58 Materiality and the Modern Cosmopolitan Novel
culture, rather than from the general’s own (p. 181). This therefore
presents an immediate and incongruous anachronism that reminds
the reader of the context-specific nature of even some of the most
politically charged concepts such as racism and, indeed, “race.” The
intrusive voice also reminds us that any engagement with historical
texts occurs within a dynamic and contested epistemological field—
with “meaning” changing, contingent upon the context in which it
is sought or encoded. Penetrating the prevailing cultural and social
influences that dictate ways in which stories such as Othello are read
is therefore a task that requires historical and cultural attentiveness
as well as the ability to establish critical cosmopolitan distance.
Yet further critical distance is required of the reader in the final
narrative thread of the novel. Servadio is a Jewish moneylender from
the very ghetto of Portobuffole that the African general visits in the
previous narrative. Along with two other “members of his house,”
he is wrongfully tried and executed for murdering and drinking the
blood of Christian children as part of their Jewish Passover festival.
Once more, Phillips employs a different register and narrative voice
to relate the story. In lieu of the first-person voice that so eloquently
provides further insight into (and empathy for) the psychological
motivations of “Othello,” this portion of the novel is dictated by the
rather callous and prejudiced voice of an anonymous third-person
narrator, ostensibly someone in charge of recording the case for legal
documentation.
Perhaps the most subtle indication of the narrator’s anti-Semitism
(his being undoubtedly a privileged male Christian) can be seen in
his deployment of essentialist rhetoric, which signals the presence
of a profoundly xenophobic ideology. His initial descriptions of the
Jews emphasize their dissimilarity to the Christian “natives,” which
he appears to suggest makes them automatically worthy of suspicion.
The Jewish men “look different,” he tells us, with their “untidy”
beards and “unseemly hats” (p. 51). Even though the women dress
with “more propriety, occasionally wearing handkerchiefs on their
heads like the Christian women wore in Church,” they nonetheless
refuse “to join in the most innocent female talk about household
matters or children” (p. 51). The third-person heterodiegetic narra-
tor is therefore seen by the reader as quite clearly placing obstacles