The last ears of corn left after the harvest were collected by those who had no possessions during the so-called gleaning. This pre-modern custom prompts Judith Kasper to search for clues in a stooped posture, in which she collects and assembles what others have dropped: the Old Testament story of Ruth becomes the occasion for an etymological search for the meaning of the word ‘empty’. From the harsh condemnation of the customary law of the wood rafters after the French Revolution, she develops a close reading of a commentary by Karl Marx that has hardly been discussed to date. Using Balzac's unfinished novel The Peasants, Judith Kasper traces the parcelling out of agriculture and the associated criminalisation of gleaning. In French painting, she sees the women who gather ears of corn, known as glaneuse, as almost revolutionary subjects. And in 19th century philology, it becomes clear that ‘reading ears is reading ears: reading with the ears’.
Gleaning is revealed here as a politically radical and always ambiguous practice, as a poetic alternative to the Christian gift, which always presupposes a giver. In short, longer and shortest texts, this essay revolves around the necessity of always leaving a little something behind so that others can pick it up.
Non-fiction
Judith Kasper, born in Esslingen, is Professor of General and Comparative Literature at Goethe University Frankfurt. She writes and researches in the field between philology, philosophy and psychoanalysis on French, German and Italian literature and theory. Her most recent publication is Der traumatisierte Raum. Insistenz, Inschrift, Montage bei Freud, Levi, Kertész, Sebald und Dante (2016), she is also co-editor of RISS, a journal for psychoanalysis.
