Bestiarium Judaicum : Unnatural Histories of the Jews

Given the vast inventory of verbal and visual images of nonhuman animals (pigs, dogs, vermin, rodents, apes, etc.) disseminated for millennia to debase and bestialize Jews (the __Bestiarium Judaicum__), this work asks: What is at play when Jewish-identified writers employ such figures in their narratives and poems? Bringing together Jewish cultural studies (examining how Jews have negotiated Jew-Gentile difference) and critical animal studies (analyzing the functions served by asserting human-animal difference), this monograph focuses on the writings of primarily Germanophone authors, including Sigmund Freud, Heinrich Heine, Franz Kafka, Gertrud Kolmar, H. Leivick, Felix Salten, and Curt Siodmak. It ferrets out of their nonhuman-animal constructions their responses to the bestial answers upon which the Jewish and animal questions converged and by which varieties of the species “Jew” were depicted. Along with close textual analysis, it examines both personal and social contexts of each work. It explores how several writers attempted to subvert the identification of the Jew-animal by rendering indeterminable the human-animal “Great Divide” being played out on actual Jewish bodies and in Jewish-Gentile relations as well as how others endeavored to work-through identifications with those bestial figures differently: e.g., Salten’s __Bambi__ novels posed the question of “whether a doe is sometimes just a female deer,” while Freud, in his case studies, manifestly disaggregated Jews and animals even as he, perhaps, animalized the human. This work also critically engages new-historical (M. Schmidt), postcolonial (J. Butler and J. Hanssen), and continental philosophic (G. Agamben) appropriations of the conjunction of Jew and animal. Given the vast inventory of verbal and visual images of nonhuman animals—pigs, dogs, vermin, rodents, apes disseminated for millennia to debase, dehumanize, and justify the persecution of Jews, Bestiarium Judaicum asks: What is at play when Jewish-identified writers tell animal stories? Focusing on the nonhuman-animal constructions of primarily Germanophone authors, including Sigmund Freud, Heinrich Heine, Franz Kafka, and Gertrud Kolmar, Jay Geller expands his earlier examinations (On Freud’s Jewish Body: Mitigating Circumcisions and The Other Jewish Question: Identifying the Jew and Making Sense of Modernity) of how such writers drew upon representations of Jewish corporeality in order to work through their particular situations in Gentile modernity. From Heine’s ironic lizards to Kafka’s Red Peter and Siodmak’s Wolf Man, Bestiarium Judaicum brings together Jewish cultural studies and critical animal studies to ferret out these writers’ engagement with the bestial answers upon which the Jewish and animal questions converged and by which varieties of the species "Jew" were identified. Given the vast inventory of verbal and visual images of nonhuman animals - pigs, dogs, vermin, rodents, apes disseminated for millennia to debase, dehumanize, and justify the persecution of Jews, "Bestiarium Judaicum" asks: What is at play when Jewish-identified writers tell animal stories? Focusing on the nonhuman-animal constructions of primarily Germanophone authors, including Sigmund Freud, Heinrich Heine, Franz Kafka, and Gertrud Kolmar, Jay Geller expands his earlier examinations (On Freud's Jewish Body: Mitigating Circumcisions and The Other Jewish Question: Identifying the Jew and Making Sense of Modernity) of how such writers drew upon representations of Jewish corporeality in order to work through their particular situations in Gentile modernity. From Heine's ironic lizards to Kafka's Red Peter and Siodmak's Wolf Man, this book brings together Jewish cultural studies and critical animal studies to ferret out these writers' engagement with the bestial answers upon which the Jewish and animal questions converged and by which varieties of the species "Jew" were identified Title Page -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of Abbreviations -- Introduction. A Field Guide to the Bestiarium Judaicum -- 1. "O beastly Jews": A Brief History of an (Un)Natural History -- 2. Name that Varmint: From Gregor to Josephine -- 3. (Con)Versions of Cats and Mice and Other Mouse Traps -- 4. "If you could see her through my eyes . . .": Semitic Simiantics -- 5. Italian Lizards and Literary Politics I: Carrying the Torch and Getting Singed -- 6. Italian Lizards and Literary Politics II: Deer I Say It -- 7. The Raw and the Cooked in the Old/New World, or Talk to the Animals -- 8. Dogged by Destiny: "Lupus est homo homini, non homo, quom quails sit non navit"--Afterword. "It's clear as the light of day": The Shoah and the Human/Animal Great Divide -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- References -- Index Through close textual analysis, detailed historical contextualization, and critical animal theory Bestiarium Judaicum examines how and to what ends German-Jewish writers (including Freud, Heine, and Kafka) drew upon the vast inventory of verbal and visual images of nonhuman animals disseminated for millennia to bestialize, debase, and justify the persecution of Jews. Jay Geller. Includes Bibliographical References (pages 341-384) And Index.