for its functioning, the Sex-Pol movement had to fight for sexual liberation
through the institutions of education, medicine, and the law.
In 1920sVienna and 1930sBerlin, the parallel projects of sexual and commu-
nistrevolution gave riseto proletarian sexuality asaliberatory discourse; it also
produced the contradictions that would continue to haunt later adaptations. The
constitutive tension betweenapostindividual ethos of masses and multitudes
and an antibourgeois individualism with Nietzschean overtones made Reich’s
radical interventions part ofalargerintellectual formation thatincludedFranz
Jung and his literary experiments with collective agency.Atthe same time,
Sex-Pol establishedatheoretical model basedonwhich the emancipatorymove-
ments of the 1970sand beyond pursuedtheirown experiments with lust in, and
for,life. In ways that will proveimportant for the remainingpages, Reich’sredis-
covery asakey figureofFreudo-Marxismand hisreassessment as part ofaFou-
cauldian biopolitics has drawnrenewed attentionto his long-standinginterest in
somatic approachestothe body.²⁰In its most (in)famous manifestation known
as orgone energy,Reich’sfascination with the preindividual, life-affirming
forcecalled life energy developed out of his intellectual debt toLebensphiloso-
phieand Nietzscheanism, including their enlistment in an aestheticization of
masculinist positions.Before 1933,the combination of psychoanalytic, Marxist,
and vitalist concepts allowed Reich to equate proletarian subjectivity with
male heterosexual genitality. After 1935,hebeganto revise his sex political the-
ories in line withadecidedlyAmericanphilosophyofindividualism. In light of
such strategic adjustments to changingcircumstances, Reich’ssexual politics
might be described best through what psychoanalysts SebastianHartmann
and Siegfried Zepf call nineteenth-century biologism masking as (Marxist) mate-
rialism.²¹
The couplingofsex and politics in Reichwasachieved through acontradic-
tion, the superiorgenital healthofthe (male) proletariat and the deep sexual
misery of the workingclass. In his writings, he repeatedlyemphasized the con-
Examplesofthe renewed interest in Reich include the2007 exhibition atVienna’sJüdisches
Museum called“Wi lhelm Reich—Sex! Pol! Energy!”which producedthe catalogWilhelmReich
Revisited,ed. BirgitJohler (Vienna:VerlagTuria+Kant,2008), and the biopic by Antonin Svobo-
da,DerFall Wilhelm Reich(2012), with Klaus Maria Brandauer in the title role; the latter was re-
leased together with the documentaryWerhat Angst vor WilhelmReich?
Sebastian Hartmann and Siegfried Zepf,“SanktWilhelm oder die wahreWahrheit eines
‘wahren’Sozialisten,”inDer“Fall”Wilhelm Reich.BeiträgezumVerhältnis vonPsychoanalyse
und Politik,ed. Karl Fallend andBernd Nietzschke(Frankfurt am Main:Suhrkamp, 1997),
223 – 248.For twovery different biographies, seeWilhelm Burian,Psychoanalyse undMarxismus.
Eine intellektuelleBiographie WilhelmReichs(Frankfurt am Main: Makol, 1972) and MyronR.
Sharaf,FuryonEarth:ABiography ofWilhelm Reich(NewYork: St.Martin’sPress,1983).
WilhelmReichand the Politics of Proletarian Sexuality 295