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READING SCARS: CIRCUMCISION AS TEXTUAL TROPE by Julia Turner B.A. in History of Art, University of Pennsylvania, 1965 M.A. in English, Portland State University, 1990 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English University of Pittsburgh 2004 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Julia Turner It was defended on December 10, 2004 and approved by Lucy Fischer, Professor Gregory F. Goekjian, Professor Mariolina Salvatori, Associate Professor Philip E. Smith II, Associate Professor Dissertation Director ii Copyright © by Julia Turner, PhD 2004 iii READING SCARS: CIRCUMCISION AS TEXTUAL TROPE Julia Turner, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2004 This dissertation presents readings across a series of disparate texts in which circumcision--as initiating Jewish rite or descendant metaphor--functions as an interpretive key. The mark of circumcision has served as the rhetorical ground upon which much negative stereotyping--especially anti-Judaic and/or anti-Semitic sentiment--has been fostered. The metaphor of circumcision, in seeming contrast, has designated an elect in both religious and secular modes of exegesis. Additionally, issues pertaining to sexuality and gender attend or subtend the representation of circumcision in any number of cultural or critical venues. Among the texts which serve to anchor discussion around these issues are portions of Genesis; anti- circumcision literature and documentary; George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda; Joan Micklin Silver’s Crossing Delancey; Agnieszka Holland’s Europa, Europa; Peter Greenaway’s Drowning By Numbers; and the opening chapter of Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis. The polysemous character of this diacritical rite become sign determines in part the theoretical and critical writings called upon to illuminate the manner in which circumcision is and has been read. The primary informing bases are critical writings by Jewish historians and Hebrew scholars and psychoanalytic theory. The legacy of the rite of circumcision within the so-called Judeo-Christian history of Western art and literature speaks both to the tenacity of Judaism’s particular embodied tradition and to the influence of Christianity’s universal and disembodying rhetoric. This inmix of iv rhetoric, rite, and religion clusters at the interpretive edge of circumcision and informs as well its variant tropes. Metaphorically speaking, this means the best reading position is one at or near the wound. Textually speaking, this means tending to those sites where literal ruptures, or reading wounds appear. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank the members of my dissertation committee for their extreme generosity of time and of spirit. To Philip Smith, committee chair, I owe far more than language allows. A premier example of the academy at its finest, his grace and constancy over a rough course have proven to be gifts beyond measure. To Mariolina Salvatori, the passionate voice always at ear with hard questions, my immense gratitude for inviting me to share the burden imposed by thinking foremost about the responsibility of reading. To Lucy Fischer, whose lively exchange and engagement foreground for me the joy to be found at the core of critical work, my ongoing and heartfelt appreciation. To my outside reader, Gregory Goekjian, I am indebted in ways too legion to list, save his unrelenting standard of excellence, ever the benchmark towards which I strive. My eternal gratitude to two friends who know me better than I know myself, whose care and love are indeed boundless. To David Robinson, whose practical, down-to-earth advice gave me courage when it had fled furthest, my thanks for being so astute. To Stephen Sutherland, whose claim upon my heart, mind and ear is as no other, my thanks for being the dearest friend, mentor, and colleague anyone could ever hope to have. I dedicate this writing with love and gratitude to my children, Gillian, Alexander, and Nicole Glass, in memory of their grandfather, Dr. George B. Jerzy Glass. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1. Reading Scars.......................................................................................................... 8 1.1. First Cuts......................................................................................................................... 8 1.2. Reading Around the Scar.............................................................................................. 19 1.3. (Re)Reading a Kristevan Scar....................................................................................... 20 1.4. The Reading Scar of Roland Barthes............................................................................ 27 1.5. Auerbach’s Ansatzpunkt................................................................................................ 29 Chapter 2. “Unsettled Tonalities”: (Un)circumcision Crusades............................................. 31 Chapter 3. Facets of Circumcision in George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda.................................. 50 3.1. Reading For The Cut..................................................................................................... 52 3.2. The Temporal Cut......................................................................................................... 57 3.3. Family Jewels: Memorial Necklace and Memorable Ring........................................... 59 3.4. The Disposable Father .................................................................................................. 64 3.5. Lapidoth as Mohel ........................................................................................................ 67 3.6. Coda: Eliot and Cross ................................................................................................... 71 Chapter 4. The Passing Cut: Crossing Delancey; Europa, Europa; Drowning By Numbers 74 4.1. Crossing Delancey: Limning New York ...................................................................... 76 4.2. Europa, Europa: Beschneidung, Obrzezanie................................................................ 94 4.3. Drowning By Numbers: Circumcision as Barb(e)rous Desire.................................... 112 Chapter 5. Circumcision as the Cut of the Ear ..................................................................... 130 CONCLUSION: Last Cuts ........................................................................................................ 153 BIBLIOGRAPHY....................................................................................................................... 156 vii INTRODUCTION The physical act of circumcision in the flesh, which prepares the (male) Jew for sexual intercourse, is also that which prepares him for Divine intercourse. Daniel Boyarin, A Radical Jew, 127 And then the guest of honor, who has reached the age of five, in our village of Tudra, was brought into the synagogue, and they wrote on wooden boards the letters of the alphabet in honey, and they said to him, “Darling, lick.” / And the learning (ha-torah) in his mouth was sweet as the taste of honey .... Cited in Ivan Marcus, Rituals of Childhood, 23 In the epigraphs above, taken from commentary on a midrash and a history of medieval custom, Jewish ritual practice enfolds an occasion for textual interpretation. While keenly pressing upon the metaphorical, the acts described in these passages do not abandon but, rather, embrace the body as they envision engagement with the divine word. As initiatory rites, each seems to foreshadow an intermediary or bridging space wherein the participant will be made ready for performance as receptive reader. While textual images such as these provide impetus for the readings undertaken here, they inform but one half of the hermeneutical hinge to which I am heir. The other half is tempered by readings more closely associated with the exegetical tradition dependent upon more disembodying allegorizations identified with Pauline interpretation. In this writing, circumcision, both as rite and as metaphor, serves as the pintle joining the hinge. The pin loosely fastens together two Western religious and textual traditions--Judaism and 1 Christianity--both of which lay claim to the relevance of Abrahamic Biblical circumcision. 1 And, borrowing from an American Heritage Dictionary definition of “hinge,” this pin is to function precisely as “A point or circumstance on which subsequent events depend” (“Hinge,” def.3). In its role as hinge-pin, circumcision at once fixes the site of the readings and locates their point of departure. As act and as trope, the wound and scar of circumcision provide the frame through or from which one reads. There is a sense, then, in which circumcision may be seen to encompass its own hermenuetic. That is to say, at the very moment the incision releases the sign, the act of reading and the discovery of meaning begin. Years ago, I was scarred by reading a scene in a popular novel. The incisive moment was that in which a young Jewish athlete, living in second century B.C.E. Judea, was bludgeoned to death by his father for having reversed the sign of his circumcision.2 Incomprehensible was the idea that the presence or absence of a foreskin could be so fraught with meaning that it would provoke infanticide. Making sense of an act so foreign and antipathetic to all I knew, has