“The Canary in the Gemeinschaft? Jews, Disability, & Film” by Faye Ginsburg (Anthropology, New York University)

Abstract

This paper examines the complex landscape of disability in Jewish life, and how that has been deeply affected by recent profound changes in two key technologies -- biomedicine and documentary media -- involved in changing understandings of contemporary Jewish identity. In the case of biomedicine, are living in what some have called the second age of biology, when notions of ethnic and religious identity and their racialization have moved from phenotype to genotype, creating new forms of biological relatedness beyond strictly genealogical kinship, especially in the case of Jewish genetic disease. In the case of media, the impact of small format, inexpensive, widely available media making technologies has had remarkable effects in the production of new cultural subjects in this case, Jews with disabilities -- whose lives previously had been stigmatized and/or rendered invisible in public space. In the case of the documentary films being considered here, they are far more than media texts; they enter into social practice in their creation, exhibition and circulation, constituting a new form of Jewish cultural practice. Because disability has been hidden in Jewish cultural life, I think of them as canaries in the gemeinschaft, image-making and story-telling technologies to reframe the boundaries of acceptance and who is in and who is out of the Jewish community.

About the Author

Faye Ginsburg is David B. Kriser Professor of Anthropology at New York University.  She is the Director of NYU’s Center for Media, Culture and History, and Co-Director of the Center for Religion and Media.  Among her many publications are Contested Lives: The Abortion Debate in an American Community (University of California Press, 1989), Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of Reproduction (co-edited with Rayna Rapp, University of California Press, 1995), and Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain (co-edited with Lila Abu-Lughod and Brian Larkin, University of California Press, 2002).

Contact and Further Links

Contact Information:  faye.ginsburg@nyu.edu

Links:                         http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/anthro/faculty/ginsburg.html
http://www.nyu.edu/fas/center/religionandmedia/
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/media/