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The search for the Jew's gene : science, spectacle, and the ethnic other

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Steinberg, Deborah Lynn. (2009) The search for the Jew's gene : science, spectacle, and the ethnic other. MediaTropes, Vol.2 (No.1). pp. 1-23. ISSN 1913-6005

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Abstract

This paper considers the collision of spectacle, science, and racial-ethnic
identifications in the contemporary scientific search for a "Jewish gene." It aims
not so much to distinguish the "line between ‘real’ and ‘fabled’ aspects of the
Jew" (as cited in the passage by Gilman above), but to consider the
inextricability of both as composite elements, mutually constituting
"difference" as racial-ethnic identification. Thus I am concerned with the specular economies of science as well as the knowledge capital of its mediatisation as they come together, troubled, over the Jew’s body. The essay takes as its case study the National Geographic (NOVA/PBS) television documentary, The Sons of Abraham, a film that follows the progress of anthropologist Tudor Parfitt through the Lemba communities of South Africa in a quest to obtain genetic evidence in order to authenticate (or falsify) their claims to Jewish identity.

Item Type:

Journal Article

Subjects:

D History General and Old World > DS Asia
Q Science > QH Natural history > QH426 Genetics

Divisions:

Faculty of Social Sciences > Sociology

Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):

Jews -- Identity , Genetics

Journal or Publication Title:

MediaTropes

Publisher:

Ryerson University

ISSN:

1913-6005

Official Date:

2009

Dates:

Date	Event
2009	Published

Volume:

Vol.2

Number:

No.1

Page Range:

pp. 1-23

Status:

Peer Reviewed

Access rights to Published version:

Open Access

References:

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Boler, Megan (2006). “Uses of Multimedia for Political Dissent.” Paper presented at the Biopolitics and Technoscience workshop, University of Toronto (November 30).
Davis, Angela (1990). “Racism, Birth Control and Reproductive Rights.” In From Abortion to Reproductive Freedom: Transforming a Movement (Fried, M.G., Ed.) (pp. 15–26). Boston: South End Press.
Epstein, Debbie and James T. Sears (1999). A Dangerous Knowing: Sexuality and the “Master Narrative”. London: Cassell.
Epstein, Debbie and Deborah Lynn Steinberg (2007). “The Face of Ruin: Evidentiary Spectacle and the Trial of Michael Jackson.” Social Semiotics 17(4): 441–458.
Foucault, Michel ([1966] 2002). The Order of Things. London: Routledge
Gilman, Sander (1991). The Jew’s Body. New York: Routledge.
--- (1985). “Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth-Century Art, Medicine, and Literature.” In Race, Writing and Difference (Gates, H., Ed.) (pp. 223–261). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hale, Chris (dir.) (1999). The Sons of Abraham: The Search for the Jewish Gene [broadcast as To the Ends of the Earth, Channel 4, 15 March 1999, United Kingdom] PBS/NOVA.
Holmes, Rachel (2006). The Hottentot Venus. Bloomsbury: Random House.
Iragaray, Luce (1985). Speculum of the Other Woman (Gill, Gillian C., Trans.). Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Kipling, Rudyard ([1888] 1999). “The Man Who Would be King.” In Kipling, Rudyard and Louis L. Cornell. The Man Who Would be King and Other Stories. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Minh-ha, Trinh (dir.) (1982). Reassemblage.
--- (1989). Woman, Native Other. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Barthes, Roland ([1957] 1972). Mythologies (Lavers, A., Trans.). New York: Hill and Wang.
Boler, Megan (2006). “Uses of Multimedia for Political Dissent.” Paper presented at the Biopolitics and Technoscience workshop, University of Toronto (November 30).
Davis, Angela (1990). “Racism, Birth Control and Reproductive Rights.” In From Abortion to Reproductive Freedom: Transforming a Movement (Fried, M.G., Ed.) (pp. 15–26). Boston: South End Press.
Epstein, Debbie and James T. Sears (1999). A Dangerous Knowing: Sexuality and the “Master Narrative”. London: Cassell.
Epstein, Debbie and Deborah Lynn Steinberg (2007). “The Face of Ruin: Evidentiary Spectacle and the Trial of Michael Jackson.” Social Semiotics 17(4): 441–458.
Foucault, Michel ([1966] 2002). The Order of Things. London: Routledge
Gilman, Sander (1991). The Jew’s Body. New York: Routledge.
--- (1985). “Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth-Century Art, Medicine, and Literature.” In Race, Writing and Difference (Gates, H., Ed.) (pp. 223–261). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hale, Chris (dir.) (1999). The Sons of Abraham: The Search for the Jewish Gene [broadcast as To the Ends of the Earth, Channel 4, 15 March 1999, United Kingdom] PBS/NOVA.
Holmes, Rachel (2006). The Hottentot Venus. Bloomsbury: Random House.
Iragaray, Luce (1985). Speculum of the Other Woman (Gill, Gillian C., Trans.). Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Kipling, Rudyard ([1888] 1999). “The Man Who Would be King.” In Kipling, Rudyard and Louis L. Cornell. The Man Who Would be King and Other Stories. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Minh-ha, Trinh (dir.) (1982). Reassemblage.
--- (1989). Woman, Native Other. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.