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

本研究将探讨暴力、死亡、仇恨和迫害如何影响现代酷儿身份和文化的发展。它主要关注多产的犹太性学家和活动家马格努斯·赫希菲尔德（1868-1935）的工作和接待。赫希菲尔德以其同性恋权利活动、易装癖的基础研究和在柏林开设世界上第一个性科学研究所而闻名于世。但赫斯菲尔德也是一位记录仇恨和暴力对男女同性恋者和其他群体影响的编年史者。他的作品以德语和英语出版，受到文学和医学训练的影响，例如，他写了关于奥斯卡·王尔德之死以及它如何影响上世纪初的同性恋者；他首次对同性恋和女同性恋自杀进行了统计调查；他还出版了关于战争、民族主义和种族主义的书籍，在这些书中，他整理了不同形式的集体歧视及其对个人生活影响的证据。作为当代作家和艺术家中的知名人物，他在一系列关于性别歧视的电影制作中发挥了重要作用，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默片《不同于他人》。赫希菲尔德的同性恋和他的犹太身份一样，他的文化活动和他的政治活动一样，都是他生活中几次言语和身体攻击的中心。在19世纪90年代到20世纪20年代之间，他游历了很多地方，最终在1930年离开了德国，因为纳粹迫害的威胁越来越大。两年后，当他结束世界巡回演讲回到欧洲时，赫希菲尔德在巴黎的一家电影院目睹了他的研究所被毁的消息，他的半身像在柏林街头游行，然后在纳粹的第一次焚书中被点燃。《暴力的差异世界》挖掘了这个复杂的档案，为暴力在塑造现代酷儿身份和文化中的作用提供了见解。通过关注酷儿历史上最近的“负面转变”——关注酷儿过去的艰难经历及其遗产——以及当前关于文化政治、情感和现代性的学术研究，该研究考察了赫希菲尔德作品中关于女同性恋和同性恋死亡、自杀、伤害和迫害的叙述，以展示当时人们是如何理解这种痛苦的。它汇集了对性学文学、文学和流行文化、电影和摄影的分析，以证明创伤经历不仅对遭受创伤的个人有重大影响，而且对塑造更广泛的现代酷儿文化也有重大影响。通过关注赫希菲尔德的旅行和他作品的翻译，该项目进一步追溯了酷儿苦难的跨国轨迹，揭示了对女同性恋和男同性恋的暴力袭击所产生的情感冲击波，远远超出了现代世界的地缘政治界限。在这样做的过程中，本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”是如何被体验、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.