By Hand: Writing Hands and Making Genders in German Culture

By Hand investigates the persistent absence of female hands from the story of the human hand. Mediating between mind and body, self and world, the hand has long been invested with the power to classify and organize bodies as human or non-human. This project argues that hands are also central to constructing and upholding a binary understanding of gender, in which the singular hand functions as a material and metaphorical instrument of patriarchy.

Against the dominant narrative, the hands and handed experiences of women reveal the many ways in which the hand is used to create, transmit, or resist these binary gender identities. Close readings of Rahel Levin Varnhagen’s letters, Hannah Höch’s essays on embroidery, and Charlotte Wolff’s psycho-physiological hand analyses offer alternate stories of the hand. Together they not only demonstrate the variety and skill of women’s manual accomplishments, but also trace how hand work becomes gender work. By offering a nuanced consideration of hands as tools for the construction of gendered difference, By Hand suggests a more general reconsideration of the gendered body as a contested site of cultural production.

Kathryn E. McEwen, Michigan State University, East Lansing, USA.