Resumen de The "New Womanly Man" Revisited: Ulysses, Weininger, Parody
In 1903, the Austrian philosopher Otto Weininger published Geschlecht und Charakter (Sex and Character), which shocked and fascinated much of its readership for its sympathetic analysis and purported confirmation of nineteenth-century stereotypes about Jews and women. Drawing liberally from psychology, philosophy, and early genetics, Weininger argued that, among other things, Jewish and gentile women derive personhood from male sexual acknowledgment. Although psychoanalysis and developments in genetics quickly supplanted Weininger's ideas, Sex and Character's articulation of fin de siècle anti-Semitism and misogyny continued to captivate audiences in the first decades of the twentieth century. Supported by the sustained popularity of Sex and Character and Joyce's awareness of Weininger, this essay examines Weiningerian topoi in the characterization of Molly and Bloom through the lens of parody. It argues that parody, in part because its etymology suggests intimacy between source and target texts, explains the forms of acceptance and opposition Ulysses signals toward Weininger's depiction of fin de siècle stereotypes. Having analyzed how, and to what degree, Joyce's incorporation of Sex and Character into Ulysses underwrites and undercuts the Austrian philosopher's theorizations, this essay finds that Ulysses exposes the ideological character of Weininger's thinking and points to ways of being that do not resort to naturalized descriptions.
