Beautiful Statues, Beautiful Men: The Abjection of Feminine Imagination in Lessing's Laokoon

Abstract

In his Laokoon essay, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing concludes that “[b]ei uns scheinet sich die zarte Einbildungskraft der Mütter nur in Ungeheuern zu äuβern” ‘in modern times the susceptible imagination of mothers seems to express itself solely in monsters.‘ In contrast, masculine imagination yields beautiful statues, beautiful men, and subsequently harmonious cultures. The idealization of classical sculpture displaces the generative power of the mother, who, if not totally impotent, is the source of the fragmented, deformed body. The Laokoon text incorporates and abjects the fragmented body of the woman. It is ironic that she represents both the void and the only object capable of filling the subjective vacuum. Stable masculine subjectivity is contingent on the abjection of woman and yet unattainable without her recovery. Accordingly, the Laokoon is based on the abjection of the feminine while simultaneously stuffed full of fragments of the woman's body and imagination. Lessing's aesthetic project fosters the circumscription of feminine imagination by the myth of the unifying function of masculine fantasy.