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This 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.
This book explores the construction of the Jew's physical and
ontological body in Russian culture as represented in literature,
fi lm, and non-literary texts from the 1880s to the present. With
the rise of the dominance of biological and racialist discourse in
the 1880s, the depiction of Jewish characters in Russian literary
and cultural productions underwent a signifi cant change, as these
cultural practices recast the Jew not only as an archetypal
"exotic" and religious or class Other (as in Romanticism and
realist writing), but as a biological Other whose acts, deeds, and
thoughts were determined by racial differences. This Jew allegedly
had physical and psychological characteristics that were
genetically determined and that could not be changed by education,
acculturation, conversion to Christianity, or change of social
status. This stereotype has become a stable archetype that
continues to operate in contemporary Russian society and culture.
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