A Violent World of Difference: Magnus Hirschfeld and the Shaping of Queer Modernity

这项研究将考察暴力、死亡、仇恨和迫害如何影响现代同性恋身份和文化的发展。它聚焦于多产的犹太性学家和活动家马格努斯·赫希菲尔德(Magnus Hirschfeld，1868-1935)的工作和接受情况，他今天最出名的是他的同性恋权利活动，对易装癖的基础研究，以及在柏林开设了世界上第一个性科学研究所。但赫希菲尔德也记录了针对女同性恋者、男同性恋者和其他群体的仇恨和暴力的影响。他以德语和英语出版，受到他的文学和医学培训的影响，例如，他写了关于奥斯卡·王尔德的死亡及其对上世纪之交同性恋男性的影响；他对女同性恋和同性恋自杀进行了第一次统计调查；他出版了关于战争、民族主义和种族主义的书籍，其中他整理了不同形式的集体歧视及其对个人生活的影响的证据。作为当代作家和艺术家中的知名人物，他参与了一系列关于性别歧视方面的电影的制作，其中著名的主演是1919年在德国电影院上映的关于同性恋勒索的无声电影Anders ALS die Anderen[与其他人不同]。赫希菲尔德的同性恋身份和他的犹太身份，以及他的文化活动和他的政治激进主义，都是对他生活的几次口头和身体攻击的中心。在19世纪90年代至20年代间广泛旅行后，他最终在1930年永远离开了德国，因为纳粹迫害的威胁越来越大。两年后，当他从世界巡回演讲返回欧洲时，赫希菲尔德在巴黎的一家电影院目睹了他的学院被摧毁的消息，最终他的半身像在柏林的街道上游行，然后在纳粹书籍的第一次焚烧中被点燃。《不同的暴力世界》挖掘了这一复杂的档案，为暴力在塑造现代同性恋身份和文化中所起的作用提供了深刻的见解。这项研究结合了最近酷儿历史上的负面转折--对酷儿过去的艰难经历及其遗产的关注--以及当前关于文化政治、情感和现代性的学术研究，考察了希尔施菲尔德作品中关于女同性恋者死亡、自杀、伤害和迫害的叙事，以展示当时人们是如何理解这种痛苦的。它汇集了对性学文献、文学和流行文化、电影和摄影的分析，以表明创伤经历不仅对遭受创伤的个人产生了重大影响，而且对更广泛的现代同性恋文化的形成也产生了重大影响。通过关注赫希菲尔德的游记和他的作品的翻译，该项目进一步追踪了同性恋痛苦的跨国轮廓，揭示了对女同性恋者和同性恋者的暴力攻击造成的情感冲击波，远远超出了现代世界的地缘政治边界。在这样做的同时，这项研究还讲述了一个更广泛的故事，即在现代性的跨国塑造中，身份是如何经历、传播、破坏和维持的。

This research will examine how violence, death, hatred and persecution affected the development modern queer identity and culture. It focuses on the work and reception of the prolific Jewish sexologist and activist Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935), who is best known today for his homosexual rights activism, foundational studies of transvestism and opening of the world's first Institute of Sexual Sciences in Berlin. But Hirschfeld was also a chronicler of the effects of hate and violence against lesbians and homosexual men and other groups of people. Publishing both in German and English and influenced by his literary as well as medical training, he wrote, for example, about the death of Oscar Wilde and how it affected homosexual men at the turn of the last century; he conducted the first statistical surveys of lesbian and homosexual suicide; and he published books on war, nationalism and racism in which he collated evidence of different forms of collective discrimination and their impact on individual lives. A well-known figure amongst contemporary writers and artists, he was instrumental in the production of a series of films about aspects of sexual discrimination, famously starring in Anders als die Anderen [Different from the Others], a silent movie about homosexual blackmail released in German cinemas in 1919. Hirschfeld's homosexuality as much as his Jewishness, and his cultural activities as much as his political activism, were at the centre of several verbal and physical attacks on his life. Having travelled extensively between the 1890s and 1920s, he eventually left Germany for good in 1930 because of the increased threat of Nazi persecution. When he returned to Europe from a world lecturing tour two years later, Hirschfeld witnessed in a cinema in Paris news of the destruction of his Institute, which culminated in his bust being paraded through the streets of Berlin before it was set alight in the first of the Nazi book burnings. A Violent World of Difference excavates this complex archive for the insights it provides into the role of violence in the shaping of modern queer identity and culture. Engaging with the recent 'negative turn' in queer history - the focus on difficult experiences in the queer past and their legacies - and current scholarship on cultural politics, feelings and modernity, the research examines the narratives about lesbian and homosexual death, suicide, injury and persecution in Hirschfeld's work to show how such suffering was understood at the time. It brings together analyses of sexological literature, literary and popular culture, film and photography to demonstrate that traumatic experiences had a significant impact not only on the individuals subjected to them but also on the shaping of a wider modern queer culture. By paying attention to Hirschfeld's travels and the translations of his work, the project further traces the transnational contours of queer suffering, revealing that violent attacks on lesbians and homosexual men created emotional shockwaves that rippled far across the geopolitical boundaries of the modern world. In so doing, then, this research also tells a broader story about how 'identity' was experienced, transmitted, damaged and sustained in the transnational shaping of modernity.