(Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) Rolf J

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DIANNE CHISHOLM
Brautlager in ein Blutmeer” (“the bridal bed into a blood bath”) with
the “Rausche der Zeugung” (GS IV.1:147–48; “ecstasy of procreation,”
SW 1:486–87). Here “procreation” (or pro-creation) refers to the creative
intercourse of humankind and nature that a proletarian-mastered
technology might conduct. The result would not be the reproduction of
the same (anthropological species) but the birth of new, post-human man
(Urmensch). As such, it is a perverse procreation that destroys/dismantles
and replaces the Earth-ravaging machine of technological imperialism, in
ecstatic techno-communion with the cosmos.
Male Impotence
Images and motifs of male impotence punctuate Benjamin’s writing,
starting with the appearance in “Sokrates” of the “männlich[e] Genius”
(“male genius”) who, in the presence of “des Weiblichen” (“the feminine”)
is creative but not conceptive and who is marked by “Empfängnis
ohne Schwangerschaft” (GS II.1:131; “conception without pregnancy,”
SW 1:53). Such idealized impotence evolves, and also devolves, in the
1930s into various critical appearances, such as the satirical image of “Hitlers
herabgeminderte Männlichkeit” (GS VI:103–4; “Hitler’s Diminished
Masculinity,” SW 2:792–93), or the misogynous counterimage in the
section “Nach der Vollendung” (“After Completion”) of “Kleine Kunst-
Stücke” (GS IV.1:438; “Little Tricks of the Trade,” SW 2:730), written
in 1928, which sets the “männliche Erstgeborene des Werkes” (“male
first-born of his work)” well above and apart from procreative female
sexuality. “Berliner Chronik” and “Berliner Kindheit um neunzehnhundert”
feature images of “impotence before the city” that, though they do
not refer to sexual impotence per se, do embody Benjamin’s fascination
with and fear of accosting prostitutes — those guardians of the threshold
who signify ambiguously both the erotic frontier beyond the domain of
the bourgeois family and the existential nothingness of reified sexuality. 18
Images of “impotence before the city” are also associated with the flâneur’s
fruitless philandering and wayward genius for getting lost or straying
from appointed destinations. It is, however, in the later writing on
Baudelaire that the most complex images of male impotence appear. Benjamin’s
“Baudelaire” reincarnates the creative impotence of male genius,
along with Breton’s “esoteric love” and recollections of Benjamin’s own
“impotence before the city.” Baudelaire is the city poet whose only love is
a prostitute — the beloved-without-aura — in whom the poet recognizes
himself (as fallen laureate and kindred streetwalker) and through whom
he empathizes with the commodity.
Male impotence amounts to a leitmotif in Benjamin’s writing and
thus merits more detailed review. To begin with, in “Socrates,” the
Platonic genius is clearly distinguished from the demonic Socrates,