Sodom v. Circumcision

Sodom v. Circumcision May 11, 2015

A hermeneutical rule of thumb I share with students: Chapter 2 comes after chapter 1. It has many applications, as in “Chapter 18 comes after chapter 17.” Make the observation, then ask, Why? Why is that story there, after this one and before that one?

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah comes in the midst of the life of Abraham. Chapter 17: Circumcision; chapter 18: Angels visit Sodom; chapter 19: Sodom destroyed. Why?

Paul Kahn (Putting Liberalism in its Place, 187) suggests that the sequence deliberately contrasts the sexual politics of Abraham with that of Sodom. The political failure of Sodom “is brought on by the corruption of sexuality, vividly portrayed in the attempted rape by the men of Sodom of the messengers of God. That rape is a kind of counterpoint to circumcision as the presence of the sacred within the sexual act itself. The covenant with God, which makes possible a meaningful history, is embodied in the sexuality of the family. This is what Abraham achieves as a result of the covenant; it is what Sodom lacks.”

Kahn generalizes the point by observing that “Sodom tells a story about the dangers of sexuality as well.” Specifically, it is a story showing that the “possibility of alternative reasons of the body and of its sexuality are always latent.” There is a standing conflict between the covenantal vision of the family signified by circumcision and the Sodomite vision of sexuality. In Kahn’s view, Sodom present “a vision of the pornographic as a representation of a kind of political freedom. . . . The homosexual appears here as paradigmatic of an affirmative reading of the body as the source of its own meanings, and thus a denial of the covenant.” It is a denial of the covenant because homosexuality asserts “completeness within the body.” Sodom is about the danger, not a denial of “the possibility of alternative readings of the body’s sexuality.”

Kahn does some fancy stepping here, and I’m not sure what dance he’s doing. But his reading of Sodom is suggestive nevertheless. As a cut in the flesh, commanded by God, circumcision is a confession of the body’s incompleteness; meaning is inscribed on the body; the body doesn’t have its own meaning. The men of Sodom find the source of the body’s meaning within their own bodies. The pornographic and the Sodomite are at one in this: A single body, without a genuine other, becomes the source of its own meaning. The pornographic is represented by Sodom because both involve declarations of freedom to choose one’s own self.


Browse Our Archives