The Femininity Puzzle
Gender, Orientalism and the »Jewish Other«
Abstract
In the Hobsbawmian long 19th century, gender and processes of sexualization and feminization have been crucial in the construction of the »Jewish Other«. Ulrike Brunotte explores how these processes came about by addressing imaginative, aesthetic, and epistemological questions. She analyzes how literature, psychoanalysis and the performing arts traverse and react to the ambivalence of racialized stereotypes. The »femininity puzzle« presents itself in two ways: first in the role of effeminization of the male Jew in antisemitic discourse, and then in the transgressive forms of femininity connected to Jewish women, especially the allosemitic orientalization in the figure of the »Beautiful Jewess«.
Keywords
Gender; Freud; Beautiful Jewess; Salome; Allosemitism; Antisemitism; Effeminization; Sexology; Judaism; Society; Cultural History; Jewish Studies; Gender History; Gender Studies; European History; HistoryDOI
10.14361/9783839458211ISBN
9783839458211, 9783837658217, 9783839458211Publisher
transcript VerlagPublisher website
https://www.transcript-verlag.de/Publication date and place
Bielefeld, 2022Imprint
transcript VerlagSeries
Historische Geschlechterforschung, 6Classification
Judaism: life and practice
Gender studies, gender groups
Social and cultural history