Unnatural Bedfellows: Sexuality and Otherness in Representations of Germans

Abstract

The aim of this article is to address a number of texts where the ‘otherness’ of the German is in part constructed through sexuality. The mobilisation of sexuality in narratives about Fascism and the Holocaust such as in the film The Night Porter, to underline and intensify oppressive, perverse power relations at the frontiers of life and death, has long been noted, and often deplored. This article will focus rather on representations within French literature. Various studies have identified features in traditional representations of the German which construct this figure as different from and opposed to France and the French: barbarism, militarism and stress on group rather than individual identity describe both a Prussian heritage and its Fascist renewal; a ponderous, organised and bureaucratic psychology is contrasted to French wit, energy and resourcefulness; one could extend the list. However, the importance of intense, often ‘deviant’, sexualities and sexual relationships in representations of Germans has received less attention. Sequestration, incest, homosexuality and ambiguous sexual doubles of various kinds are to be found in texts from the 1940s to the twenty-first century − sexual encounters which are frequently locked into psychosexual dramas with strange or monstrous parental relationships.