‘With a Gesture, a Smile, a Glance’: Felix Salten Performing Vienna and Decoding Acculturation

Abstract This article accompanies Felix Salten, author of Bambi and popular journalist in fin-de-siècle Vienna, in his efforts to observe, negotiate, and perform social role performances in the modern city. Linking Jewish Cultural Studies with theatre theory, it argues that Salten developed an understanding for the performative qualities of society through his sensibility as a theatre critic, and that he positioned Jewish belonging within this performative framework as thoroughly corporeal. His writings, thus, articulate his Jewish experiences for his Vienna contemporaries as a physical practice of socialization—thereby decentring acculturation as a merely Jewish practice, while also unravelling a praxeology of belonging via attention, gaze, and posture.