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Otto Weininger: Sex, Science, and Self in Imperial Vienna

by Chandak Sengoopta

University of Chicago Press, 2000
Cloth: 978-0-226-74867-2
Library of Congress Classification B3363.W54S46 2000
Dewey Decimal Classification 193

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Turn-of-the century Vienna is remembered as an aesthetic, erotic, and intellectual world: the birthplace of Freud and psychoanalysis, the waltz, and novels of Schnitzler. The contexts of this cultural vibrancy, Chandak Sengoopta argues, were darker and more complex than we might imagine.

This provocative, enlightening study explores the milieu in which the philosopher Otto Weininger (1880-1903) wrote his controversial book Sex and Character. Shortly after its publication, Weininger committed suicide at the age of twenty-three. His book, which argued that women and Jews were mere sexual beings who lacked individuality, became a bestseller.

Hailed as a genius by intellectuals such as Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Kraus, Weininger was admired, not for his prejudices, but for his engagement with the central issues of the time—the nature and meanings of identity. Sengoopta pays particular attention to how Weininger appropriated scientific language and data to defend his views and examines the scientific theories themselves.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Chandak Sengoopta is a senior lecturer in the history of medicine and science at Birkbeck College, University of London.

REVIEWS

“Sengoopta presents a learned, modest and sensible account of Weininger’s major work. . . . It is a major contribution to the literature on this extraordinary icon of early twentieth-century Vienna.”

— S.A.M. Burns, Annals of Science

“[This] study contributes to our understanding of Weininger by locating him more precisely in the context of late nineteenth-century medicine and biology. Sengoopta clarifies the historical standard—especially scientific, but also moral—against which to read Weininger, and he makes this peculiar writer comprehensible by providing a realistic sense of his scientific frame of reference.”

— David S. Luft, Central European History

“[Sengoopta] takes Weininger’s scientific interests seriously, and in a series of finely crafted readings locates Weininger’s concerns within a constellation of fields ranging from experimental psychology to research on sex glands, and the study of homosexuality.”

— Andreas Killen, German-Studies Review

“Sengoopta, in his highly informative study, convincingly shows that <I>Geschlecht und Charakter<I> is a ‘serious, comprehensive, and emotionally charged ideological critique of modernity in general and of women’s emancipation in particular.’”

— Volker Depkat, H-Net Reviews

“Sengoopta has done something I would have considered impossible: he convinced me, by tracing the roots of Weininger’s thought, that it was worthwhile to read his book about a man I had considered unworthy of serious study. . . . I would hazard the conclusion that, despite his rabidness, Weininger articulated some main currents of thought . . . and that his work is relevant today as a jumping off point for explorations of issues that still concern us.”

— Hannah S. Decker, ISIS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Why Read Otto Weininger Today? And How?
1. The Education of Otto Weininger
2. Weininger's Worlds: Identity, Politics, and Philosophy in Central Europe
3. Man, Woman, Text: The Structure and Substance of Geschlecht und Charakter
4. The Biology of Sex and the Deconstruction of Gender
5. Normalizing the Homosexual
6. Deconstructing Femininity: The Psychology of Hysteria
7. Impregnation and Autonomy: The Political Physiology of Motherhood
8. Echoes, Analyses, Critiques: Responses to Weininger
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

See other books on: 1880-1903 | Austria & Hungary | Human Sexuality | Self | Vienna (Austria)
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