Hands and Herodotus: Filling Gaps, Probing Boundaries

Abstract: This article focuses on a series of episodes from Herodotus’s Histories that feature hands or other body parts as fluctuating boundaries of vitality. Part one reframes the phenomenon of iconatrophy in terms of the narrative agency of material objects. Material agency vies with the agency of the narrator as Herodotus and his objects meet each other halfway. Part two picks up on the theme of the severed hand, showing the body generating a story. The hand is a porous meeting point of human/nonhuman agency. The severed hand materializes the ‘gap’ that is central to the process of storytelling.