Materiality and Memory
Body, Blood, and Land in Rabbinic Tales of Death and Dismemberment
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23487273 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Julia Watts Belser (0000-0003-0354-4962, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Pages | 99-134 |
| Publication date | 2018-01-25 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | Rabbinic Tales of Destruction (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Oxford University PressNew York (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/oso/9780190600471.003.0005 |
| OpenAlex | W4238699331 |
| ISBN | 9780190600471 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 29 |
This chapter reads Bavli Gittin’s destruction narratives through the lens of ecological materialist criticism, tracing the trail of blood and other fleshy residues of the body that run through the account of the devastation of Betar. These tales imagine the body dismembered, undone by the conqueror’s violence. Filled with transcorporeal images of blood and brain seeping into the land, they blur the boundaries between human bodies and the rest of the material world. While these tales memorialize the lingering presence of body and blood in the land, they also betray an anxious instability: the tangible remains of Jewish death are all too easily rendered ephemeral. This chapter traces tensions over materiality and memory, permanence and erasure, heroism and defeat in the tales of the boiling blood of the slain prophet Zechariah and the martyrdom of the mother of seven sons, parsing the Bavli’s complex discourse of ruin and redemption.
Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Covert · Criticism · Dominion · Ephemeral key · Epistemology · Literature · Materialism · Materiality (auditing) · Narrative · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Ecology · History · Islamic Studies and History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Philosophy
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |