Circumcising the body: negotiating difference and belonging in Germany

Abstract

The circumcision debate in Germany in 2012 is an exemplary case for symbolic struggles over national boundaries. The debate became a site for the negotiation of traditions practiced by religious minorities. We ask, first, how the clinical gaze constitutes Muslim and Jewish others. Second, we investigate how 'writing around' the debate's center, bodily integrity, became meaningful through analogies to other practices said to harm it. We compare newspaper coverage in Germany, Israel and Turkey, and reveal transnational discursive dynamics that transgress national boundaries. We show how 'otherness' of Muslims and Jews remains present in a self-perceived secular, liberal imaginary.

What Do We Talk About When We Talk about Antisemitism in Germany?

“…The narrowing view on and racialization of antisemitism is effected through a threepronged process of signalling that we have identified in earlier work: first, antisemitism and Jews are marked as external to the German body politic; next, Muslims are then marked as single-handedly placing Jews in danger through the putative practice of an antisemitism; finally, this antisemitism is presumed to have been learned and imported from their home countriescountries from which they are often three generations and a language removed. 8 Joining now this group alleged to threaten German Jewish life is a Black African philosopher and historian. Finally, white conservative male Germans signal themselves as protectors and saviours of Jews from Muslims and Blacks, who are depicted as never learned the right lessons from the Holocaust and remain external to the post-World War II Western civilization.…”