Orientalism, Gender, and the Jews

Book description

Originating in the collaboration of the international Research Network “Gender in Antisemitism, Orientalism and Occidentalism” (RENGOO), this collection of essays proposes to intervene in current debates about historical constructions of Jewish identity in relation to colonialism and Orientalism. The network‌’s collaborative research addresses imaginative and aesthetic rather than sociological questions with particular focus on the function of gender and sexuality in literary, scholarly and artistic transformations of Orientalist images. RENGOO’s first publication explores the ways in which stereotypes of the external and internal Other intertwine. With its interrogation of the roles assumed in this interplay by gender, processes of sexualization, and aesthetic formations, the volume suggests new directions to the interdisciplinary study of gender, antisemitism, and Orientalism.

Table of contents

  1. Europäisch-jüdische Studien Beiträge
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Table of Contents
  5. Orientalism, Gender, and the Jews - Literary and Artistic Transformations of European National Discourses
    1. Context
    2. Orientalism, Germany, and the Jews
    3. Jewish Self-Orientalization
    4. Gender, Sexuality, and Orientalism
    5. Instead of a Conclusion: Further Perspectives
  6. Asians in Europe - Reading German-Jewish History through a Postcolonial Lens
    1. German Orientalism
    2. Studying Jews and Muslims: Historical Roots and Institutional Frameworks
    3. The Gender Dimension
    4. Jews and Orientalism
    5. Conclusions
  7. Prussians, Jews, Egyptians? - Berlin Jewish Salonières around 1800 and Their Guests. Discursive Constructions of Equality and Otherness
    1. Jewish Women in Berlin around 1800 and their “Salons”
    2. Salon Letters and “Salon Tone”
    3. Conversion and (No) Scandal in 1799
    4. “A Cognition of Jewishness” – Salon Guests and the Jewish Body
    5. From Praising the Settee to the “Judensofa”
    6. “This is not Jew-Hatred yet.” Reactions of the Salon Women
    7. Conclusion
  8. “Good to Think” - (Re)Conceptualizing German-Jewish Orientalism
    1. Orientalization as a Tool for Negotiating the Emancipation of Women and Jews in Fanny Lewald’s Novel Jenny (1843)
    2. (Re)Conceptualizing German-Jewish Orientalism
  9. Ephraim Moses Lilien - The Figure of the “Beautiful Jewess,” the Orient, the Bible, and Zionism
    1. Photography and Graphic Art – Authentication and Artistic Design
    2. (Cultural) Zionism and the “Beautiful Jewess” Figure
    3. Horace Vernet: Revitalizing the Bible or the New Religious Painting of Orientalism
  10. Zionism, Colonialism, and the German Empire - Herzl’s Gloves and Mbwapwa’s Umbrella
    1. Colonial Shibboleths
    2. The Ambiguity of Mbwapwa’s Umbrella
    3. The Ambivalence of Herzl’s Gloves
    4. Gloves Off! – Showing their Hands
  11. Kafka’s “Schakale und Araber” and the Question of Genre - Gleichnis, Tiergeschichte, or dialektisches Bild?
    1. What Species of Gattung?
    2. A Ménagerie à trois
    3. A Jackal of All Trades
    4. From Animadversions to Animal Versions
  12. Desire, Excess, and Integration - Orientalist Fantasies, Moral Sentiments, and the Place of Jews in German Society as Portrayed in Films of the Weimar Republic
    1. The Gaze of the Jewess: Eros and Death in Paul Wegener’s Film Der Golem (1920)
      1. Florian
      2. Miriam
      3. The Golem
      4. Order and Orientalism
    2. The Gaze of the Archduchess: Desire and Tradition in E. A. Dupont’s Film Das alte Gesetz (1923)
      1. Journey to Vienna
      2. Erotic Desire
      3. Longing, Shame, and Reconciliation
    3. Difference and Dual Integration or Der Golemversus Das alte Gesetz
      1. Cinema as Moral Laboratory
  13. Jewish Drag - The Ostjude as Anti-Zionist Hero in Arnold Zweig’s De Vriendt kehrt heim
    1. Zionism, Gender, and Sexuality
    2. Border Crossings: Ostjuden, Orientals, and the Return to Origins
    3. The Sacrifice of Isaac: Envisioning a Jewish–Arab Coalition
  14. Re-Orientalizing the Jew - Zionist and Contemporary Israeli Masculinities
    1. New Models, Old Patterns
    2. The Modern Discourse on Jewish Sexuality, Effeminacy, and Orientalism
    3. From Jewish to Israeli Masculinity
    4. The Continued Evolution of Jewish-Israeli Masculinity
  15. “All Jews are womanly, but no women are Jews.” - The “Femininity” Game of Deception: Female Jew, femme fatale Orientale, and belle Juive
    1. Jewish Cultural Studies, Feminism, and Queer Theory
    2. Between the Poles of Oriental Femininity and Jewishness: the “Beautiful Jewess”
    3. Salome: femme fatale Orientale or belle Juive?
    4. Oscar Wilde’s and Maud Allan’s Salome as aFigure of the Third
    5. The Psychoanalytical Theory of Femininity and the Omission of the “Jewish female” from Early Scholarly Discourse
    6. The Trace of Repression of the Jewish Woman in Freud’s Psychoanalysis
    7. Judith or the Taboo of Virginity
  16. Between Orientalization and Self-Orientalization - Remarks on the Image of the “Beautiful Jewess” in Nineteenth-and Early-Twentieth-Century European Literature
    1. Images of Jewish Women
    2. Orientalization
    3. Self-Orientalization
    4. Conclusion
  17. To See or Not to See - The Gaze and Gender in the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Cultures
    1. Religion and Gender Order
    2. Religion and Image
  18. Veils in Action - The “Oriental Other” and Its Performative Deconstruction in Modern Fashion and Art
    1. In-between: The Performativity of Vestimentary Signs
    2. Veiling/Unveiling: Dance and Design around 1900
    3. Hijabising: Contemporary Veil Art and Performance
    4. List of illustrations and acknowledgements
  19. Embodied Protest - Nakedness and the Partition of Gazes
    1. Introduction
    2. “My body belongs to me”
    3. Naked Protest and Critique of Islam
    4. Travelling Images
    5. Conclusions
  20. Works Cited
    1. Archival Materials
    2. Films
    3. Printed and Internet Sources
  21. List of Contributors
  22. Index

Product information

  • Title: Orientalism, Gender, and the Jews
  • Author(s): Ulrike Brunotte, Anna-Dorothea Ludewig, Axel Stähler
  • Release date: December 2014
  • Publisher(s): De Gruyter Oldenbourg
  • ISBN: 9783110395532