Assemblages and Realism in Tannaitic Law: Legal Intensities, Affects, and Circuits

Abstract

The question of rabbinic apprehensions of the nonhuman is not frequently listed as paramount in the study of rabbinic legal texts. Yet, nonhumans such as animals, tools, and trees, as well as impersonal forces, such as impurity, fill much of the space within Tannaitic legal traditions. What effect, if any, do these nonhumans have on the Tannaitic subject, and in what ways do they shape the legal traditions of which they are a part? To answer these questions and to understand the relationship between rabbinic law and rabbinic science in relation to the nonhuman, this study takes up assemblage theory. This study sheds light on the relationship of humans and nonhumans in Tannaitic legal traditions and shows that these traditions are predicated on a science of the nonhuman, which itself is predicated on broader underlying ontological commitments. This study also brings clarity to the realism/nominalism debate in rabbinic literature.