Foreboding Forefathers: Cross(br)ed Desire, A Child and Dubious Parenthood. Goethe's Elective Affinities (Translated by Kate Brooks)

Abstract

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Elective Affinities [Die Wahlverwandtschaften] was published in 1809. With the character of the child, Otto, Goethe takes up the debate surrounding female/maternal imagination and its supposed influence on the development of the embryo; however, he takes it out of the context of the discourse on monstrosity, in which it was traditionally discussed. When I study Otto as the result of parental imagination and relate this to the debate surrounding maternal imagination, I notice the "artificiality" of procreation and the apparent break with the genealogy in this so-called monstrous imagination. In other words, I am interested in the artificial and artistic status of the child whose birth appears to be the consequence of an artificial insemination.