Transcendental Masochism

Building on my analysis of the rhetoric of masochism in the previous chapter, I now turn to a case study whose formal composition offers a different way of getting a purchase on the violence of masochism. Robert Musil’s debut novel Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß (The Confusions of Young Törless), first published in 1906, can be read as a narrative of the modern pedagogical institution in which diverse forms of violence become intertwined. Contrary to the assumption that Musil’s novel intends the depiction of sado-masochistic excesses, my argument focuses on a reading scene that mediates the various potentials of violence the novel harbors: only when Törleß reads Kant does it become clear which violence and which pain are meant by Musil’s text. This allegory of reading furthermore discloses the manner in which the novel’s formal principles of composition bear on the violent acts it represents. Whatever violent event finds itself depicted within the novel discovers its condition of possibility in the abstract violence that primordially institutes its form. In Kant, the object of Törleß’s readerly desires, this abstract principle takes the shape of the law of practical reason. The Zögling’s story becomes readable not simply as an exhibition of schoolboys in disgrace, but as an insight into the violent structure of practical reason itself.