Declinazioni del "femminile" nell'antimodernismo tedesco. Ludwig Klages e i suoi contemporanei (1893-1933).

At the beginning of the 20th century, Johann Jakob Bachofen’s notion of the Maternal as the origin of all things opened a broader scholarly debate in which gender categories became critical tools against modernity. According to each scholar’s political view point, the Feminine is now perceived as the repressed Other of European history, a utopian alternative to modernity, linked to ideas such as archaism, naturalness or backwardness. The present study is an attempt to trace and explain the persistence of the Feminine in German Anti-Modernism and is something else than a contribution to the debate about the historical existence of matriarchies and the linked political and social implications. Within this framework the reception of the matriarchy and of Bachofen’s theories by Ludwig Klages is compared with that of his contemporaries. Indeed, Klages’ radical employment of Bachofen’s matriarchy, considered as ‘feminine principle’ against the instrumental rationalism of the ‘masculine’ modernity, has a significant impact on his time. First of all his influence can be perceived in the so called Munich Cosmic Circle, of which Klages was one of the founder members together with Alfred Schuler and Karl Wolfskehl. Stefan George and the members of his Circle were also inspired by his work, as later the theorists of the Frankfurt School, especially Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno and Ernst Bloch. Klages’ use of the “Feminine” is also compared with that of the feminist movement active in the same historical period, including the particular point of view supported by Franziska zu Reventlow in her novels. Starting from the above-mentioned comparisons, the present study aims at demonstrating that the male-female dualism is crucial for the paradigmatic “struggle” for Bachofen and at defining the nature of the crisis of modernity

Declinazioni del "femminile" nell'antimodernismo tedesco. Ludwig Klages e i suoi contemporanei (1893-1933).

At the beginning of the 20th century, Johann Jakob Bachofen’s notion of the Maternal as the origin of all things opened a broader scholarly debate in which gender categories became critical tools against modernity. According to each scholar’s political view point, the Feminine is now perceived as the repressed Other of European history, a utopian alternative to modernity, linked to ideas such as archaism, naturalness or backwardness. The present study is an attempt to trace and explain the persistence of the Feminine in German Anti-Modernism and is something else than a contribution to the debate about the historical existence of matriarchies and the linked political and social implications. Within this framework the reception of the matriarchy and of Bachofen’s theories by Ludwig Klages is compared with that of his contemporaries. Indeed, Klages’ radical employment of Bachofen’s matriarchy, considered as ‘feminine principle’ against the instrumental rationalism of the ‘masculine’ modernity, has a significant impact on his time. First of all his influence can be perceived in the so called Munich Cosmic Circle, of which Klages was one of the founder members together with Alfred Schuler and Karl Wolfskehl. Stefan George and the members of his Circle were also inspired by his work, as later the theorists of the Frankfurt School, especially Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno and Ernst Bloch. Klages’ use of the “Feminine” is also compared with that of the feminist movement active in the same historical period, including the particular point of view supported by Franziska zu Reventlow in her novels. Starting from the above-mentioned comparisons, the present study aims at demonstrating that the male-female dualism is crucial for the paradigmatic “struggle” for Bachofen and at defining the nature of the crisis of modernity