10dem ulinity | inte- pantic vhose man. sular, ched 5 for 3 of pce rice nti pi he sly a pt a io J THE SOVEREIGN SETTLER VERSUS THE CONSCIOUS PARIAH 35 rupture of his conversion to Zionism. This underlying continuity is that he, and later the Jews who as a collective stood in his way with their obstinate exilic femiyinity, would be accepted as equal by white Christian_men. This doef not mean that his recognition — similar to Tazare’s — of the Ee a new ghetto was not an important development. Rather, ifies that all his thoughts about the Jewish Question aid about politics — conversion to Christianity, socialism or Zionism, duelling or colonizing — were fundamentally underlain by this ne obsession, a central feature of which was the emphasis upon form_ at the expense of content, upon the vitalizing impact of the aesthetics of the violent gesture itself as an affirmation of masculinity at the expense, of the purpose. Whereas for Lazare anarchism was a world view, Herzl wrote in his brilliant feuilleton (29 April 1892) on the trial of the French anarchist Ravachol: ‘The ordinary murderer rushes into the brothel with his loot. Ravachol has discovered another voluptuousness; the voluptuousness "31 of a great idea and of martyrdom. The New Ghetto indeed marked the beginning of Herzl’s turn to Zion- ism, which, at least in literary terms, culminated in Altneuland. It was at one and the same time a compensation for Herzl’s own past dueling humiliations, and an aesthetic gesture whereby, ultimately, Jews would Iearn how to die in a manly and honourable manner in duels and thus ed as + white men, Herz!’s insatiable attraction to duelling in his student days in Vienna is well documented. He was a member of the ultra~German nationalist duelling fraternity Albia, from which he was expelled, partly because of the fraternity’s growing anti-Semitism But it is quite plausible that the expulsion also stemmed from the fact that he had avoided a duel in the ‘dishonourable’ manner reminiscent of Jacob Samuel's first avoidance of von Schramm’s challenge.'** Herzl’s confession from his student days is revealing: ‘[T]he peculiar feeling of impotence, the humiliating consciousness of being incapable! Eunuch, away!"™ All this culminated in the only fitting resolution Herzl could find for the breaking of the walls of The New Ghetto: a duel that makes little sense even within the narrowly masculine confines of the logic of duelling. The strikingly intimate comment Herzl made to Schnitzler upon completing the play, with which this chapter opened, can now be revisited. By saying, ‘In the special instance of this play, I want to hide my genitals even more than any other time’,"™ Herz] sought to acquire, at least in a literary way, the Mensur, the scar incurred in a duel and a masculine sign inscribed on the body, one that would erase the scar of circumcision.