The Kindest Cut: Circumcision and Queer Kinship in The Merchant of Venice

Abstract

This essay argues that through evoking the idea of a male community bound through the act of circumcision, Antonio’s proposed forfeit of a “pound of flesh” suggests a form of kinship (or, in the play’s terms, kindness) based on contract rather than heredity. I characterize these ties as instances of “queer kinship” because they occupy an in-between space in which identities traverse sexual and national categories. By extending the meanings of circumcision well beyond this ritual’s original gendered and national context, Shakespeare’s play opens onto a subtle, corporeal terrain that promises alternative, half-imagined structures of intimacy and community.