This thesis embraces a cross-disciplinary approach to the examination of Jewish body culture, and integrates aspects of Jewish studies with new theories of gender and visual culture, thus contributing specifically to the field of Jewish body culture in relation to the visual arts. It demonstrates that at the fin de si??cle the Zionist artist, Ephraim Moses Lilien, integrated Nordau's concept of 'Muscular Jewry' and Buber's notion of a 'Jewish Cultural Renaissance' in order to figure the 'New Jew'. It establishes that Lilien's figuring of 'Muscular Jewry' as a visibly athletic, explicitly heterosexual, male body, bearing Jewish distinction, was developed as a crucial strategy to overcoming the twin dilemmas of Jewish alterity: antisemitism and assimilation. By proving that Lilien's art serves as a crucial model for both regenerating the Jewish male body and resisting antisemitic projections of decadence and degeneracy, this thesis expands upon current scholarship. It applies Margaret Olin's theory of ' visual redemption' to Lilien's figuring of the 'New Jew' and Daniel Boyarin's articulation of Homi Bhaba's Post-Colonial theory of mimicry as imitation, inversion and resistance to determine how Lilien's images functioned as an art of resistance against the dominant Christian European culture. By demonstrating how Lilien drew upon the modern and rebellious Jugendstil to figure the 'New Jew' and produce a new, defiant and authentic Jewish visual culture, this thesis proves he transformed the image of the diaspora Jew into the New Hebrew or Israeli tsabar, forty years before it became part of Israeli identity. Nevertheless, this thesis also uncovers the double-binded predicament inherent to Lilien's quest; despite his attempt to use mimicry of the athleticised, hyper-masculine, genetically pure, normative body as a strategy to resist antisemitic rhetoric and invert its projection, the closest parallel to Lilien's figure of 'Muscular Jewry' remained this same image which became instrumental to eugenic campaigns across Europe, particularly in Nazi Germany. Ultimately what is exposed by this thesis is the illusion underpinning Lilien's figuring of the 'New Jew'; that the Christianised Eurocentric body culture, designed to eradicate decadence, degeneration and Semitism, could resolve the problematic struggle for a Jewish national identity.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/215604 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Swarts, Lynne Michelle, Art History & Art Education, College of Fine Arts, UNSW |
| Publisher | Publisher:University of New South Wales. Art History & Art Education |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/copyright, http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/copyright |
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