Queer Theory and the Jewish Question by Daniel Boyarin, Daniel Itzkovitz, Ann Pellegrini Page A
Tags: Gay Studies, Literature & Fiction, nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Politics & Social Sciences, Social Sciences, Gay & Lesbian, Religion & Spirituality, Jewish, Judaism, Lesbian Studies, History & Criticism, Criticism & Theory, Regional & Cultural, Specific Demographics, Lesbian; Gay; Bisexual & Transgender eBooks, LGBT Studies, World Literature
Ads: Link
that is visible in all but exceptional cases (cases that are neither rare nor irrelevant, but that delineate the outlines rather than coloring the center of racial experience); so are the oppressions based on gen- der, age, size, physical handicap. Ethnic/cultural/religious oppressions such as
anti-Semitism are more analogous in that the stigmatized individual has at least notionally some discretion—although, importantly, it is never to be taken for granted how much—over other people’s knowledge of her or his membership in the group: one could “come out as” a Jew or Gypsy, in a het- erogeneous urbanized society, much more intelligibly than one could typical- ly “come out as,” say, female, Black, old, a wheelchair user, or fat. A (for in- stance) Jewish or Gypsy identity, and hence a Jewish or Gypsy secrecy or closet, would nonetheless differ again from the distinctive gay versions of these things in its clear ancestral linearity and answerability, in the roots (how- ever tortuous and ambivalent) of cultural identification through each indi- vidual’s originary culture of (at a minimum) the family.
Proust, in fact, insistently suggests as a sort of limit-case of one kind of coming out precisely the drama of Jewish self-identification, embodied in the Book of Esther and in Racine’s recasting of it that is quoted throughout the “Sodom and Gomorrah” books of A la recherche . The story of Esther seems a model for a certain simplified but highly potent imagining of coming out and its transformative potential. In concealing her Judaism from her husband, King Assuérus (Ahasuerus), Esther the Queen feels she is concealing, simply, her identity: “The King is to this day unaware who I am.” 10 Esther’s deception is made necessary by the powerful ideology that makes Assuérus categorize her people as unclean (“cette source impure” [1039]) and an abomination against nature (“Il nous croit en horreur à toute la nature” [174]). The sincere, rela- tively abstract Jew-hatred of this fuddled but omnipotent king undergoes con- stant stimulation from the grandiose cynicism of his advisor Aman (Haman), who dreams of an entire planet exemplarily cleansed of the perverse element.
I want it said one day in awestruck centuries:
“There once used to be Jews, there was an insolent race; widespread, they used to cover the whole face of the earth; a single one dared draw on himself the wrath of Aman, at once they disappeared, every one, from the earth.”
(476–80)
The king acquiesces in Aman’s genocidal plot, and Esther is told by her cousin, guardian, and Jewish conscience Mardochée (Mordecai) that the time for her revelation has come; at this moment the particular operation of sus- pense around her would be recognizable to any gay person who has inched to- ward coming out to homophobic parents. “And if I perish, I perish,” she says in the Bible (Esther 4:16). That the avowal of her secret identity will have an immense potency is clear, is the premise of the story. All that remains to be
seen is whether under its explosive pressure the king’s “political” animus against her kind will demolish his “personal” love for her, or vice versa: will he declare her as good as, or better, dead? Or will he soon be found at a neigh- borhood bookstore, hoping not to be recognized by the salesperson who is ringing up his copy of Loving Someone Jewish?
The biblical story and Racinian play, bearable to read in their balance of the holocaustal with the intimate only because one knows how the story will end, 11 are enactments of a particular dream or fantasy of coming out. Esther’s eloquence, in the event, is resisted by only five lines of her husband’s demur- ral or shock: essentially at the instant she names herself, both her ruler and Aman see that the anti-Semites are lost (“ AMAN, tout bas : Je tremble” [1033]). Revelation of identity in the space of intimate love effortlessly over- turns an
anti-Semitism are more analogous in that the stigmatized individual has at least notionally some discretion—although, importantly, it is never to be taken for granted how much—over other people’s knowledge of her or his membership in the group: one could “come out as” a Jew or Gypsy, in a het- erogeneous urbanized society, much more intelligibly than one could typical- ly “come out as,” say, female, Black, old, a wheelchair user, or fat. A (for in- stance) Jewish or Gypsy identity, and hence a Jewish or Gypsy secrecy or closet, would nonetheless differ again from the distinctive gay versions of these things in its clear ancestral linearity and answerability, in the roots (how- ever tortuous and ambivalent) of cultural identification through each indi- vidual’s originary culture of (at a minimum) the family.
Proust, in fact, insistently suggests as a sort of limit-case of one kind of coming out precisely the drama of Jewish self-identification, embodied in the Book of Esther and in Racine’s recasting of it that is quoted throughout the “Sodom and Gomorrah” books of A la recherche . The story of Esther seems a model for a certain simplified but highly potent imagining of coming out and its transformative potential. In concealing her Judaism from her husband, King Assuérus (Ahasuerus), Esther the Queen feels she is concealing, simply, her identity: “The King is to this day unaware who I am.” 10 Esther’s deception is made necessary by the powerful ideology that makes Assuérus categorize her people as unclean (“cette source impure” [1039]) and an abomination against nature (“Il nous croit en horreur à toute la nature” [174]). The sincere, rela- tively abstract Jew-hatred of this fuddled but omnipotent king undergoes con- stant stimulation from the grandiose cynicism of his advisor Aman (Haman), who dreams of an entire planet exemplarily cleansed of the perverse element.
I want it said one day in awestruck centuries:
“There once used to be Jews, there was an insolent race; widespread, they used to cover the whole face of the earth; a single one dared draw on himself the wrath of Aman, at once they disappeared, every one, from the earth.”
(476–80)
The king acquiesces in Aman’s genocidal plot, and Esther is told by her cousin, guardian, and Jewish conscience Mardochée (Mordecai) that the time for her revelation has come; at this moment the particular operation of sus- pense around her would be recognizable to any gay person who has inched to- ward coming out to homophobic parents. “And if I perish, I perish,” she says in the Bible (Esther 4:16). That the avowal of her secret identity will have an immense potency is clear, is the premise of the story. All that remains to be
seen is whether under its explosive pressure the king’s “political” animus against her kind will demolish his “personal” love for her, or vice versa: will he declare her as good as, or better, dead? Or will he soon be found at a neigh- borhood bookstore, hoping not to be recognized by the salesperson who is ringing up his copy of Loving Someone Jewish?
The biblical story and Racinian play, bearable to read in their balance of the holocaustal with the intimate only because one knows how the story will end, 11 are enactments of a particular dream or fantasy of coming out. Esther’s eloquence, in the event, is resisted by only five lines of her husband’s demur- ral or shock: essentially at the instant she names herself, both her ruler and Aman see that the anti-Semites are lost (“ AMAN, tout bas : Je tremble” [1033]). Revelation of identity in the space of intimate love effortlessly over- turns an
Similar Books
