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Sex and the City. Homosociability and Sexual Dissidence in Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin

Abstract

The novel Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929) by Alfred Döblin appears in a time and space of enormous political excitement and also of sex-dissident militancy, the Berlin of the Weimar Republic. Composed as a montage of the voices of the big city, the novel allows us to enter into many of the tensions, discussions and militancies of the time around sexual dissidence. This article, therefore, takes a look at these sex-dissident representations in Berlin Alexanderplatz to think about them in tension with the production and reproduction of heterosexual masculinity. In contrast to this sexual effervescence of 1920s Berlin, I am also interested in thinking about the production of the cisheteromasculinities thought of from the concept of homosexuality, fundamentally in the relationship between the characters of Franz and Reinhold. In this way, this point can also be linked to the violence and aggression against women, which are very marked in Döblin's novel, and, mainly, to the exchange of women between Franz and Reinhold.

Keywords:
Alfred Döblin; Berlin Alexanderplatz; Homosociability; Sexual dissent

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