Review: Épater L'Embourgeoisement: Freud, Gender, and the (De)colonized Psyche
Author(s): Daniel Boyarin
Source: Diacritics, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Spring, 1994), pp. 16-41
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/465153
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EPATER
L 'EMBOURGEOISEM
FREUD,
GENDER,
AND
THE
PSYCHE
(DE)COLONIZED
DANIELBOYARIN
John Murray Cuddihy. THE ORDEAL OF CIVILITY: FREUD, MARX, LEVISTRAUSSAND THEJEWISHSTRUGGLEWITHMODERNITY.1974. Boston:
Beacon, 1987.
Bram Dijkstra. IDOLS OF PERVERSITY:FANTASIES OF FEMININEEVIL IN
FIN-DE-SIECLE CULTURE. New York: Oxford UP, 1986.
Jay Geller. "'A GLANCEAT THE NOSE': FREUD'S INSCRIPTIONOF JEWISH
DIFFERENCE." American Imago 49.4 (1992): 427-44.
"(G)NOS(E)OLOGY:THECULTURALCONSTRUCTIONOFTHEOTHER."
People of the Body: Jews andJudaismfroman EmbodiedPerspective.Ed. Howard
Eilberg-Schwartz. Albany: SUNYP, 1992. 243-82.
Sander L. Gilman. FREUD, RACE, AND GENDER. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993.
Estelle Roith. THERIDDLEOF FREUD:JEWISHINFLUENCESON HIS THEORY
OF FEMALE SEXUALITY. London: Tavistock, 1987.
The truly psychotic, rather than merely neurotic, idealization of a supremely
evolved white male and the concomitant assumption that somehow all others
were "degenerate" had, as Freud was writing [Civilization and Its Discontents], begun to reap its most evil harvest. Even the most casual reader of
the theoretical disquisitions of the later nineteenth-century exponents of the
science of man must at once perceive the intimate correlation between their
evolutionist conclusions and the scientific justification of patterns of "inherent" superiority and inferiority in the relations between the sexes, various
races, and the different classes in society.
-Bram Dijkstra, Idols of Perversity
I wish to thank Jonathan Culler, Howard Eilberg-Schwartz,Martin Jay, Donald Pease, and
Kalpana Seshadri-Crooksfor reading early versions of this essay and making very important
comments. Researchfor thispaper has been carried out with a grantfrom theMemorialFoundationfor Jewish Culture.
diacritics / spring 1994
diacritics 24.1: 17-41
17
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Is Love goyim naches? Cuddihyand Roith
Long live war. Long live love. Let Sorrow be Banishedfrom the Earth.
-Giuseppe Verdi, TheSicilian Vespers
John MurrayCuddihy's The Ordeal of Civility inauguratedthe discourse this essay
continues,a discoursethatwe might call culturalstudiesin Freud. The book presentsthe
mostcuriouscombinationimaginableof brilliantinsightintothemodemJewishsituation
andoffensive crudityin its characterizationof traditionalJudaism. It is not anti-Semitic
(as I thoughton my first reading)but ratherthoroughlyneocolonialist. It grows out of a
grudgingbutpalpableadorationof Protestantismandcapitalistimperialismandforms, in
large part,an apology for them. We see where Cuddihystands when he writes of all
postcolonial peoples, "The values and life-style of the colonial power-or, for the
indigenousminoritieswithin a more generalcore culture,the meaningsandbeliefs of the
'oppressivemajority'-constitute a status-woundto thenormalnarcissismof peoples and
nations. The defense (apologia) against this 'assault' we call ideology" [171]. "Ideology," mirabiledictu,is producednot by the oppressor(no scarequotesfor me) to justify
andnaturalizeoppressionbut by the oppressedin bad faithto justify andnaturalizetheir
stubbornand atavisticresistanceto an oppressivemodernity. Cuddihyfully accepts the
Durkheimiannotion that there are superior and inferior religions and cultures. Like
Parsons, he therefore considers the structuralist-Levi-Straussian--(and presumably
poststructuralist)insistence on the commensuratevalue of all human cultures as a
"regression"[160]. It is, then, almost beside the point thatJudaismis one of the inferior
ones. This is Orientalismin the most precise sense of the word.
Take the following case of Cuddihiananalysis. In 1908 Freudwrote a letterto Karl
Abrahamin which he impartsthathe had been in Berlinfor twenty-fourhoursand been
unableto see him andwishes him not to misunderstandthis as a sign of disfavor. Cuddihy
glosses thispassage: "tomakeoneself accountableforone's appearancesbeforestrangers
is the first step to social modernization"[99]. Cuddihyapparentlyfinds it impossible to
imaginethatan EasternEuropeanJew (which he alleges Freudto have been) would have
had"native"traditionsof thoughtfulnessto drawon. The GalicianJew, as a memberof
a "primitive"culture,couldnotpossibly have caredthatanassociatemighthave been hurt
througha misunderstanding.WhatCuddihyseems unableto imagineis thatthe conflict
is notbetweentheuncivil andthe civil butbetweenalternativeanddifferentcivilities, that
the culturesof the "East"and the past maintainedtheir own civilities. At the risk of
exaggerationor distortion(and perhapsoffense), I would suggest that this is a peculiar
consequence of the sociological (as opposed to anthropological)stance. Classical
ethnographymay have served the colonialist project de facto, but classical sociology
seems best poised to justify it de jure, to the extent that it is still engaged in the
Durkheimian,Weberian,Parsonianprojectof rankingcultures. It is not surprising,then,
thatParsonsconsidersLevi-Straussa "regression."
The Orientalistgaze at Jews (and Others)thatmarksCuddihy'swork is delineated
in a muchmoresignificantway when he uses it to reduceJewish socialism to a response
to an innerJewish social problem:
German-Jewishsocialism, in other words, in its deep-lyingmotivationnexus is
a sumptuarysocialism. It is tailor-madefor a recently decolonized "new
nation" indigenous to the West whose now-dispersed "nationals"have had
neithertimenor opportunityto internalizethatsystemof informalrestraintswe
are calling theProtestantEtiquette.Protestantinteriorityand internalizationin the tripleform of an ethic, an esthetic, and an etiquette-was thefunctional
modernizingequivalentof what,for CatholicsandJews in theMiddleAges, had
18
been a formally institutionalized set of legal restrictions on conspicuous
consumption and behavior. (Jewry was in the nineteenth century exiting from
its Middle Ages.) Feudal sumptuary laws-external constraints-took the
modernizing form of internal restraints of moderation on consumption, trade,
and commercial practices. [5]
Aside fromrevealinghis positionvis-a-vis socialism here,Cuddihymanifestsonce more
the bizarrecombinationof the acumenthatmakeshis book so powerfulandthe grotesque
appreciationof Germanbourgeoisculturethatmakes it so repulsive(to me). On the one
hand,it marksperhapsthe first time thatthe Jews of modem centralEuropewere seen as
a recentlydecolonizedpeople, an analogythathas provenvery fruitfulindeed. Buton the
otherhand,readcarefully,it can be seen to encode the following propositions:"Protestant
interiority and intemalization"-read "faith"-was the functional equivalent of the
medieval sumptuarylaws of both Jews and Catholics-read "works."Cuddihy's two
intellectualheroesareTalcottParsons,whom Cuddihyhimself identifies"as an intellectual descendant of Calvin" [9], and Max Weber, who was certainly an intellectual
descendant of Luther!1I would suggest that the distinction between "ascribed"and
"achieved"statusuponwhich so muchof Parsons'stheoriesarebasedis a recodingof the
distinctionbetween the Pauline descent accordingto the flesh and descent accordingto
the spirit. This ratherputs Cuddihyhimself, as I imaginehe would freely admit,into the
ambivalentsituationof the (de)colonizedsubjectwho perceiveshimself throughthe eyes
of the colonizer, and the "ordealof civility" is, at least in part,his own. One can be an
Orientalistwith respectto one's own past as well.
The sumptuarylaws, atleast in theirmedievalCatholic(thatis, state-ly)version,were
laws that enforcedclass distinctionsby restrictingwhat could be worn by the members
of differentsocioeconomic groups. Ratherthan seeing "Jewishsocialism" as a protest
against the capitalismthatin fact expandedand exploited such economic gaps, Cuddihy
sees it as the Jewish response to the Jews' inability to internalizeand make instinctive
those formsof "internalrestraintsof moderationon consumption,trade,andcommercial
practices"that characterizedsuch Protestantcapitalistsas, presumably,Henry Ford or
John D. Rockefeller.2Is Cuddihyjoking when he writes, "Not having undergonein his
[Marx's] upbringingthe blessings of a properly installed ProtestantEthic, he would
encounterandexperiencethe informalsumptuarylegislationof a ProtestantEtiquetteas
a heteronomoustyranny"[128-29]?3 And this ridiculouscommentis made with respect
to an early articleof Marx's protestingactivities of the Prussiancensors. What would
count as tyrannyon Cuddihy'saccount? Marxisma la Cuddihyis just anothermode of
Jewish embourgeoisement!As he explicitly remarks,"Thesocialist ideology thatcomes
out of GermanJewry,from Marxto the young WalterLippmann,is rootedin the 'Jewish
question'which,for GermanJewrygenerallyhas alwaysturnedon the matterof thepublic
1. On Weber'sProtestantsociology ofJudaism,seeAbraham[passim, and especially 12n33].
For Weberon theplace of Catholics in Protestantsociety, see passim, esp. 21, andfor Weberon
the Kulturkampf61-63. This importantbook was broughtto my attentionby MartinJay.
2. I had originally writtenhere I. G. Farben, because I think it makes the example much
sharper,butrealizingthepotentialfor misunderstandingdecidedto weakenthe rhetoric. I am not,
of course, suggesting any complicity between Cuddihy's discourse-much less Cuddihy-and
genocide.
3. My colleague MartinJay suggests an ironic reading here, but it seems to me that such a
reading would denude Cuddihy'sstatementof any meaning. If Cuddihythinksthat the Prussian
censorshipwas tyranny,then what is thepoint of this ironic statement?And if he doesn't, then the
statementis not ironic. Either way, it seems hard to escape the conclusion,particularlygiven the
whole context, that Cuddihy takes seriously his description of the "ProtestantEtiquette" as
"informalsumptuarylegislation."
diacritics / spring 1994
19
misbehaviorof the Jews of EasternEurope"[5].4 Now it is interestingthat in Jewish
traditionthereweresumptuarylaws thatrestrictedthe rich in theirconspicuousconsumption at weddings, funerals,and so forth, in orderto renderthe differencesbetween the
classes less obnoxious. I am disturbednot by the claim thatJewishsocialism is somehow
a continuationof these sumptuarylaws but ratherby the implicationthat Protestantism
achieved the same ends withoutlegislation,while Jews had to be legalists aboutit. This
Weberianstance on Judaismand Christianityseems rathera bizarreposition to take for
a man who declares himself glad to be a Catholic, and it is almost emblematic of the
argumentof the entire book with its consistent distinctionbetween being "civil" and
merely appearingso. AdaptingSartre,one could sum up Cuddihy'sargumentas being
anotherreflex of the anxious notion held by non-Jews that"behind[the Jew's] feigned
adaptability,thereis concealed a deliberateandconscious attachmentto the traditionsof
his race"[Sartre100; see Abraham24-25].
The point is thatfor Cuddihythe "JewishQuestion"is entirelya questionfor Jews.
"The intelligentsia 'explains,' 'excuses,' and 'accounts' for the otherwise offensive
behaviorof its people. All the 'moves' made in the long publicdiscussion of the Jewish
Emancipationproblematicconstitute,in the case of the detraditionalizedintellectuals,an
apologetic strategy"[Cuddihy 6]. Again, unpacking this claim yields the following
proposition:Jews arenot a problemfor Europe,nor is Europea problemfor Jews. Only
Jews are a problemfor Jews.5 The entireproblemof emancipationis an internalJewish
one of modernization.Anti-Semitismis totally irrelevant,if it exists at all:
Thefact thatJews in the Westare a decolonized and modernizingpeople, an
"underdevelopedpeople" traumatized-like all underdevelopedcountries-by
contactwiththe moremodernizedand hence "higher"nationsof the Westgoes
unrecognizedfor several reasons. First, because they have been a colony
internal to the West; second, because decolonization has been gradual and
continuous;third, because of the democratic mannersof the West (only Max
Webercalled themapariahpeople, i.e., a rituallysegregatedguestpeople); and
fourth,becausethemodernizationcollision has beenpoliticizedandtheologized
by the charge of "anti-Semitism"(as, in noncontiguousWesterncolonies, the
charge of "imperialism"effectivelyobscures the real natureof the collisionnamely,betweenmodernizingand nonmodernizedpeoples). [47]
Here is the whole story of Cuddihy'sbook: stunninginsighton the one hand-the Jews
as colonized andEmancipationas decolonization;on theotherhand,themost malodorous
opinions imaginableaboutJews and othercolonized peoples: (1) Thereis praisefor the
"democraticmannersof the West" for its reticence in not calling a spade a spade. One
might be temptedto readCuddihyhere in an ironic fashion, since, as MartinJay points
out to me, he, an Irish Catholic,ought to have resentedEnglish colonial controland its
civilizing mission,buthow, then,shallwe readhis claim thatAnnaO.'s reticencebecause
"she wantedto be polite"is "a far cry from being polite" [42], somethingclearly only a
truly civilized person (Protestant)is capable of? Bertha Pappenheim(Anna O.), like
Freud in the Abrahamincident, desires only to appear polite. She and he could not
possibly be sincerely motivatedhere, as the Protestantwould be by her "interiorityand
4. Cuddihyhimselfseems finally (after more than 150 pages) to have been embarrassedby
the vulgarityof his analysis. He writes, "beginningwithparticularistshame,it [Marxism]becomes
in the end universalistand motivatedby genuinepassion for justice" [161n].
5. It is certainlyrevealing thatperhaps the onlypart of Marx of which Cuddihyapprovesis
On the Jewish Question, of which he writes, "the anti-philo-Semitismof Marx's essay 'On the
Jewish Question'will be misread,whenit appears in 1844, as unadulteratedanti-Semitism"[150].
20
internalization."6(2) Cuddihy analyzes the "charge"of anti-Semitism(he calls it the
chargeof "anti-Semitism")as a smokescreento hide the realdeficiencies of the Jews;and,
similarly, (3) presents a parallel"demystification"of the charge of imperialism. Even
more thanhe intendsto, Cuddihydemonstrates-in spite of his being at some profound
level philo-Semitic7-how intimatelyrelatedthe discourse of anti-Semitismis to other
discoursesof colonialism.8
Freud'sbehaviorin theAbrahamcase is accountedforby Cuddihyas a kindof works
righteousness,and a hypocriticalone at that, reproducingthe precise terms of Weber's
critiqueof "Ancient"Judaism. Cuddihy'sChristianbias is revealedin quite traditional
theologicaltermsas well, when, for example,he ends up revivingthe patristicchargesof
carnalityagainstthe Jews:
The late Susan Taubesnoted that "theOld Testamenthas had the benefitof the
most sublime spiritualizationthroughcenturies of Christian interpretation."
Bourgeois-Christianlove is just such a "spiritualization"of coarse sexuality.
Thisliteral level is theunspirituallevel, it is the coarse, "given"Old Testament.
It is like the id, understood"carnally"(camaliter);but, as a "preparation"for
the New Testament,it is read "spiritually"(spiritualiter). [74]
This analysis provides the basic term for Cuddihy's account of Freud's theories of
sexuality which are summedup by his outrageousstatement:"the id of the 'Yid' is hid
underthe lid of Westerndecorum(the 'superego')"[29]. Hid underthe lid of this droll
formulationis a doubly Orientalistfantasy:the Jew as OrientalandEasternEuropeitself
as the Orient,the site of Draculaandhis brethren:"Draculamay not officially have been
one of those horridinbredJews everyonewas worryingaboutat the time Stokerwrotehis
novel, but he came close, for he was very emphaticallyEasternEuropean,andhence, like
du Maurier's'filthy black Hebrew', Svengali (Trilby[du Maurier],52), a creaturewho
hadcrawled'out of the mysteriousEast!The poisonousEast-birthplace andhome of an
ill wind that blows nobody good"' [Dijkstra343; see also 335].9
All of the theoreticalproblems of Cuddihy's bizarrely reified notions of Eastern
EuropeanJewish life show up in the following crucialthesis, in which Jews, like women,
manageto be both crude animals and "puritans"at one and the same time:
6. CuddihywritesadoringlyofDietrichBonhoeffer: "Thereis unbearablepathosin thefigure
of Pastor Bonhoefferas he prepares to die: 'Called to conducthis last worshipservice in prison
shortly before his execution,' Peter Berger writes,Bonhoeffer 'held back,for he did not want to
offendhis neighbor,a Soviet officer"' [238]. Thisis referredto by Cuddihyas the "ritesof love, "
butBertha Pappenheim'sdisinclinationto offendherfamily or Freud's to hurt thefeelings of his
friend is bad faith!
7. For the connection between Weberianphilo-Semitismand anti-Semitism,two seemingly
opposite discourses, see Abraham[x-xi].
8. As withMarxism,Cuddihysomewhatamelioratesthisposition more thana hundredpages
later, whenhe manages to write, "Needlessto say, colonialism, like anti-Semitism,has workedits
ugly will on defenseless peoples" [178]. His value system remains unchanged, however. For
Cuddihy,modernizationis an unmitigatedgood, and theproblems ofpostcolonialpeople wouldbe
exactly the same with or withoutthe colonial history.
9. How delicious the irony that the "scientists"invokedby Stokerto confirmthe criminality
of the visage of Dracula the crypto-Jew[Dijkstra 343], namely, Lombroso and Nordau, were
themselvesJews, a fact discreetly left unmentionedby Dijkstra. This irony, however, though
delicious, was not rare. To the extent that Dijkstra's argument that Nazism was spawned by
scientificized misogyny is convincing-and, by and large, it does convince me-Nordau and
Lombrosoare unwittingauthorsof their ownpeople's genocide (as was, certainlyand explicitly,
Weininger). The irony becomes less and less palatable.
diacritics / spring 1994
21
Freudpaid scant attentionto sexualforeplay. It eithermaneuveredthepartners
toward orgasm, or it was perversion. To Freud's shtetl puritanism,forepleasure-like courtship,essentially,or courtesy-was aformofroundaboutness,
of euphemism. To play with sexual stimulation, to postpone the intense
endpleasure of orgasm, was a form of goyim naches, of games goyim play,
endlesslyrefiningthemselves.Freudhada choice here. If therulesof thatgame
genuinelytransformedtheold coarse "fuck"intosomething"rareandstrange,"
then he, Freud was missing out on something. "They" were experiencing
somethinghe wasn't. He, most of the time, bore a grudge against their claim.
[70]
If there were any evidence for this as Freud's affect-that is, that foreplay is "goyim
naches"-then one would simply conclude that Freudwas delusional. (If anything,it
seems thatthe Freudof the "ThreeEssays"considersthe impulseto endless foreplayone
of those instinctualdelights given up-not discovered-in the civilizing process. My
reasoningis thatif the"perversions"area regressionto infantilesexualityandif ontogeny
recapitulatesphylogeny,thenit would follow thatprimitivesaremoreperverse.) Is there
any evidence whateverthatAustrianGentilesengagedin moreor differentforeplaythan
Galician Jews did? Has Cuddihymade any attemptto learn anythingat all about the
prescriptionsfor foreplaythatJewishcultureinsists on, going backto the Talmud?10The
term "goyim naches"refersto violent physical activity, such as dueling or wars, not to
foreplay. I am preparedto grant Cuddihy that "goyim"-his vulgarism-invented
romanticandcourtlylove, essentiallymisogynistformations,"butnot thatthey invented
foreplay. Thus,just for example,we find the following bit of talmudicadvice to wivesa fatheris speakingto his daughter:"Whenhe takesthe pearlin one handand the furnace
in the other,show him the pearlandnot the furnace,untilyou [pl.] aresuffering,andthen
show it to him,"which Rashiforthrightlyglosses: "Whenyour husbandis caressingyou
to get excited for intercourse,andhe holds yourbreastin one hand,andyourvulva in the
other,give him access to yourbreast,in orderthathis passionwill be great,andnot quickly
to your vulva, in order that his passion and affection will be great, and he will feel
suffering, and then give him access to it" [BabylonianTalmud Shabbath140b]. It is
interestingto note the sexist shift in the axis of the discoursefromthe Talmudto Rashiin the formerthe desire is mutual,in the latteronly the husband'sis relevant-but it is
certainthatneithertheTalmudnorthis FrenchJewishcontemporaryof courtlyloverswas
ignorantor disdainfulof foreplayor even of its "sweetsuffering"[forotherrelevanttexts,
see Boyarin, Carnal Israel 122-25]. To be sure, courtly love with its conventions
(honoredin thebreach,perhaps?)of chasteadulterywouldhaveseemedsilly andimmoral
to both sets of Jews, as romanticnotions of "love at first sight" did to their nineteenthcenturydescendants. The problem,once more, is not anti-Semitismbut the uncritical
assertion of the superiorityof Western bourgeois civilization over that of the "primitives"-whoever those primitives might be and particularlyin the overvaluation of
"romantic love." There is something truly grotesque in Cuddihy's claim that "In
bourgeois-Westernlovemaking,foreplay-'love play'-foreshortens theritualof courtly
love into the space-timerequirementsof the bourgeoisbedroom,"fromwhich it follows,
accordingto him, that if "Freudand his psychoanalyticalheirs make short shrift of the
10. The Talmudeven explicitlypermits oral and anal intercourse between husbands and
wives, acts thatFreud wouldpresumablyregard as "perversions," operatingas he was, inpart at
least, on theteleological assumptionsaboutsexualitythatwerecurrentin his day. For the talmudic
materialand its ambivalencessee DanielBoyarin, CarnalIsrael:ReadingSex in TalmudicCulture
[109-22].
11. SeeBloch,MedievalMisogynyandtheInventionof WesternRomanticLove. See also
Dijkstra[188] on the virulentmisogynyof late nineteenth-centuryrenditionsof "chivalry."
22
'rules' of courtly love," and Judaismhas no patience for these rules either, then this
adequatelyexplainsanallegedFreudiandisdainforforeplay[72]! Infact,I wouldsuggest
that there is much in bourgeois (that is, post-Reformation)marriage(as opposed to its
medieval Christianpredecessors)thatis similarto, andmaybe even partlydependenton,
talmudicmarriageideology as lived in medieval and early modem Judaism,including
especially the valuation of foreplay, a practice entirely unlike the pseudocourtesiesof
courtly love.
This thesis of Cuddihy'shas had an afterlife in a work that goes even furtherin its
valorizationof romanticandcourtlylove andthus disparagementof traditionalJudaism,
which would have none of these. Thus, Estelle Roith writes:
TheFreudian doctrineof sexualitycan be seen to be of a more ancient lineage,
since, to reiteratethecentralthemeof thisbook,Freud'sfirst and lastingculture
was Jewish ...
It can thereforebe no coincidence that Freud camefrom a long tradition
that viewed as bizarre, hypocritical, and ultimatelyunhealthy, the aesthetic
exhilaration and ritualizedlonging that characterizedthe spirit of Christian
bourgeois romantic love. John Murray Cuddihy in his book The Ordeal of
Civility is one of veryfew writersnot merelyto observe but also to considerthe
implicationsof the crucialfact thattheFreudiansexual doctrinehad its origins
in the encounter between two cultures that differed radically in their sexual
ideologies. Freud wrote that 'the ascetic current in Christianity created
psychical valuesfor love whichpagan antiquitywas never able to conferon it'
(1912, SE 11: 188), and while this statementmight seem to us to strike a faint
personal note of envy, the phenomena of romance, courtship, and, indeed,
forepleasure depend, as Cuddihypersuasively argues, on the principle of
delayed consummationwhich, in both the Freudian and Jewish doctrines, is
consistentlydeplored.... [126-27]
I submit that there is not the slightest bit of evidence that in traditionalJewish culture
delayed consummation is deplored, and I have cited evidence above that directly
contradictsthis absurdnotion. The category errorhere involves simply identifying (as
Cuddihydid) courtshipwith courtly love with foreplay-and courtly love with love, a
series of identificationsthatsimply acceptin an uncontestedfashion the self-evaluations
andmystificationsof Europeanideology. Roithcontinuesby assertingthe correctnessof
what is perhapsthe most egregious moment in all of Cuddihy'swork:
Cuddihyquiterightlynotes thatcourtship,like love, was seenfrom a traditional
Jewish viewpoint as a Gentile refinement. He quotes Ernest van den Haag:
"Loveas 'an aesthetic exhilarationand as a romanticfeeling'... never made
muchof a dentonJewish attitudestowardsthebodyor towardsthe oppositesex.
Love as "sweetsuffering"was too irrational. If you wanther, get her." [12627]
The quotationfromvan den Haagcited by Cuddihyandthen re-citedby Roithrepresents
perhapsthe silliest statementever made abouttraditionalJewish culture. Whaton earth
could "If you want her, get her"mean;hit her over the head with your club and dragher
to yourcave?12In traditionalJewish culturethe process of finding a spouse involved the
12. Altogether,the idea of serious scholarly worksturningto a vulgarpopularizationsuch as
vandenHaag's as a majorsourceof informationon traditionalJewishcultureis simplystaggering.
As an exampleof the level of this book,I quote thefollowing:
diacritics / spring 1994
23
effortsof a matchmakerwho soughtto discover a suitablepairing. Both membersof the
potentialcouple, after having met the "intended"or even "fated"one had the absolute
right to refuse the match. God himself was understoodin Jewish folklore to pick out
appropriatepartnersfor people even beforebirth;indeed,accordingto the Talmudthis is
what God does for a full thirdof his time. How, I ask, does such a pattern,only sketched
out here, get translatedinto "If you want her, get her?" The importantpoint, of course,
is that what was seen from a traditionalJewish viewpoint as Gentile (and not as a
refinement) was not love but romance.13 This point is doubly significant when we pay
attentionto the genderpolitics of romance,especially its latenineteenth-centuryversion.
As Bram Dijkstrahas made only too clear, much of the sexual imagining of Roith's
vaunted"Anglicism"in this period involved fantasiesof women ripe and available for
rapeat any time, and this was typically expressedin representationsof primitivesof one
sort or another: cavemen, barbarians-Galician Jews?-whose culturespermittedsuch
"free"sexual behavior[Dijkstra109-18].'4 Particularlytelling is Dijkstra'ssummation
of this ideology: "Manymiddle-classmen dreamedof those simple times when the sight
of a male was enough to make a woman cringe, and when, if you wanteda woman,you
"Jewishgirls arethe world's most boringwomen,"a friendof mine who is somethingof
a Don Juanrecentlyremarkedto me. "Theykeeptellingme thatI'm not interestedin their
minds. They have a point. But when I tell them I'm interestedin them as women, they
burstinto tears. Why don't they want to be women? Why do they want to be less than
a woman? That's what a mind is, only partof a woman." [152]
Thewhole book-at least the chapteron sex-is basically one long, humorlessJAPjokepresented
as pop sociology. Van den Haag's values, in many ways like those of Cuddihyand Roith, are
precisely the values anatomized (and anathematized) in Dijkstra's book Referring to the
misogynist writers of the fin de-siecle, Dijkstra writes, "They discovered the glories of the
'gratuitousact' as evidence of theirpower" [204]. Van den Haag writes, "Likea river that is
regulatedto avoidfloods or dryingup, love and evensex, carefullyandusefullyregulated,lose their
wild, spontaneous,impracticalbeauty"[149]. I suggest that this "impracticalbeauty"of which
van den Haag speaks owes much to the "glories of the 'gratuitousact.'"
13. Roith's critiqueof the androcentrismof traditionalJudaismseemsgenerallyon the mark;
women were extremely disenfranchisedin traditionalJewish culture. She correctly observes,
however, that "contraryto some feminist opinion, assumptionsthat women's status has been
generallylower inJudaismthanin otherreligious andsocial systems,is withoutmuchfoundation"
[90]. But her apparentinabilityto read Hebrew sources in the original has occasionally led her
disastrouslyoff course. "Theassociations betweenwomen,sex, and sin can be clearly discerned
in thepowerful Talmudicedict kol be-ishahervah-woman's voice is an abomination-as well as
in countless other warningson the corruptingeffect of thefemale and the dangers to male purity
andpiety ofherpresence" [92]. Thisconclusionis based on a gross mistranslation. "Ervah"does
not mean "abomination."It is simplya termfor the nakednessof the genitals, male orfemale. A
man is not allowed to pray in thepresence of exposedgenitals, male orfemale, his own or others'.
Whatthe Talmudis saying is that the female voice is so sexually stimulatingto men thatpraying
in thepresence of a singing womanwouldbe equivalentto praying in thepresence of a nakedone.
Thereare, accordingto theRabbis,places and timesat whichtheexposureof thegenitals is entirely
appropriate,evenpraiseworthy,butprayer is not one of them. Thetext is undoubtedlysexist and
androcentric,insofaras womenare not discussed as subjectsof desire or ofprayer here at all. But
it does not manifestthe kind of misogyny,corruptingeffects, or semi-demonicdanger to piety or
purity thatRoith reads into it. Moreover, such representationsand warningsof the "corrupting
effect of thefemale" are rare, indeed nearly nonexistent,in talmudicculture,as I have argued at
length in CarnalIsrael[77-106].
14. Dijkstra's exhaustivedocumentationof Europeanfin-de-siecle images of womenin both
discourse and visual arts demonstrateseloquently the absence of any direct influenceof Jewish
gender ideologies on Freud's theories of femininity. In further work, I plan to demonstrate,
moreover,thatpremodernJewish malefantasies bore little resemblanceto those of the culturethat
producedFreud and Freud's ownfantasies.
24
simplyreachedout and tookher"[111; my emphasis]. Whose fantasiesarebeing played
out when van den HaagdescribesEasternEuropeantraditionalJewishsexual ethics as "If
you want her,get her,"andCuddihyandthen Roith repeatthis nonsense? This seems an
almost embarrassinglyclassical case of racistprojection,whetherfrom the Gentile's or
the "evolved"WesternJew's pen.
In general,Roith's book, like Cuddihy's,is firmly ensconced within the Orientalist
Whig traditionof perceivingProtestantcultureas some sort of ideal to which humanity
is progressing. This is manifest particularlyin the following invidious comparison
between "the rabbis"and John Donne: "Marriage'keeps us from sin,' the rabbis said
(Epstein1967: 15), an attitudethatwas roundlycondemnedin Anglicism by thepoet John
Donne, who spoke of men using theirwives 'in medicinam'(my emphasis,Szasz 1981:
108)" [Roith 129]. This extends even to approbationof the violent performancesof
Europeanmasculinity. Thus, she manages to write: "Shtetlvalues held that physical
superioritywas appropriateonly for goyim but even the far more sophisticatedBerlin
Jews, accordingto Reik, regardedmilitaryhonourscynically as 'GoyimNaches' (Reik
1962: 61)" [Roith132]. Roithis at least more accuratethanCuddihyin heridentification
of "goyim naches." Violence was not particularlyhighly regardedin traditionalJewish
culture. What is remarkable,then, is her uncriticalvalorizationof the opposing valuesystem of the Protestantbourgeoisie, who saw fighting (for example, dueling) as
fundamentalto manly honor. Thus she is surprisedthat"sophisticated"BerlinJews are
still "cynical"aboutmilitaryhonors. Presumablyshe would not be so cynical. I would.
In the light, then,of this astonishinglyethnocentricposition, her accountof Freudon
sexualityandwomen is easily interpreted.If she has fully assimilatedthe ideology of war
as manliness and sophistication,then it is not at all surprisingthat she has also fully
assimilated the ideological mystification that romantic love (even courtly love) is
somehow more respectfulof women than are traditionalcultures (nearly all) in which
sexuality is understoodto fulfill-not sublimate-physical desire and love to be the
productof such mutualfulfillmentand otherjoint effort and activity. It is only thus that
she can arriveat suchformulationsas the following: "Onthe otherhand,theJewishsexual
ethoshasbeen describedby MaxWeberas being characterizedby 'the markeddiminution
of secular lyricism and especially of the erotic sublimationof sexuality' (Weber 1964:
257), whose basis he finds in the 'naturalismof the Jewishethicaltreatmentof sexuality.'
This, I suggest, is closely relatedto the ancientJewishperceptionof women as spiritually
and intellectuallyinferior"[Roith5]. My mother(to be sure, only one generationfrom
the shtetl herself) always used to tell me thatlove is what happensaftermarriage.Is this
indicativeof hercoarseness,orperhapsof an attitudeof disparagementtowardwomen on
herpart? Once more, Roith's failurehere is the inabilityto imagineothercivilities, other
culturalsystems in which marriagesarearrangedby parents,as being just as worthy(and
just as flawed) as "ours."
TraditionalJewish culturemay not have had room for romance (and was cynical
aboutit when encounteredin eitherits medieval or moder forms),but it was not cynical
aboutlove between marriedcouples:
OurRabbis have taught: One who loves his wife as he loves his own bodyand
honors her more thanhe honors his body and raises his childrenin the upright
fashion and marriesthemsoon aftersexual maturity,of him it is said, "Andyou
shall know thatyour tent is at peace. " [BabylonianTalmud,Yevamoth62b].
Roith's thesis thatFreudwas influencedin his notionsof female sexualityby Jewish
cultureis dependenton findingcriticalways in which thatcultureis significantlydifferent
fromthe Christianculturethatprovidesan alternative"source"for Freud'sthinking,and
Roith completely fails at this task. Thus she writes: "Lacks correctly emphasizes,
diacritics / spring 1994
25
contraryto thetheologians'view, thattheearlyeventsof Genesishave, since the Christian
eraandits view of womanas temptress,also been associatedby Jews attimeswith theFall
of Man (Lacks 1980:93-7). We can see this in Isaac Bashevis Singer's The Family
Moskat,for example,wheretheattendingdoctorannouncesto the expectantmother,'The
curse of Eve is upon you"' [Roith92]. This passage simply does not carrythe evidential
weight assigned to it by Roith. The "curseof Eve" is that she will have pain in bearing
children,as the "curseof Adam"is his necessity to work hardto eat. This is explicit in
Genesis and therefore denied by no traditionalJudaism. The doctor here is merely
speakingallusively (andeuphemistically,pace Cuddihy)of the onset of labor. Note that
I am not denying the sexism of the formation. There is nothing here, however, that
constitutes the Hellenistic Jewish (and Christian)myth of woman as temptressand a
cataclysmic Fall in Eden [Boyarin, Carnal Israel 77-106]. Moreover, even if such
notions are held "attimes"by Jewish writers-I. B. Singer is hardlya sufficient source
for generalization-this does notconstitutea basis fromwhich to constitutea description
of Jewish culturein general,much less a foundationupon which to distinguishbetween
Jewish and Christianculture,which is what Roith must do to make her thesis stick. My
argumentis not thatif certainJewishexpressionsaresimilarto Christianitythenthey are
inauthenticallyJewish but ratherthat they are certainlythen not uniquely Jewish and,
therefore,by the simplestcanonsof historicalargumentation,cannotprovideevidencefor
"Jewishinfluences on Freud'stheoryof female sexuality."15
Finally,the problemwith Roith,as with Cuddihy,is thatshe treatsEasternEuropean
Judaismin perfectOrientalisttraditionas a monolith,as a primitive,unchangingcultural
entity.16In this sense, I insist once more,both CuddihyandRoithareneocolonialists,for
colonization, as ChandraMohantyobserves, "almost invariablyimplies a relation of
structuraldomination,and a suppression-often violent-of the heterogeneityof the
subject"[52].
This assumptionof homogeneityleads Roith into self-contradiction.In a paragraph
thatbegins, "Theadoptionof masculinestandardsas the absolutenormis, of course,not
restrictedeither to Freudor to Judaism. However, the linking of masculinitywith the
renunciationof wishes andobedienceto the realityprincipleandtheirlocationat the root
of all culturalendeavour,has a characteristicallyMosaic ring to it." And then continues
a bit furtheron, "Idealmasculinity(althoughrarelyachieved),is always associatedwith
renunciationof submission to gods and to fathers as well as to the archaic libidinal
strivings toward mothers. All intellectual, ethical, and spiritual achievements are
associatedwith renunciation;it is renunciationthatwomen, neurotics,and the religious
areleastcapableof' [Roith123]. Thereseems to me somethingfundamentallyincoherent
15. Thisis in contrastto vandenHaag,for instance,whowrites,
of physicalgraceandbeauty.Notonly
TheJewshaveneveracceptedtheGreektradition
withJewishintellectual
wasthattradition
andmoral
alien;it wasfeltto be inconsistent
values.NordidtheJewseveraccepttheGermancultof force,ortheRomancultof sex
withtheirownalmostexclusivelymoral
andcruelty.Theseidealswereirreconcilable
fused
emphasis,thoughoccasionallysomeHellenisticideaswereat leasttemporarily
infavorof theJewishintellectandofJewish
toberepudiated
withJudaicones,ultimately
ethics[147],
by andpurifiedof
mobilizingimagesof an essentialJewishculturewhichcan be contaminated
fromoutside.Thatis notthemodelofJewishculturewithwhichI work.
"influences"
16. Evenworse,CuddihyreifiesallJewryintoa monolith.Thus,for him,"inthecaseof the
was "animportsituation"[179]. SomeWestern
Jews,for example,inItaly,
Jews,"modernization
in westernEuropein
andJewswereinvolvedeverywhere
did,however,evenhavea Renaissance,
complicated
waysin theinventionof modernity.
26
in this sentence. Firstof all, "renunciationof submission,"thatis, presumably,independence and self-assertion, is hardly the same thing as renunciationof archaic libidinal
strivings;indeed, they may often be opposites. This self-contradictionhas its objective
correlativein the inclusion of the "religious"in this list. Is it being claimed thatby not
being capable of renouncing their submission to gods and fathers, the religious are
thereforeincapableof spiritualachievements? Is the "Mosaic ring"to be found in the
demand to renounce submission to the father god? In what sort of Judaism is such
renunciationan ideal? None thatI know of. If Freuddemandsof men, as he indeeddoes,
that they renouncereligion, which may include or even be constitutedby a failure to
renouncesubmissionto thefather,thenhe standsagainstJudaism-not with it. Moreover,
if Cuddihy'sthesis is thatthe "id of the Yid was hid underthe lid of Westerndecorum,"
and Roith approvesof Cuddihy, then how is it now that "it is renunciationof archaic
libidinal strivings"thatestablishesthe FreudianJewish influence?I arguethat the selfcontradictionthatwe observeherein Roithis the productof the maintenanceof herthesis
that Freud was directly and primarilyinfluenced by "Jewish"culture and that Jewish
culturewas a self-consistentmonolith. Cuddihy'sthesis is simple: Thereis the (Y)id and
the superego(y).'7Its very simplicityconstitutesboth its coherenceandits invalidity,but
Roith cannot accept this. Both the id and the superego are Jewish for her, and it is this
insistencethatproducesthe fundamentalincoherencethatmanifestsitself in the surface
contradictionsof the above quotation.It simply cannotbe thatthe same cultureapproved
of immediatelibidinalgratification-"If you want her,go get her"-and renunciationof
libidinalstrivings,at one andthe same time, unless we assume a complex and contradictory culture, which this (like all others) was, but such an assumption would quite
underminethe theoriesof both Cuddihyand Roith.18
There is no voice of the Eastern European Jew that speaks for herself here.
Unimaginableto Cuddihy and Roith, perhaps,would be the notion that such Jewish
"savages"could also provide a significantcritiqueof the culturaland social patternsof
their"evolved"Westernbrothers. I would close this section of my essay, then, with the
following EasternEuropeanyarn. God,on Yom Kippur,sends theAngel Gabrielto Earth
to see whatis going on. As it happens,it is the time for the prayerin which Jews sing, inter
alia: "We are Your servants,and You are our Master. We are Your sheep, and You are
ourShepherd.We areYourchildren,andYou areourFather."Thesomewhatdenseangel,
who only stays long enough to hearin each place one of these phrases(or perhaps,who
has a very subtlesense of humor),reportsback: "Iwas in LondonandthereI found You
have servantswho dresslike lords,andthenI went to New Yorkanddiscoveredtherethat
You have sheep as fat as pigs-but oh, whatbeautifulchildrenYou have in Berditchev!"'9
And there are other such stories, even stories in which EasternEuropean"primitives"
mock Moses Mendelssohn's enlighteneddisciples-those same disciples who were so
discomfitedby Solomon Maimon'suncouthbehaviorwhen he firstarrivedat theirSalon.
CertainBerlin Jews, having questionsaboutfaith, sent one of theirnumberto Volozhin
(the centerof LithuanianJewish rationalisttalmudism)to get answers. He returnedafter
two years, and uponbeing asked if he had the answers,replied: No, but he had no more
questions either. This anecdote, which I received through oral tradition,could be a
double-edged sword. The context in which I heard it clearly read it as mocking the
"Westerners."
17. Mypun is no worse nor any more validfor Freud's language than Cuddihy's.
18. Thatis to say, in Roith's work it is implied but not thematized. Whatis thematizedis a
simple model of a univocal Jewish culture that "influenced"Freud. In Cuddihy,it is not even
impliedthatJewish culturemighthave had its own inner complexitiesand differentiations.It was
too busy being tribalfor that.
19. As related to me by my wife's late uncle Daniel Ben-Nahum,originallyfrom Lithuania.
diacritics / spring 1994
27
EasternEuropeanJews were as capable, it seems, of criticizingthe embourgeoisement of their Westernconfreresas these were of looking with disdainat the Ostjude's
"coarseness!"Alreadythenthe Empiretalkedback. The realpointthatneeds to be made
is thatnineteenth-centuryEasternEuropeanJewrywere not a morallydegeneratepeople,
as Cuddihyseems to simply assume [passim]. Like any otherhumangroup,therewere
differentforces andtendencieswithin this community-I am not proposinga Fiddler on
theRoofidealization-and much misery and degradation,but this was also a time of the
highest cultural creativity for Eastern EuropeanJews, both in the rationalistwing of
Lithuania and in the mystical-literarywing of Galicia, Hungary, and further East.
Particularlytelling is a comparison of the notions of modernity as the product of
whichCuddihyemphasizesfollowing Parsons[10], andtheracistsocial
"differentiation,"
Darwinismof a HerbertSpencer,as discussed by Dijkstra[165-66 and 170 ff.]: "There
is a clear correlation,for instance,between the notion thatwith the progressof evolution
men andwomen hadbecome more unlikeandHerbertSpencer'sfamousdictum,in First
Principles, that 'evolutionis definableas a change from an incoherenthomogeneityto a
coherentheterogeneity'(332)" [171].20Even if in 1974, Cuddihyconceivablycould have
been innocentof the implicationsof his own Social Darwinism,by 1987, when his book
was republishedand when he explicitly refuses to retracta single word, he certainly
should have been innocent. I could assureCuddihythatRabbiHayyimof Volozhin (and
my grandmother)were just as capable of making differentiations-although to be sure
differentones-as his modernizedpeople are: "Differentiationon thelevel of thecultural
system is the power to make distinctionsbetween previously fused-confused-ideas,
values, variables,concepts"[11; his emphasis].21Marx's On the Jewish Question and
Herzl's disdain for these Jews are not to be readas accuratereflectionsof but as sickly,
alienated disdain for these embarrassingothers, a point I will make briefly in the last
section of this paper. Volozhinwas hardlya site strangeto theoria,andthatis, in a sense,
my whole point.
Freud and the Battle with Racism: Gilman and Geller
In a series of quite stunningpublications,two scholars, SanderGilmanand Jay Geller,
havebeen pursuingclosely relatedtrainsof thoughtregardingthequestionof how Freud's
analysis was materiallygeneratedout of the context of Europeananti-Semitism. The
startingpoint of theirview of the relationof psychoanalysisto "Jewishness"is perhaps
best capturedin thepithyquotationthatGilmanprovidesfromtheworkof PeterHomans,
"Psychoanalysisemergedas the negative image, so to speak,of its Jewishsurroundings"
20. Note also the affinitieswith Otto Weininger-an association thatI am sure would repel
Cuddihy-for whom, according to Dijkstra, "Women[and Jews] were, in essence,, human
parasites. Theycouldnot live withoutmenor withouteach otherfGemeindschaft].In a sense they
wereinterchangeable,undifferentiatedbeings,for the capacityto differentiatewas a characteristic
of theintellect,ofgenius. Truegeniusyearnedfortrueindividualismandstoodsternlyandruggedly
alone ..., all of whichserved to show that regressive, materialisticanti-individualisticpolitical
philosophies such as communismwere basically the weak conceptionsof benightedmen who, like
KarlMarx,weresuffering
fromterminalcasesof effeminacy"
[219-20]. I donot,of course,mean
to associate Cuddihywith Weininger'smisogyny,only to show how deeplyproblematicthe ideas
of social evolutionand "differentiation"to which he subscribes trulyare.
21. In my work-in-progress,Antiphallus:Jewishness as a Gender,for which this essay is a
prolegomenon, there will be a chapter entitled Edelkeit, in which I will argue that there was a
"native"traditionof "civility" among Eastern EuropeanJewish culturalelites. The ordeal was
the product of conflict not between coarseness and civility but between two differentcultures of
gendering. Once more, I emphasize,Cuddihyis not anti-Semiticbut neocolonialist in his ethos.
28
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[71; qtd.in Gilman4]. Inotherwords,whateverthe impressionthatJewishnesshadmade,
somehow psychoanalysisdefendedagainstit by producingan opposite image point for
point, as "a key to its wax impression."Notice that this position is itself a negative
impressionof the Cuddihy-Roithnotion that Freudwas somehow directly representing
Jewish gender/sex ideology in his positing of the id and in his descriptionsof female
sexuality;in a sense, the Gilman-Gellerline of thoughtis the antithesisto thatof CuddihyRoith (in this aspect,of course;in many otherways Cuddihyand Roith arevery distinct
fromeach other). If Cuddihy-RoithperceiveFreudas very muchimplicatedin traditional
Jewish cultureand covertly respondingto or reflecting it, Gilman-Gellerperceive his
Jewishness as virtuallyonly a reactive reflex to anti-Semitism. (By setting this up as a
dialectic, I prefigure the third section of this paper, in which a "synthesis"will be
proposed.)
Althoughthe researchpursuedby Gilmanand Geller has many facets, in this essay
I will concentratejust on the nexus of race,sex, and genderthatthey uncoveras a salient
factorin the generationof "Freud."The firstkey resultof theirresearchis the recognition
An
ofjust how powerfulthe linkageof maleJews with womenwas in Europeanculture.22
to
Glance
at
the
Nose."
In
this
Geller
seeks
is
"A
text
Geller's
paper,
Jay
exemplary
a
that
when
in
Freud's
that
has
become
a
one
of
crux, namely,
papers
explain parapraxis
Freudis explainingthe Glanz (shine) on the nose as a sexual fetish in a case history,he
relatesit to the Englishword glance, and not the Latinword for penis, glans, and this in
spite of the fact that Freudhimself theorizes that the fetish is a surrogatefor the absent
maternalpenis. He ignores,moreover,a fact otherwisewell knownto him, namely, that
noses are often a substitute for penises in popular culture and psychic substitutions
[Geller,"Glance"428-29].23 A furtherdifficulty with this passage is thatthe entirecase
of the "glanceon the nose" is cited apparentlygratuitouslyandnot at all workedinto the
argument. Gellersets out to solve this cruxby "uncoveringfeminizingmetonymsof the
male Jewish body by which the Central Europeansocial and scientific imagination
constructedtheJew"[429-30]. Thisconstructionof theJewishmalebody hada profound
effect, accordingto Geller, on Freud'sself-image:
Freud's fetishized discourse, like his discourse on fetishes, betrays as well a
concern about sexual difference. His account of the bloody aftermath of
Eckstein's operation and his reworkingof the event in his dream of Irma's
injection,in whichhe clearly identifieswith his patient Irma, reveal that these
scenes problematizedhis own gender identity. IndeedFreud (1985) notes that
Ecksteinwielded the maternalphallus when she said to him whenhe returned
to the near-deathscene he had earlierfled: "So this is the strong sex" (117 [8
March 1895]). Both Freud's subsequentletters to Fliess and his dreamsfind
him attempting to respond to this taunt and to refute its implications of
unmanning. ["Glance"436-37]
Moreover,when readfully, as Geller does in his "(G)nos(e)ology"essay, the dreamof
Irma's injection reveals as well that Freud was concerned not only with his own
problematicgenderidentitybut with thatof all (male) Jews ["(G)nos(e)ology"264-65].
For Geller, "Freud found himself embedded in a matrix of social discourses that
increasinglyassociated(male)Jews with women"["Glance"437]. Thuswe find Geller's
dazzling conclusion:
context.
22. ExcellentworkonthistopichasbeendonealsobyGarber[233]inquitea different
23. SeealsoSanderL.Gilman,TheCaseof SigmundFreud:MedicineandIdentityattheFin
De Siecle[93-106].
30
In sum, thefetishizednose as thesubstitutefor the circumcisedpenis belies that
feminine-codedJewishdifference. On theone hand,Freud's elision of odor and
his failure to integratehis "mostextraordinarycase" into his argumentmaybe
an attemptto disavow the connection of Jews to the perverse sexuality and
problematicgenderidentitywhichare constitutiveof thenotionoffetishism. On
the other hand, his gratuitous example, like all fetishes, "remainsa token of
triumphover the threat of [Jewish difference] and a protection against it"
(Freud1927,154). Freud's nose leaves a trace of the inscriptionof ethnic-and
gender-difference on the male Jewish body. ["Glance"441]
Working from insights like these, both Geller's and his own, Sander Gilman has
produceda most extraordinaryhypothesis to explain Freud's gender theories, namely,
that they are a defense against and displacementof statementsabout race. This is the
leadingargumentof his Freud,Race, and Gender. The heartof the argumentis contained
in a section called "TheTransmutationof the Rhetoricof Race into the Constructionof
Gender"[36-48], and since the questionof genderis my theme here, it is on this section
of the book thatI will concentrate.Gilman'smajorclaim is encapsulatedin the sentence
"Therhetoricof racewas excised fromFreud'sscientific writingandappearedonly in his
constructionof gender"[37]. Gilmanis claimingthatthe key to femininityin Freudwas
molded via the "wax impression"of racial ideas about (male) Jews: "What Freud
constructedin his image of the femininewas the absolutecounterimageof the Jew"[47].
Freudboth erases his racial specificity and effaces his anxiety about it by adoptingin
public the personaof the "neutral"scientist and the ideology thatthe mind has no race.
The cruxhereis thatFreudclearlyheld racialnotions aboutthe Jewishessence in private,
so that if his ideas about women are a displacementof secret thoughtsand fears about
Jewish men, then (puttingthe best constructionon it-and why shouldn'twe?) we have
a case of persecutionandthe artof writing. "ThelanguageFreudused [in private]about
the scientific unknowabilityof the core of what makes a Jewish male a male Jew was
parallelto thatwhich he used [in public]concerningthe essence of the feminine"[37]. In
perhapsthe most stunningmoment of the argument,Gilman claims that the use of the
"DarkContinent"metaphorfor femalesexualityis specifically determinedby thefact that
Jews were consideredblacksby Europeananti-Semites[38]. Thebottomline is that"The
Aryan is the 'healthy,' 'normal' baseline that determinesthe pathologicaldifference of
the male Jew. In Freud's discussion of the natureof the female body, the distinction
betweenmaleAryanandmale Jew is repressed,to be inscribedon thebody of thewoman"
[40]. Gilman has discoveredthat in Viennese parlanceof Freud'stime, der Jude was a
usual slang termfor the clitoris, most likely, as Gilmanclaims, because both the clitoris
and the circumcised penis were read as truncatedor reduced versions of the truly
masculineorgan. In otherwords, the Jew's penis was inscribedby the anti-Semiticracial
discourseas female. Freud'sreinscriptionof the clitoris as male, then,is a code or cipher
for the reinscriptionof the circumcisedpenis as male, andthusof the Jewishmanas male
as well. Another way of saying this is that Freud,by erasing the essential, biological
differencebetween male andfemale, as he does-contra popularopinion [Mitchell8]is erasingas well the biologized differencebetween Jew andAryan. I submitthatthis is
stunning stuff. It shows, moreover, how complicated culturalpoetics is, for Freud's
greatestinsight,thatsexual differenceis made andnot bor, andalso his darkestmoment
of gross misogyny areboth made to restultimatelyon a base of self-defense againstantiSemitic hostilities.
There are, however, other crucial moments in which I am much less convinced by
Gilman'sarguments.Thus of Freud'sdissociationof sexualityfromprocreationandthe
assumptionof a pleasureprinciple,Gilmanargues,"By eliminatingreproductionas the
goal of the sexual, Freuddestroyedthe argumentthatJewish sexual practices(circumcidiacritics / spring 1994
31
sion or endogamousmarriage)were at the rootof the pathologyof theJews"[42]. I don't
get it. This seems to me to be almost totally a non sequitur. Whetheror not reproduction
is the telos of sexuality, sex neverthelessresultsoften enough in babies, or perhapsit is
moreappropriateto pointout thatin Freud'stime, at any rate,babiescame fromnowhere
else, so whatever pathologies were identified as common to Jews owing to sexual
practiceswould still be in place.
In its most compact form, Gilman's thesis is double: a claim that both Freud's
ethnologicalwritingsandhis writingson female sexualityareengenderedby his concern
for racism againstJews. In the ethnological texts (especially Moses and Monotheism,
althoughto my recollectionGilmandoes not make this explicit), Freud
counters the charge of the special nature of theJews by illustrating(using an
ethnopsychologicalmodel) how the Jews, as a group, underwentthe same
Oedipal struggles as any other collective could have experienced. This view
places the origin ofJewish differencein thepast and understandsit in termsof
a universalmodelof experience. On the otherhand,Freud explodesthe charge
of the inherentdifferenceofthe Jews by subsumingthe qualities ascribedto the
Jew and theAryan into thefemale and the male. [43]
Anotherway of seeing and saying this is thatFreudends up in Moses and Monotheism
masculinizingthe Jews over against Christianity(in Future of an Illusion) as a defense
againstthe anti-Semiticrepresentationof Jews as female or feminized.24Gilmannever
presentsa clear moralpositionor critiqueof these strategiesof Freud's-which is not to
claim (or even hint) thathe assents to them. On the one hand,we should not forget that
when the Moses book was written, the myth of the Jews as a degeneratethirdsex had
already unleashed its murderousforces in Europe;on the other hand, we must now
carefully separateout the politically (ethically) useful from the retrogradein Freud's
responsesto the conditionof the Jews and the ways that it impingedon his theorization
of male and female. In particular,we cannotignorethe ways in which his transmutation
of race into genderwas not in oppositionto the prevailingwinds of the fin de siecle but
fully complicit with them [Dijkstra 167]. If Jewish men were women in Europe, all
women were also Jewish and "Negro"as well, and Freud's"DarkContinent"begins to
sound even more ominous. Race into genderand genderinto race is a much wider (and
moredisturbingand dangerous)phenomenonthanthis text of Gilman'swould let us see.
Insofaras it did not affect only Jewish men, Freud's participationin it, in defense of
himselfas Jewishmale accordingto Gilman'sthesis, is muchmoreprofoundlydisturbing
thanGilmanallows. It is ultimatelycomplicitouswith both the extrememisogyny that
24. As Gellerhas brilliantlysuggested,thereis strongevidencewithinMoses andMonotheism
to the effect that Freud's entire description of Judaism's advance in intellectualitythrough its
insistence on the name-of-the-fatherover against the claims of the mother may be "a reaction
formation-not by the ancientHebrewsagainstEgypt,butbyFreudagainst theassociationofJews
with womenmade by his contemporaries"[Geller, "APaleontological Viewof Freud's Studyof
Religion: Unearthingthe Leitfossil Circumcision"62]; see also the much tamer version of this
claim in Robert [107-08]. In his recent God's Phallus and Other Problems for Men and
Monotheism,Howard Eilberg-Schwartzhas provided some more dramaticconfirmationfor this
readingofFreud's work.He shows thatFreuddrawsbackfroma conclusionthatseems ineluctable
from his argument,namely that monotheismpredicts representationsof the male worshipperas
feminizedvis-i-vis themale God and as afantasized erotic objectfor the male God,thusproducing
the tension that leads eventually to the abstraction-the unmanning,if you will-of the deity.
Eilberg-SchwartzexplainsFreud's reluctance to come to this conclusion as a productof his fear
that it would amountto representingJewish men as feminized,thusplaying into the hands of that
representationof himself as Jewish male that he was tryingso hard to avoid.
32
markedthe period as well as colonialist racism,both of which are finally to be found in
Freud's developmental theories and especially as encoded in his acceptance of the
principlethat"ontogenyrecapitulatesphylogeny"[cf. Seshadri-Crooks].Gilmanis much
too easy on Freudhere.
Now one way that the negative aspect of Freud's fin-de-siecle thought can be
redeemedis, it seems to me, by retrievingand transvaluingthe delineationof male Jews
as female, arguingthathistoricallyJewishmenwere indeeddifferentlygenderedfromthe
generalEuropeanideal. This enablesus to see thatFreud'selision of thebordersbetween
raceandgenderas well as his insistencethatmale andfemale arenot fixed binaries(which
Gilmanreadsas a further"desireto abandonthemin a biology of race"[46] need not only
be negative strategies of displacement and scapegoating but can also be positive
contributionsto a new theorizingof race/gendersystems, systems in which we readrace
and gendernot as independentvariablesbut as coimbricatingand covaryingexigencies
of identityformation. This gives anothersense to Fanon's famous cri de coeur, "At the
risk of arousingthe resentmentof my colored brothers,I will say thatthe black is not a
man"[8], readingit in the same way as HortenseSpillers's "Thereis no such thing as a
blackwoman." On this reading,thereis no such thing as a Jewish man or woman either,
since "man"and"woman"as we (all of us) understandthem areproductsof the dominant
culturalsystem.
Inthe thirdsection of this paper,I will outlinea new way of approachingthe question
of the materialbase of Jewishnessin the formationof the superstructureof psychoanalysis, one thatI hope providesa combinationof the best of the Cuddihy,Roith,andGilman
hypotheseswhile avoidingtheirpitfalls. It also adds,I trust,to the Gellerposition(which
I acceptin the main)by avoidingits "lachrymosity,"defined in Jewish historiographyas
theassumptionthatJews wereprimarilyoronly victims andthattheirculturalproductions
are primarilyor exclusively reactive in nature.
A Synthesis: Freud and the (De)Colonized Psyche25
In this final section of the paper I wish to propose anothermodel for looking at the
relationshipsbetween Freud'sideas aboutfemininityand his Jewish situation. I suggest
that if we combine differentelements from all of the above models with each other and
use themto correcteach other,we will come up with a much supplerandmoreuseful way
of describingthese connections. FromCuddihyI adoptthe idea of theJew as postcolonial
subject. My account (and especially evaluation)of postcolonialitycould not, however,
be more differentfrom Cuddihy's.
In orderto understandFreudon both gender and sexuality we have to consider the
materialconditionsof his life as postcolonial male, that is, as the subjectwho has come
into contactwith the dominatingsociety and is partlyfree to act out a mediationof one
sort or anotherbetween the "native"and the Metropolitancultures. In other words,
following the practiceof certaincritics (and obviously not others), I am using the term
"postcolonial"hereto referto a particulartype of culturalsituation. These arethe people
who live "lives in between,"in Leo Spitzer's(the younger's)evocative term.26The reason
25. Some of thefollowing argumentis takenfrom anotherpaper of mine, entitled "ASharp
Practice:LittleHans's Circumcisionand theSubjectof Colonialism." In thatversionI alsopursue
an elaborate comparisonbetweenFreud's and Fanon's writings on gender and sexuality, which
has been droppedfor thepresent context.
26. I prefer not to use the term "assimilation," because of its implicit assumption that
previouslyone could speak of an unassimilated,that is, pure culturalsituation-on eitherside. In
all butthemostexceptionalcases, it is now clear thatculturesare always in contactto some degree
or anotherand always changingin responseto those contacts,thusalways assimilating. Thisterm,
diacritics / spring 1994
33
for using this termis preciselybecausethis culturalsituationis generatedparexcellence
by the politicalsituationof postcoloniality,albeitnot exclusively so. It shouldfurtherbe
pointed out that the "post"in "postcolonial"refers to the psychological and cultural
situation caused by colonization, including its effects duringpolitical decolonization,
whichdoesnotimply,by anymeans,culturaldecolonization[Nandyxi, xvi]. "Postcolonial"
is, then, more like the anthropologicalterm"postcontact"thanlike "postwar."By using
the term"postcolonial,"I do not mean to commodify a termthatrepresentsan extraordinarilyvigorous criticaldiscoursegroundedin a certainpolitical, historicalsituation,but
ratherto both acknowledgeandenterinto dialoguewith thatdiscoursethroughextension
of the termto the significantlyanalogousJewish situationin modem Europe. This move
is perhapsparallelin an interestingfashionto the ways thatthe term"Diaspora"is being
appropriated(in a fully positive sense) within postcolonial discourses.
The first step in the argument,then, is to assert thatthe Jews of premodernEurope
arebest described-for certainpurposes-as a colonized people, as one of the internally
colonized peoples of Europe. In "The Otherwithin and the OtherWithout,"Jonathan
BoyarinarguesthatJewishexistence in Europebore significantanalogiesto the situation
of colonized peoples outside of Europe. Thus the other Boyarin refersto "the contrast
betweenJewishcarnalityandChristianspirituality-one of the primefiguresthatwill be
carriedforwardinto the thematicsof colonialism [includingCuddihy's!],with Christian
remainingin place and 'the savage' being substitutedfor the Jew" [88]. A typical late
nineteenth-centuryslur of the Jews is thatthey have no languageat all, renderingJews
virtual Calibans, "reducedto the level of the beast" [Jewish Self-Hatred 215-16; cf.
Greenblatt].The analogybetween"theJew"andthe colonized has also been actuatedby
Cixous in an explicit allusionto Fanon: "Me, too. The routine'ourancestors,the Gauls'
was pulled on me. But I was bor in Algeria, and my ancestorslived in Spain, Morocco,
Austria,Hungary,Czechoslovakia,Germany"[Cixous and Clement71].27
If the Jews of premodemEuropearea colonized people, then the Emancipationis a
decolonization and like any other produces that cultural condition referred to as
postcoloniality. The postcolonial situation can be defined (even within the period in
which the colonies hadnot yet been "granted"political independence)as the situationof
the migrant,of the hybridsubjectwhose culturalworld is doubled. It is in this sense that
I will be using the termhere:
Every colonized people-in other words, every people in whose soul an
inferioritycomplexhas been createdby the deathand burialof its local cultural
originality-finds itselfface to face with the language of the civilizing nation;
that is, with the cultureof the mothercountry. [Fanon 18]
AnyJew wishingto escape his materialandmoral isolation wasforced, whether
he liked it or not, to learn a foreign language. [Anzieu 203]
then, does not sufficientlyevoke the particular cultural anxieties of the transitionfrom colonial
domination to emancipation. Furthermore,the term "assimilation"seems to imply a sort of
stabilityin the "targetculture"to whichone is assimilating,whereas in reality,Europeanculture
at the time of Jewish Emancipationwas more in flux than it was stable. Indeed, it would not be
inaccurateto say (as MartinJay has emphasizedto me in a somewhatdifferentcontext)thatJewish
culturalactivitiesplayed a role in theproductionof Europeanmodernity,just as we are comingto
recognize more and more the crucial culturalrole of colonialism and the colonies in producing
Europeanmodernity. See alsoJ. Boyarin [82].
27. But see the [only partially fair] critiqueof Cixous in J. Boyarin ["Other Within,"10203]; I too will returnto a discussion of Cixous,arguing that the distortionsof herposition are yet
anothereffect of the colonized/postcolonialJewish situation.
34
MartheRobert has eloquently delineatedthe situation of GermanJewish intellectuals
aroundthe fin de siecle. She describesthemas dividedsubjects,tryingas hardas they can
to wear Germanmasksbut inevitablyrevealingtheirJewish skins. The hardersuch Jews
tried to efface theirJewishness, the more rejectedthey were [Robert17].
The success of this transformationis marked in great part through language:
abandonmentof Creole (Yiddish "Jargon")for French("High"German)with greateror
lesser facility [Fanon27-28; Hutton].The internalhierarchyis createdbetweenthe more
"civilized"subjectof the Antilles [Fanon25-26] (Vienna, Berlin) and the still "native,
uncivilized"subjects of Dahomey or the Congo (Vilna, Warsaw). Gilman evokes this
moment eloquently:
In the eyes of the formerly Yiddish-speakingconvert [who had described the
Hebrew words in Yiddishas so deformedas to appear "Hottentot"!],Yiddish
movedfrom being a language of a "nationwithinnations" to a language of the
"barbarian."But for the Jew, convert or not, these barbarians must be
localized, like theHottentot,in some remotegeographicplace to separate them
from the image of the GermanJew. Theirlocus is theEast. [JewishSelf-Hatred
99]
The German-speakingJew who appliesthe stereotypesof the anti-Semiteto the Yiddishspeaking "Ostjude,"including Freud's teacher Theodor Billroth [Jewish Self-Hatred
219], forms almost an uncanny analogue to the "evolved" colonial subject with his
contemptfor his native place, people, language,and culture. The "Ostjude"was for the
German-speakingVienneseJew whatthe "UntoWhom"-"the ignorant,illiterate,pagan
Africans ... unto whom God swore in his wrathetc."-were to a EuropeanizedYoruba,
such as Joseph May [Spitzer42].
In general,the prescriptionsfor solving the "Jewishproblem,"whetherof "evolved"
Jews or of anti-Semites, involved a version of the civilizing mission. Thus Walter
Rathenau "sees as the sole cure the integrationof the Jew into German education
(Bildung)"[Gilman,JewishSelf-Hatred223; Cuddihy25; see also Spitzer26; Berkowitz
2-3, 99]. Even morepointedarethe ideas of anotherassimilatedJew who holds that"the
Jew, like Nietzsche's Superman,is progressingfrom a more primitivestage of development,characterizedby religious identity,to a higherstage of development,characterized
by the present identification with cultural qualities of the German community, to
eventuallyemergewhole andcomplete"[JewishSelf-Hatred225]. Gilmanclearlynotes
the analogiesbetween this situationandthe discourseof colonialism: "By observingthe
Ostjude,says the WesternJew, we can learnwherewe have come from,just as Hegel uses
theAfricanblackas the sign of theprogressof Europeancivilization"[JewishSelf-Hatred
253]. We can imagine the effect thatsuch internalizedrepresentationswould have had
on the transplantedFreud whose mother spoke only Galician Yiddish all of her life
[Hutton11; contraAnzieu 204 and passim].
Althoughthe (br)otherBoyarinexplicitly mobilizes the paradigmof the otherwithin
in orderto interruptthe spatialfigurationsof some postcolonialdiscourses-the West and
the rest-["Other Within"81-82];28the move of Freud'sfamily steadilywestward,from
28. A point I came to appreciate only after a seminar with Homi Bhabha at the School of
Criticismand Theoryin the summerof 1993, which inspiredmuchof the thoughtin this essay. J.
Boyarin is particularly useful on the problematics of identifying time and space as separate
coordinates: "Thereare close genealogical linksbetweenthe 'Cartesiancoordinates'of space and
time, and the discreet, sovereign state, both associated with European society since the Renaissance "["Space, Time"]. Thisis not to trivializethe effectsof eitheranti-Semitismor imperialism,
a la Cuddihy.
diacritics / spring 1994
35
Latvia and Galicia [Hutton 11], to Pribor(Freiberg)in Bohemia, and then in Freud's
childhood to Vienna, can be read as a move through time from the colonial to the
transitionalpostcolonialsituation. Time andspace here arenot independentcoordinates
in a Cartesiansystembutstrangelyequivalentto or mappableonto each other. "Wespeak
of distanttimes; we also thinkof long ago places, if not in so many words"[J. Boyarin,
"Space, Time"; see also Dijkstra 343]. Galicia was, for Freud, a long-ago place.
"Bildung"as a move throughtime into "modernity"is thus the functionalequivalentof
an imperialistmove throughspace thatimposes the KantianEuropeanuniversalon all of
the world [Lloyd 36].
It was in this context thatthe crisis of gender and sexuality was producedin Freud
(as in Weininger). I am suggesting thatthe internalizedself-contemptthatthe colonized
male comes to feel for his disempoweredsituation-represented in the case of Jews by
the affect surroundingcircumcision-is a powerfulforce for the productionof the twin
diseases of misogyny and homophobiain the postcolonial situation,precisely because
their situationhas been misrecognizedas feminized. The intrapsychicmechanismis a
kind of splitting occasioned by the "move" from one subject position-that of the
colonized-to anotherin which there is a partialidentificationwith the colonizer. The
subjectbegins to see himself with the eyes of his oppressorandthusto wish to abjectthat
in himself which he now identifiesas contemptibleby projectingit onto women andgay
men.
There is a remarkablepassage in "LittleHans"in which I thinkFreudrevealswillynilly (as it were) the connections between internalizedanti-Semitism,the postcolonial
situationof the Jews of fin-de-siecle Vienna, and misogyny:
I cannot interruptthe discussion so far as to demonstratethe typicalcharacter
of the unconscious train of thought which I think there is here reason for
attributingto little Hans. The castration complex is the deepest unconscious
root of anti-semitism;for even in the nursery little boys hear that a Jew has
somethingcut off hispenis-a piece of hispenis, theythink-and thisgives them
therightto despiseJews. And thereis no strongerunconsciousrootfor thesense
ofsuperiorityoverwomen. Weininger(theyoungphilosopherwho,highlygifted
butsexually deranged,committedsuicide afterproducinghis remarkablebook
Geschlechtund Character[1903]), in a chapterthat attractedmuchattention,
treatedJews and womenwith equal hostility and overwhelmedthem with the
same insults. Being a neurotic,Weiningerwas completelyunderthe sway of his
infantile complexes; and from that standpoint what is common to Jews and
women is their relation to the castration complex. [198-99]
This text could be interpretedto mean that the castration complex, in the sense of
attributionof castrationto women, is thatwhich is "theunconsciousrootfor the sense of
superiorityoverwomen."However,thetextis also readableas meaningthathearingabout
circumcisionis the unconsciousroot of misogyny,just as it is the root of anti-Semitism.
Here(inadvertently,I think)Freudis suggestingthe deepestunconsciousrootfor his own
(Jewish)misogyny, namelya Jewish male reactionto the accusationfromoutsideof their
own "castration"or "feminization."The key to my reading is the occlusion of Little
Hans'sJewishidentityin Freud'saccount. I suggestthatthis occultationof thelittleboy's
identityis a cipherfor Freud'sown attempt,throughthe theoryof castration,to elude the
psychic effect thathis own circumcisionhadon him. ForGilman,OttoWeiningeris cited
by Freudas "an example of the problematicrelationshipof the Jew to his circumcised
penis" [Freud,Race, and Gender 77], that is, as a sort of analysand. Thus, "Freudhas
evoked theJewish 'scientist' OttoWeiningeras an anti-Semite."Gilmangoes on to argue
that
36
Weiningeris like the little (non-Jewish)boy in the nurserywho hears about the
Jews cutting offpenises, except that he, of course, knows that it is true. His
hatredoftheJew is "infantile,"accordingtoFreud,since it remainsfixedat that
momentin all children's developmentwhen they learn about thepossibility of
castration. Jewish neuroticslike Weiningerfocus on the negative differenceof
their bodies from ones that are "normal,"and use this difference, like their
evocation of the bodies of women, to define themselves. [80]
This strikesme as altogethertoo benign a readingof Freud'stext (althoughby no means
an impossibleone). WhereGilmanreadsFreud'sWeiningeras an analysand,I will read
him as a fellow analyst. Anotherway of saying this would be that both Little Hans in
Freud'stext and indeed Freudhimself are like the little non-Jewishboy in the nursery.
How can this reading be validated over against Gilman's suggestion that only
Weininger is that little "non-Jewish"boy? It is the possession of the penis that is the
unconsciousrootof misogyny, thanwhich thereis no stronger.Weiningertreatedwomen
andJews with equal hostility,because neitherof thempossesses the penis; they areboth
castrated"fromthe standpointof the infantilecomplexes,"the stage at which Weininger
was fixated. So far,so good. This paraphrasesupportsGilman'sreadingperfectly. Freud
is an anatomistof anti-Semitismand of Jewish self-hatredas well. However, when we
delve moredeeply intothetext,we will see thatnotall is nearlythatsmooth. The operative
questionis: WhataboutFreud? Whereis he in this picture? The key, again, is "Hans's"
suppressedcircumcision.
Freudargues that in the young boy, hearingaboutthe circumcisionof Jews would
arousefearsof being castrated,just as knowingaboutwomen would arousesimilarfears.
These two parallelanxietiesproducethe twin affects of misogyny andanti-Semitism.As
the castrationcomplex is "resolved,"or "dissolved,"these unrealisticfears, one would
think,oughtto give way then to a "normal"(noninfantile)appreciationof the equalityof
women and Jews. However, on Freud's own account, the castration fantasy-the
assumptionthat women have something missing and are inferior-remains the unconscious root of misogyny and clearly not only in infants,since Freudconsidersthe sense
of male superiorityto be a given in adultmales andnot a marginalandpathologicalform.
After all, it is the "repudiationof femininity that is the bedrockof psychoanalysis,"in
Freud'sfamous 1937 formulation. As Jessica Benjaminhas put it, "We might hope that
the boy's 'triumphantcontempt' for women would dissipate as he grew up-but such
contemptwas hardlyconsideredpathological"[160]. Similarly,as Freudprojectsit, the
fantasythatJews have somethingmissing remainsthe unconsciousfantasythatproduces
anti-Semitismin adultsas well. Neitherof these neurosesis ever completely resolved in
adulthood. Now the Jewish boy, even more thanthe Gentile boy, obviously knows that
somethinghas been cut off his penis, which is not to say, of course,thatI am in agreement
with the conceptthathe would interpretthis as a castration. Not only has he heardin the
nurseryaboutcircumcision,it has undoubtedlybeen explainedto him and,moreover,he
has most likely attendedcircumcisionceremonies for otherJewish infants. This could
very well have been the case for Little Hans-although, to be sure, he had a little sister
and no brother-and almost certainlyfor Freudhimself. Not only of Weiningerbut of
Freudcouldwe say that"he,of course,knows thatit is true"thatJews have a piece of penis
cut off. By occludingthe fact of Hans's Jewishness,andby obscuringthe role of his own
here, Freudis hiding something. I would suggest thatwhat he is hiding is a claim that
Jewish knowledge of theirown circumcisionmust inevitablyproducein the Jew a sense
of inferiorityvis-a-vis the Gentile-and thatFreudhimselfsharesthatsense of inferiority.
We have herenot only an anatomyof misogyny andof anti-Semitism-both readas near
inevitabilities-but also of Jewish self-contempt,also read as a sort of inevitability. In
otherwords,I am suggestingthatFreudessentiallyacceptsWeininger'sargument,indeed
diacritics / spring 1994
37
that that is why Freudcites him here and not as an example of the pathology of antiSemitismin Gentiles,for which he would be a ratherstrangeexampleindeed. According
to my reading,then, once again, Freudis more identifiedwith than differentiatedfrom
Weininger. If indeed as Gilman claims, "Freud seems not to have responded to
Weininger'sself-hatredas the reflectionof his identitycrisis"[JewishSelf-Hatred251],
this would be, on my reading,a classic exampleof denialanddefense. Hiddenbehindthe
figureof Weiningerin Freud'snoteandeven of the incognitoJewLittleHansis none other
thanFreud,"thespecialiston the innernatureof the Jew"[JewishSelf-Hatred242], and
thus he, Freud,effectively reveals one strandof his own complex and conflictual"inner
nature"as the "Jewishanti-Semite."29
I suggestthatFreud,lookingathis circumcisedpenisfromthepositionof the "whole"
man's gaze, recovershis "maleness,"as this is defined within the dominantculture,by
pathologizing his male and female enemies as "feminized."In other words, the very
misogyny andhomophobiaof the colonizerthathave been directedagainstthe colonized
become internalized,then projectedout, and ultimatelyturnedagainstwomen and gays.
It is not I who have these despised characteristics;it is they! This move cannotbut have
effects on women and gays within the dominatedgroup. I thinkthe psychic mechanism
here is clear enough. They demasculinize us; we will assert our value by abjecting
everything that stinks of the effeminate, the female, the homosexual. Freud's selfdescribed"overcoming[Ubermannung]" (literally,over-manning)of his "homosexual
cathexis"[qtd.in Jones2: 83] seems to me to be cutof thesamepsychicclothas his psychic
"bedrock"of the repudiationof femininity.
It is herethatGilman's and Geller's work mustbe mobilized,for Freud'sinsistence
on the repudiationof femininity is best read,I would suggest, as the repudiationof that
feminized position into which Jewish men are put by Europeanculture. I have already
mentionedGilman'sstunningcitationof the clitoris as "theJew"and its implicationsfor
Jewish self-imaging:
Thustheclitoriswas seen as a "truncatedpenis."Withintheturn-of-the-century
understandingof sexual homology,this truncatedpeniswas seen as an analogy
not to the body of the idealized male, with his large, intactpenis, but to the
circumsised("truncated")penis of the Jewish male. This is reflected in the
popularfin de siecle Vienneseview of the relationshipbetweenthe body of the
male Jew and the body of the woman. The clitoris was knownin the Viennese
slang of thetimesimplyas the "Jew" (Jud). Thephraseforfemalemasturbation
was "playingwith the Jew. " [Freud,Race, and Gender38-39]
The Jew is a clitoris. He has no phallus. Freud'sprojectcan be described,at least in part,
as getting the phallus for his male self/People.3 Freud's now famous reaction to his
father's story of having "passively"picked his hat up after it was knocked off by a
Christiananti-Semiteis certainlyrelevanthere. Freudexplicitly refersto this incidentas
an example of "unheroicconduct on the part of a big, strong man" [SE 4: 197]. In a
perceptiveinterpretation,WilliamJ. McGratharguesthatthe hatin the storywould have
been understoodby Freudas a symbol for the phallus,so "theknockingoff of his father's
29. See Gilman[Jewish Self-Hatred268], where he writes, "Freud'sscientific German,at
least when he sits down to write his book on humor, is a language tainted by Weininger'santiSemitism," a claim that seems to contradicthis later argumentthatFreudpathologized and thus
rejected Weininger'santi-Semitism. In 1986, it seems, Gilman was closer to the perspective on
Freud thatI am adoptinghere than he is in his latest work.
30. As can Roith's, paradoxically, with her apparent valorizationof the high regard for
"militaryhonors."
38
hat could have directlysymbolized to him the emasculationof JakobFreud"[McGrath
64]. Here we have, I hypothesize, a (the?) source of the castration(circumcision?)
complex and penis (foreskin) envy. What Gilman understandsas the development of
normal Jews who "overcome their anxiety about their own bodies by being made to
understandthatthe real differenceis not between theircircumcisedpenises and those of
uncircumcisedmales, but between themselves and castratedfemales"on this readingis
precisely the root of the misogyny of the (de)colonized Jew, including that piece of
psychoanalyticmisogyny known as the castrationcomplex/penis envy.
I am suggesting that the binaryoppositionphallus/castrationconceals the circumcised penis. Both the "idealizationof the phallus, whose integrityis necessary for the
edificationof the entirepsychoanalyticalsystem" [Johnson225] and the flight to Greek
culturalmodels and metaphorssignal the imbricationof this productionin the affect of
the colonized person. Inpsychoanalyticalterms,the Oedipuscomplex is Freud's"family
romance,"in the exact sense of the term. He is fantasizing(unconsciously)thathe is not
the circumcised Schelomo, the son of Jakob,but the uncircumcised,phallic, and virile
Greek Oedipus, the son of Laius [cf. Anzieu 195], just as earlier he had consciously
fantasizedthat he was Hannibal,the son of the heroic Hamilcar,and not the son of his
"unheroic"Jewish father.31
In my accountof Roith's work above, I have discussed (andrejected)only one of its
themes,namelythethesis of "direct"culturalinfluence,or adoptionby Freud,of allegedly
traditionalJewish ideologies of gender. There is another theme, however, that runs
throughherbook, integratedonly with difficultywith the firstone, namely,thatit was the
conflict between traditionalJewish genderingandthe genderingof the dominantculture
thatgave rise to the tensions thatproducedFreud'sideas. This "other"thesis in Roith is
muchcloser to my own construction.Roithcites theviews of PercyCohenfrompersonal
interviews[79,82] andthenbuildson them [85]. ThuswhereRoithwrites that"theexilic
Jew, becausehe lackedpoliticalautonomyandnationalrightsto self-defense, felt himself
to be seen as-and at some profoundlevel to be-castrated" [88], I arguethat this gaze
of the Jew on "him"selfis not a productof the exilic situationbut of a misrecognitionof
Jewishculturaldifferencein the transitionto the postcolonialsituation.Jewish maleness,
I suggest, was different, in part precisely in the rejection of such performancesof
masculinityas duelingandcourtlylove. Whatis perhapsmost novel aboutmy argument
is my assertionthatthe Jewish patternof male subjectivitywas notjust a reactiveartifact
of the "unnatural"situationof DiasporaJews but a positive culturalproduct. It felt like
a castrationonly when Jews began to look at themselves with the eyes of the dominant
culture.
Demystificationor Reduction?
I do not meanthis suggestionto be reductive. In anotherplace I have arguedthatFreud's
accountof sexualdifferentiationas nonbiologicalin its foundationsis in some ways much
moreliberatorythan,for instance,the accountof KarenHomey, wherebypeople areborn
male and female. The castrationcomplex thus representsa theoretical advance over
naturalizedviews of sexual difference, which are also necessarily heteronormativein
ways thatFreud'stheoriesallow us to avoid. The point,then,is certainlynot to disqualify
Freud'scontributionby locating it in a particularlysocial circumstance.Rather,it would
seem that the function of an argumentsuch as this is to help contextualizethose places
where Freud'sthesis seems incoherent,unnecessary,or otherwiseunhelpful,that is, not
its momentsof insightbut its momentsof blindness. Thereseems to be a signal blindness
31. In anotheressay, "Freud'sBaby, Fliess's Maybe," I will discuss the particulars of this
theory.
diacritics / spring 1994
39
in Freud'sunwillingnessto see any possibility for figuringsexual differenceother than
the phallus,which, as Lacanhas correctly interpreted,is equivalentto the name-of-thefather. Why, I am asking,was a thinkerwho was in so manyways so willing and able to
breakthe paradigmsof his culturehere seemingly unableto do so? As I have suggested
above, Roith's thesis thathe is directlyreflectingJewishgenderideology simply does not
hold up (this point will be furtherdeveloped throughoutmy currentresearch). As
MalcolmBowie remarks(of Lacan,butthe samepointcould be madeof Freud),he shows
a "monomaniacalrefusalto grantsignifying power to the female body";"the dramaof
possession and privation,of absence and presence, of promise and threat, could be
retainedand perhapseven enhanced if the principalswere breast,clitoris, vagina, and
uterus." But Lacanhimself, Bowie continues,"tirelesslysuggests thatany such transfer
of symbolic power to the female would be heresy,and bringthe Symbolic orderitself to
theverge of ruin"[Bowie 147]. Lacan's"monomania"is his own;Bowie's use of theterm
"heresy"is telling. Whatrequiresandenablesa culturalexplanation,however,is Freud's
priorrefusal. The descriptionadoptedherehas,I think,thevirtueof providinga technique
for condemning the misogyny and homophobiathat postcolonial male cultures often
manifestwithoutessentializingthemin a racistfashion. We, "intheory,"mustfind ways
of thinking about gender domination that do not reinstate racist, colonialist cultural
Darwinismsandalso ways of thinkingaboutanti-imperialismandpostcolonialitythatdo
not reinstategender dominationand homophobia. Ourdaily political lives demandthis
move forward. The "consequencesof theory"here are palpable.32
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