norm or whose embodied lives departed from gender binaries historically served divinatory functions as priests or other types of mediators between the material and immaterial world. He also notes that queer living means having to view and experience the world differently and that, in doing so, queer people come to be more attuned to the operations of the world. This, in turn, affords them certain divinatory capacities of apprehending worldly and beyond-worldly phenomena. In Freimark's study, queer people are naturally predisposed to occultist practice.

Eugène Wilhelm, a prolific sexologist working in Hirschfeld's circle who published his work under the pseudonym Numa Praetorius, lists Freimark's study in the yearly bibliography of notable books published in sexology in the Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, a major organ for sexological thought edited by Hirschfeld himself. In other words, despite Freimark's explicit rejection of empiricist thought such as that espoused by most contributors to the Jahrbuch, the editorial board and a major bibliographer for the periodical saw it as an essential publication to understand the growing discourse around sexuality during its time. The inclusion of Freimark's book in a sexological periodical then suggests a complicated relationship between sexology and occult practice, even if practitioners on both sides frequently and vehemently disagreed with one another's practices. Studying the sites of convergence and divergence, how occult thought shaped some sexological writing and how sexology informed occult practitioners, would be an exciting avenue for future research in queer German studies.

Theorists of the queer occult such as Freimark articulated frameworks for understanding queer life in non-sexological terms. But their methods are not without fault. Occultists at times drew on orientalist, racist, and otherwise exclusionary and harmful discursive practices in order to articulate their fascination with and dedication to divinatory practice. As such, their craft—and the occult as a phenomenon overall—warrants rigorous interrogation. But this interrogation would have to be balanced with the fact that occult esotericism—perhaps not so counterintuitively—was never exclusively reserved for the select few. It appealed to a group of people eager to find tools to help them articulate a meaningful relation to the world. Occult practices were a heuristic that drew on speculation, playfulness, and other epistemic procedures that often inspired people to depart from any type of doctrinal program that might have been put into place.

Take, for instance, the first German-language book on tarot and accompanying deck, Der Tarot—die kabbalistische Methode der Zukunftsforschung als Schlüssel zum Okkultismus (1920), which was conceptualized and written by the occultist Ernst Tristan Kurtzahn. The author insists on a clear doctrine for how and by whom tarot is to be used, but bemoans what he anticipates to be a departure from his prescription in practices that he already sees deployed among other tarot users in public settings (Kurtzahn 84). Despite the book's authoritative tone and its author's esoteric leanings that make portions of his system challenging to follow, it was reissued and well received domestically and internationally. The cards have a generative function for users no matter their background. Indeed, the cards’ symbolic order invites speculation that departs from any prescriptivism. In the process of tarot, dominant discourses are revised and shaken up so that new relations to formerly hostile objects can be forged. In this regard, occult thought appears susceptible to what Sara Ahmed calls queer use, namely when an object is used “for a purpose that is ‘very different’ from that which was ‘originally intended’” (Ahmed 199). Indeed, occult practitioners might have done very queer things via these practices, phenomena which certainly deserve the attention of scholars in queer German studies.

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GERMAN QUARTERLY
GERMAN QUARTERLY Multiple-
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期刊介绍: The German Quarterly serves as a forum for all sorts of scholarly debates - topical, ideological, methodological, theoretical, of both the established and the experimental variety, as well as debates on recent developments in the profession. We particularly encourage essays employing new theoretical or methodological approaches, essays on recent developments in the field, and essays on subjects that have recently been underrepresented in The German Quarterly, such as studies on pre-modern subjects.
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Issue Information Preface: German Quarterly Special Issue on Form Intertextuelle Verhandlungen. Zur Kafka-Rezeption in der afrikanischen Literatur The Sociality of Form: Camillo Sitte's Urban Morphologies Meter Against Essentialism
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