Negotiating the Categories: Sarah Bernhardt and the Possibilities of Jewishness
1996; College Art Association; Volume: 55; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/777746
ISSN2325-5307
Autores Tópico(s)Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies
ResumoThis sentence punctuates a lengthy discussion of Sarah Bernhardt in a best-selling anti-Semitic text by François Bournand and Raphael Viau titled Les Femmes d'Israël (1898). I chose not to frame any part of that sentence with quotation marks because I wanted to begin by implicating myself in some of its assumptions. Though I would not describe my interest in Bernhardt as anti-Semitic, I do artificially foreground and essentialize the issue of Bernhardt's Jewishness. In so doing, I come unsettlingly close to the practice of reading for signs of racial and ethnic identity. The difference I perceive between my project and Bournand and Viau's—a difference that is, in some sense, what this article is about—is that I am looking for ways to dislodge markers of difference while they are looking for ways to reinscribe them.
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