The Anthropology Of Genocide - WNLibrary

240 genocide’s wake
naked body, stripped of its materialist trappings, stood outside society: an emblem
of nature, liberated from violent history. As in the 1920s, public nudity came to symbolize
freedom from the deceptive armor of clothing: the naked body was purged
of the artificial, the illicit, the erotic. But unlike the aestheticization of white nudity
at the turn of the century, the West German critique of postfascist culture
was not at first driven by an overtly nationalist agenda. That dimension was to be
added later. Rather, the unclothed body (as an authentic truth-claim) was imagined
in opposition to society and the state.
Encoded by these messages of opposition and rebellion, public nudity was soon
employed by many young Germans as a personal gesture of cultural protest. Seemingly
unconventional and provocative, the practice of disrobing in public was widely
adopted as a pastime with countercultural significance. Offering a “language of
commodity resistance” (Appadurai 1986:30), and inverting the logic of capitalist
consumption, public nudity signified freedom from the constraints of modern German
society. During the 1970s naked sunbathing established itself as a popular
leisure activity, and as urban parks were increasingly thronged by those who preferred
to bask in the sun without clothes, full-body exposure became commonplace
(see Figure 9.2). By the late 1970s, nudity in public parks was so pervasive that local
prohibitions against body exposure were no longer enforced unless “it caused
offense”: naked sunbathing was exempt from public indecency codes (Brügge
1985:149). The public display of naked bodies, in particular the public viewing of
nude men, was rendered acceptable or normal by severing the links with historical
memory. Confined to natural settings, the naked body seemed devoid of erotic
or libidinal meanings. The topographic surface of the body, regarded as a natural
figuration, was purged of its violent historiography.
NAKED MASCULINITY: ICONIC MEMORIES OF VIOLENCE
This perception of the “natural innocence” of naked bodies was contested in 1981,
when public nudity moved beyond conventional urban spaces. Transgressing the
designated boundaries of parks and park-related greens, nudists began to congregate
along river shores, on beaches, in playgrounds, swimming pools, and cemeteries,
even city centers. In downtown Munich, for instance, nudes were now often
sighted in historic fountains, on streetcars, and in shopping centers (Brügge 1981,
1985). Such a migration of unclothed bodies into the metropolis, the apparent escape
of nakedness from “nature,” provoked among some segments of the German
public deep anxieties about unfettered sexuality.
At issue was the naked male. Exposed masculinity was met with suspicion and
unease. Uncovered male genitalia, the public sight of “dangling and swinging
penises” (Brügge 1981:150), was experienced by many Germans as a threat. The
open display of the phallus was traditionally prohibited, a thematic much belabored
by the cultural critics of the 1960s. Among leftists, male nudity had been encour-