Food for Thought: The Question of the Animal in Gil Anidjar’s Blood: A Critique of Christianity

This paper reads Gil Anidjar’s Blood: A Critique of Christianity with the question of the animal in mind. The first section looks at the blood prohibition of the Hebrew Bible and Anidjar’s reading of the relevant biblical texts; the second section uses Acts 10 as an example of the New Testament’s view of eating and how this applies to the practice of the eucharist; the third, and final, section offers a reading of Freud’s Moses and Monotheism (in light of Anidjar’s reading of it) and returns to the question of the animal in the Hebrew Bible. The purpose throughout each section is to display how Blood opens up fruitful areas of exploration in connection with the question of the animal, eating, and (animal) blood.