Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 22 George Square Edinburgh EH8 9LF www.euppublishing.com ISBN 978 0 7486 4053 9 Jacket illustration: Goya, The Dog (1820-23). Museo Nacional Del Prado, Madrid Jacket design: Michael Chatfield Of Jews and Animals Andrew Benjamin The Frontiers of Theory Series Editor: Martin McQuillan This series brings together internationally respected figures to comment on and re- describe the state of theory in the twenty-first century. It takes stock of an ever- expanding field of knowledge and opens up possible new modes of inquiry within it, identifying new theoretical pathways, innovative thinking and productive motifs. The Frontiers of Theory Of Jews and Animals Andrew Benjamin Approximate Pantone colours: 727, plus tint on flaps, spine 4625 ‘Andrew Benjamin has written an original and provocative meditation on the place of the ‘figure’ of the animal in modern philosophy and culture. The book is remarkable for its sensitivity to the issue of visibility and the use of visual material. The engagement with the philosophical history of art is beautifully sustained and serves not only to work through the theme of figuration but also to make the philosophical narrative available to a wider range of readers.’ Howard Caygill, Goldsmith’s College, University of London ‘A stimulating book which will help those readers who, interested in the work of Agamben and the late Derrida, wish to reflect more on the image of the animal in classical continental philosophy.’ Peter Fenves, Department of German, Northwestern University Of Jews and Animals Andrew Benjamin A philosophical concern with animals has played a central role within contemporary philosophical discussions since Peter Singer’s work in the 1980s. However, recently within the area of Continental Philosophy the question of the animal has become an important area of academic inquiry. In addition, work on the figure of the Jew has for years been an area of scholarly investigation. By developing his own conception of the ‘figure’ Andrew Benjamin has written an innovative and provocative study of the complex relationship between philosophy, the history of painting and their presentation of both Jews and animals. As Benjamin makes clear the ‘Other’ is never abstract. He underscores the means by which the ethical imperative, arising from the way the history of philosophy and the history of art are constructed, shows us how to respond to an already identified, even if unacknowledged, determinant other. Andrew Benjamin is Professor of Critical Theory and Philosophical Aesthetics and Director of the Research Unit in European Philosophy in the Faculty of Arts at Monash University. His most recent books are Writing Art and Architecture (2009) and Style and Time: Essays on the Politics of Appearance (2006). Of Jews and Animals M2093 - BENJAMIN PRELIMS.indd iM2093 - BENJAMIN PRELIMS.indd i 4/3/10 12:18:004/3/10 12:18:00 The Frontiers of Theory Series Editor: Martin McQuillan The Poetics of Singularity: The Counter-Culturalist Turn in Heidegger, Derrida, Blanchot and the later Gadamer Timothy Clark Dream I Tell You Hélène Cixous Scandalous Knowledge: Science, Truth, and the Human Barbara Herrnstein Smith Geneses, Genealogies, Genres and Genius Jacques Derrida Insister of Jacques Derrida Hélène Cixous Not Half No End: Militantly Melancholic Essays in Memory of Jacques Derrida Geoffrey Bennington Death-Drive: Freudian Hauntings in Literature and Art Robert Rowland Smith Reading and Responsibility Derek Attridge Of Jews and Animals Andrew Benjamin The Romantic Predicament Paul de Man The Book I Do Not Write Hélène Cixous The Paul de Man Notebooks Paul de Man Veering: A Theory of Literature Nicholas Royle M2093 - BENJAMIN PRELIMS.indd iiM2093 - BENJAMIN PRELIMS.indd ii 4/3/10 12:18:004/3/10 12:18:00 Of Jews and Animals Andrew Benjamin Edinburgh University Press M2093 - BENJAMIN PRELIMS.indd iiiM2093 - BENJAMIN PRELIMS.indd iii 4/3/10 12:18:004/3/10 12:18:00 © Andrew Benjamin, 2010 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh www.euppublishing.com Typeset in Adobe Sabon by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 4053 9 (hardback) The right of Andrew Benjamin to be identifi ed as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. M2093 - BENJAMIN PRELIMS.indd ivM2093 - BENJAMIN PRELIMS.indd iv 4/3/10 12:18:004/3/10 12:18:00 Contents List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix Series Editor’s Preface xi OPENING 1 1. Of Jews and Animals 3 PART I 21 2. Living and Being: Descartes’ ‘Animal Spirits’ and Heidegger’s Dog 23 3. The Insistent Dog: Blanchot and the Community without Animals 51 4. Indefi nite Play and ‘The Name of Man’: Anthropocentrism’s Deconstruction 74 PART II 93 5. What If the Other Were an Animal? Hegel on Jews, Animals and Disease 95 6. Agamben on ‘Jews’ and ‘Animals’ 113 7. Force, Justice and the Jew: Pascal’s Pensées 102 and 103 130 8. Facing Jews 151 ANOTHER OPENING 179 9. Animals, Jews 181 Index 195 M2093 - BENJAMIN PRELIMS.indd vM2093 - BENJAMIN PRELIMS.indd v 4/3/10 12:18:004/3/10 12:18:00 M2093 - BENJAMIN PRELIMS.indd viM2093 - BENJAMIN PRELIMS.indd vi 4/3/10 12:18:004/3/10 12:18:00 List of Illustrations Figure 3.1 Goya, The Dog (1820–3) 52 Figure 6.1 Piero della Francesca, Saint Michael (1454) 114 Figure 6.2 Bartolomé Bermejo, St Michael Triumphant Over the Devil (1468) 115 Figure 8.1 Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfi ni Betrothal (1432) 156 Figure 8.2 Jan van Eyck, segment focus from The Arnolfi ni Betrothal (1432) 157 Figure 8.3 Velásquez, Las Meniñas (1656) 158 Figure 8.4 Dürer, Jesus Among the Doctors (1506) 159 Figure 8.5 Dürer, Self- Portrait (1498) 160 Figure 8.6 School of van Eyck, The Fountain of Grace and Triumph of the Church Over the Synagogue (1430) 161 Figure 8.7 School of van Eyck, segment detail from The Fountain of Grace and Triumph of the Church over the Synagogue (1430) 162 Figure 8.8 Dürer, face detail from Jesus Among the Doctors (1506) 168 Figure 8.9 Dürer, hands detail from Jesus Among the Doctors (1506) 169 Figure 9.1 Turner, Dawn After the Wreck (c.1841) 182 Figure 9.2 Piero di Cosimo, Satyr Mourning the Death of Nymph (1495–1500) 183 M2093 - BENJAMIN PRELIMS.indd viiM2093 - BENJAMIN PRELIMS.indd vii 4/3/10 12:18:004/3/10 12:18:00 M2093 - BENJAMIN PRELIMS.indd viiiM2093 - BENJAMIN PRELIMS.indd viii 4/3/10 12:18:004/3/10 12:18:00 Acknowledgments I would like to acknowledge colleagues and friends whose comments on specifi c chapters played an important role in helping me develop the overall argument: Howard Caygill, Karen MacCormack, Heidrun Friese, Helen Hills, Paul Hills, Terry Smith, and Elena Stikou. In par- ticular, I would like to thank Dimitris Vardoulakis who not only read the work, but our ensuing discussions played an essential part in its overall formulation. I presented most of these chapters as lectures and seminars in the Centre for Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Goldsmiths College was the indispensible setting that enabled the book to be written. I would like to thank John Hutnyk and Scott Lash for the kind invitation to be a Visiting Professor in the Centre. I also wish to thank Lydia Glick and Juliet Trethenick for their help in the preparation of the manuscript. Martin McQuillan, editor of the series The Frontiers of Theory, and Jackie Jones at Edinburgh University Press have both been unstinting in their support of my work. A number of these chapters have been published before. However, they have been extensively rewritten and the vocabulary of this project has been incorporated within them. M2093 - BENJAMIN PRELIMS.indd ixM2093 - BENJAMIN PRELIMS.indd ix 4/3/10 12:18:004/3/10 12:18:00 [...]... generations of scholars have grown up with Theory This leaves so-called Theory in an interesting position which its own procedures of auto-critique need to consider: what is the nature of this mainstream Theory and what is the relation of Theory to philosophy and the other disciplines which inform it? What is the history of its construction and what processes of amnesia and the repression of difference... imagine the frontiers of Theory is not to dismiss or to abandon Theory (on the contrary one must always insist on the it-is-necessary of Theory even if one has given up belief in theories of all kinds) Rather, this series is concerned with the presentation of work which challenges complacency and continues the transformative work of critical thinking It seeks to offer the very best of contemporary theoretical... that spirit: the continued xii Of Jews and Animals exercise of critical thought as an attitude of inquiry which counters modes of closed or conservative opinion In this respect the series aims to make thinking think at the frontiers of theory Martin McQuillan Opening Chapter 1 Of Jews and Animals Two terms joined in order to create a title: Of Jews and Animals With that creation, there is the inevitable... interplay between universal and particular .1 There are therefore two elements that are at work within the presence, either related or separately, of the Jew and the animal Allusion has already been made to both The first concerns what will be called the figure of the Jew and the figure of the animal.2 The second refers to the question of particularity In regards to the first, the point of the term ‘figure’ is that... taken by the relationship between the universal and the particular are continually being worked out in the way the figure of the Jew and the figure of the animal are positioned Of Jews and Animals 5 within specific philosophical and theological texts as well as in given works of art Two of these determinations are of special interest in this context The first involves what will emerge as the threat of particularity... within the imposition of the quality of being other, it will sanction, at the same time, the possible repositioning of the other as the enemy (The ‘other’ here is the generalised term designating alterity.) This is by no means an extreme or attenuated repositioning On the contrary, the move from other to enemy is a possibility that is already inherent in the category of the other A further aspect of the. .. Jews and animals They appear within the history of philosophy, art and theology in ways in which the differing forms of conjunction mark the manner in which dominant traditions construct themselves In certain instances, however, it is the separate presence of Jews and animals that serve the same ends This study is concerned with both these eventualities The weave of animal and Jew, their separate and. .. be obtained and sustained The second way a form of constitution works is linked to the movement in which the other acquires the position of being other as the result of a process of naturalisation Within this setting the other is the other because of ‘nature’ The positing of nature, however, has to be understood as a construction that is internal to the process that is itself the creation of figures A... figures are not just given, they have to be lived out The figure therefore can have an effect on the operation of institutions as well as the practices of everyday life Finally, in the case of the figure of the Jew there will be an important distinction (one admitting of a form of relation) between a construction of Jewish identity within Judaism itself and the figure of the Jew The latter is always external... works of art In this context, it will be the human face in which portraiture becomes the face of human being The retention of that face brings with it the need to exclude others (present as other faces) whose specific presence, often in terms of deformation, reiterates the same structure of exclusion and inclusion The faces in question, in this instance, are those of Jews While both these elements stand . Justice and the Jew: Pascal’s Pensées 10 2 and 10 3 13 0 8. Facing Jews 15 1 ANOTHER OPENING 17 9 9. Animals, Jews 18 1 Index 19 5 M2093 - BENJAMIN PRELIMS.indd vM2093 - BENJAMIN PRELIMS.indd v 4/3 /10 12 :18 :004/3 /10 . 4/3 /10 12 :18 : 014 /3 /10 12 :18 : 01 Opening M2093 - BENJAMIN TEXT.indd 1M2093 - BENJAMIN TEXT.indd 1 4/3 /10 12 :19 :054/3 /10 12 :19 :05 M2093 - BENJAMIN TEXT.indd 2M2093 - BENJAMIN TEXT.indd 2 4/3 /10 12 :19 :064/3 /10 . 4/3 /10 12 :18 :004/3 /10 12 :18 :00 Of Jews and Animals Andrew Benjamin Edinburgh University Press M2093 - BENJAMIN PRELIMS.indd iiiM2093 - BENJAMIN PRELIMS.indd iii 4/3 /10 12 :18 :004/3 /10 12 :18 :00 © Andrew