Description
Book SynopsisThis book analyzes the ways in which literary works and cultural discourses employ the construct of the Jew's body in relation to the material world in order either to establish and reinforce, or to subvert and challenge, dominant cultural norms and stereotypes. It examines the use of physical characteristics, embodied practices, tacit knowledge and senses to define the body taxonomically as normative, different, abject or mimetically desired. Starting from the works of Gogol and Dostoevsky through to contemporary Russian-Jewish women's writing, the book argues that materiality also embodies fictional constructions that should be approached as a culture-specific material-semiotic interface.
Trade Review“This book rewards the reader as a result of the breadth of discussion of a specific domain, and the number of vectors that Mondry succeeds in applying in her research. This is complemented by the depth of discussion, represented by a layered approach that employs tools from literary theory, psychoanalysis, museum studies, pathology, and sociology, to name a few of the disciplines brought to bear on the topic at hand. It is an extremely erudite study that, nonetheless, engages the reader by its approach, making it an ideal acquisition for any academic library.”
— John Cook, University of Melbourne, Australian Slavonic and East European Studies
Table of Contents
- A note on transliteration
- List of illustrations
- Introduction
- Part One: The Other Body and Spaces for Matter
- Chapter One. Locating historically the Jew's body between display and transformation
- Chapter Two. The power of meat: defining ethnicity and masculinity in Gogol
- Chapter Three. Valued bodies and spaces: cross-religious encounters in Dostoevsky
- Chapter Four. Intimate spaces: the modern Jewess in the boudoir in Chekhov and Bely
- Chapter Five. Animal advocacy and ritual murder trials
- Chapter Six. Aphids and other undesirables: the predatory Jew versus Soviet art
- Chapter Seven. Abject bodies: tactility, dissection, and body rites in postmodernist fiction
- Part Two: Re/active Embodiments and a Sense of Things
- Chapter Eight. Women writers inventing exotic origins
- Chapter Nine. Strange ancestors in the house and in the basement
- Chapter Ten. On feeding the family: constructing Jewishness through nurture
- Chapter Eleven. Materiality of smell and constructs of embodied memory
- Chapter Twelve. "An edible chronotope": in search of Jewish heritage food
- Conclusion: The Power of Bodies and Senses that Matter
- Bibliography
- Index
