Past Difference--Future Possibility: Re-Reading the Early Brecht (Bertolt Brecht) (Critical Essay‪)‬

INTRODUCTION The purpose of this article is to consider factors that relate to the question of how and why Bertolt Brecht's Baal (1918) can be read as a contemporary queer experience. The issues will be discussed in three parts. The first part will attend to the context for the play's writing and the relevance of context to the question; that is, why Baal can be read as a queer figure. This section will also consider the ways in which Brecht as a writer has been historicised by looking at the relevance of Jean Francois Lyotard's work on knowledge and controlled context. The second part will describe the text and its trajectories with focus on reading the significance of Baal's actions to the question. I will suggest that transgression is the strongest trajectory, particularly transgressive sexuality. Part three proceeds from the question of transgressive sexuality, making use of Sigmund Freud's theory of polymorphous perverse tendencies, Julia Kristeva's theory of ideality as malady in adolescence, and Judith Butler's expansion of both Freud and Kristeva in her relation between melancholia and the desire for recognition. These three theorists are referenced as a way of speaking about the discourse on sexuality and the figure of Baal. Finally, Baal's transgressive sexuality will be considered for its contemporary relevance.