'We were turned into Jews': space, subjectivation, and resistance in occupied Paris. (7th February 2023)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Le Noc, Maël; Sarmiento, Eric
• Is Part Of: Social & cultural geography. Volume 24:Number 2(2023)
• Page Start: 363
• Page End: 379
• Publication Date: 2023-02-07
• Subjects: Holocaust -- persecution -- subjectivation -- signage -- body-writing; Holocausto -- persecución -- subjetivación -- señalización -- escritura corporal; Shoah -- persécution -- subjectivation -- signalisation -- inscription corporelle; Human geography -- Periodicals; 304.205
• DOI: 10.1080/14649365.2021.1950825
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1464-9365

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Recent geographical scholarship has shown that the persecution and extermination of European Jews during the Holocaust was associated with profound spatial transformations at every scale, from the body to the continent. Yet, the embodied spatial experience of Jews throughout persecution and the way it affected their subjectivity, particularly as they kept living and surviving in the ordinary city, has been understudied. In this paper, we draw on the diaries of six Parisian Jews written during the Holocaust to explore the process of subject formation, or subjectivation, as antisemitic measures transform their daily life and experience of public space in the city. We focus in particular on two techniques of control that sought to produce particular kinds of subjects by working on the relationship between bodies and their surrounding milieus: signage and body writing . Relying on understandings of subjectivation as contested, contingent, and multiple we show that, first, 'ideal' subject formation relied on techniques involving both bodily inscription and differentiation as well as the resignification of urban space; and second, that such efforts were resisted and taken up only partially by both Jewish and non-Jewish Parisians, resulting in incomplete and contested attempts at subjection.