0618000 - ÚČL 2025 eng A - Abstract
Müller, Richard
Passing by the Brothel. On the Cultural Techniques of Collective Experience and Brod's/Kafka's Experimental Travelogue Richard und Samuel.
[Central-European Masculinities in a Comparative Perspective /2./. Katowice, 14.11.2024-15.11.2024]
URL events: https://us.edu.pl/wydzial/wh/event/konferencja-srodkowoeuropejskie-meskosci-w-perspektywie-porownawczej/ 
Institutional support: RVO:68378068
Keywords : Kafka, Franz * Brod, Max * collective male experience * male friendship
OECD category: Specific literatures

The presentation was focused on the cultural techniques of collective male experience through case study of the “Prague circle” and Brod’s and Kafka’s unfinished novel Richard und Samuel. Examining the close and intimate male friendship in both authors’ writings, the speaker doubted the thesis of homosexual repression. Instead, he argued, Kafka developed the ‘posthuman approach to the self’ within an understanding of writing as an existential activity, working from within the vulnerable position of the “male Jewish writer” and in response to the contemporary discourse on Jewish effiminacy and lack of (socially constructive) virility (Weininger, Blüher).
Permanent Link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0364813