Male Fantasies, Vol. 1: Women, Floods, Bodies, History (Theory and History of Literature, Vol. 22)

[Full disclosure: I only read the first section of this book, as it considers the male fascist regard for women; I only perused the second section]

A psychological study of protofascism that, in my humble estimation, is hit and miss.

The author bases his analysis of the Freikorps (the militaristic

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form of German fascism under the short-lived and tumultuous Weimar Republic) on a reading of their "literature." I find this sloppy and wish he'd have relied more on historical instance in making his argument instead of subjecting his readers to the lurid details of pre-Nazi pulp fiction. (Is the work of Danielle Steel reflective of the state of American feminism? C'mon.)

However, he does a good job of demonstrating 1) the shortcomings of a Freudian analysis of fascism, and 2) that protofascists (and hence, the lineage of said protofascists) didn't just dislike women -- they hated them because they are (and, I'd wager, remain) terrified of them.

Although there's a Walter Benjamin sighting, for my money Wilhelm Reich's The Mass Psychology of Fascism is a more insightful book into the psychology behind fascism (and Reich is one of Theweleit's targets), and Frontsoldaten by Stephen Fritz better demonstrates just how universal "fascist" prejudices were in Germany leading up to and during World War II, even among non-Nazis, and shows how Hitler and his band of brigands merely gave form and expression to nascent intolerance.

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