I forplantningens tegn

Abstract

The thesis of this article is that our under- standing of gender and gender differences is characterised by unacknowledged fantasies related to reproduction as a fundamental condition of human existence. The article analyses works by Heinrich von Kleist and Thomas Mann with a view to revealing how unconscious masculine ideas connected with the conditions of reproduction determine the representation of the two genders. The analysis focuses on the metaphors contained in the literary texts and demonstrates that it is through the rhetoric rather than the explicit messages of these texts that these unconscious ideas come to expression. On the basis of these samples from the literary historical canon,the article draws parallels with contemporary ethical and scientific discourses on reproduction technology, and points out that these discourses share fantasies of gender and reproduction with fiction that is 50 or 200 years older.