Scribbledehobbles: Writing Jewish-Irish Feet
Steven Connor
i. Pedagogic
I propose in this essay to describe the relations between Jewishness and cultural modernism in terms of an insistent thematics within both of the foot. Accordingly, my concern is with the modernist concern, both within Jewish writing and writing, both antisemitic and philosemitic, on the question of Jewishness, with feet, toes, soles and heels, and, by extension legs; by further extension, with shoes, boots and other forms of footwear; and by yet further extension, with the modes and meanings of walking. Such a focus may seem arbitrary, banal, and even abusive, given the reach and solemnity of the philosophical questions which remain for us today regarding the fate and the function of the Jew within the modern world, and the responsibilities of modernity with regard to Jewishness. And of course, in a way, this essay will not be able to help trying to exculpate itself from this charge, by showing that the thematics of the foot are indeed a central and recurring part of the self-understandings of both Jewishness and modernity, and that the foot may be read as a synecdoche for themes of historical being, belonging and displacement. But I wish also to curb the sublimating soar of the foot into airier, less ignoble regions. For perhaps the most important point about the foot will turn out to be that it is debasement itself, the botching of sublation, the hideous hilarity of the unrisen body. The foot means — is — death, banality, ugliness and laughter. Despite everything, I will have wanted to avoid reading the foot into philosophical seriousness, and to have remained close to the graceless literality of feet; will have wanted to write, as some of those with whom I am concerned attempted to write, as the French expression has it, `au pied de la lettre’, of a subject which remains, as its etymology tells us, `sub-jacent’ — thrown down, beneath notice.
ii. Footnotes
Nobody has done more than Sander Gilman to show that the centrality of the imagined weakness of the Jewish foot to what, in The Jew’s Body, he calls `the general representation of the pathophysiology of the Jew’ from the late nineteenth century onwards in Europe (1991, 39). In the course of his account, Gilman reproduces, but does not discuss in detail, a cartoon strip by the Nazi caricaturist Walter Hofmann, which illustrates the following story of the creation of the Jew:
When the dear God made the Jew, he made him, like Adam, out of damp clay. Then he told him to remain lying in the sun to dry. But since from the beginning the Jew has shunned the light and been drawn to the darkness, he disobeyed the command of the true God and rose prematurely. Since the clay was still damp and soft, the know-all developed not only bandy legs but also flat feet after the first few steps. When the Creator saw this disobedience of