Metonymic cohabitation: On women figures in Brecht

This paper begins by registering the paradox that, although Bertolt Brecht was in his lifetime frequently exploitative of women (both erotically and, in terms of his creative work, collaboratively), his poetic and dramatic oe uvre is wonderfully res-onant in its picturing of women figures. A number o f concerns within that portrait-ure are highlighted: the perception of wome ns closeness to the material universe as such; their intimacy with everyday things and objects. Yet neither cognitively nor aesthetically was Brecht a crude determinist. For him, materiality was not all. Hence he allows his w omen figures to exist in a kind of metonymic cohabitation with physicality. And by that token they speak for and can be spoken for by things. Precisel y this field of force which allows literal and figurative modes to interact is at the heart of Brechts creative project to acknowledge and interrogate the forms and sites of human being in the world.