ABSTRACT
As Hertz notes, the historical-cultural predominance of right-handedness comparative to left-handedness, and their respective positive and negative associations, established an ideal to which all were expected to conform and which society respected by positive sanctions. Those unfortunate enough to show a preference for the left suffered at best society’s disapproval and at worst often punitive discrimination. If in so-called primitive cultures the left hand is associated with unclean or inauspicious tasks, in the West its role has been more symbolically assigned in the name of uniformity and conformity, subject to a definite stigma. Symbolically, then, dexterity and gaucherie have been understood in positive and negative terms, which privilege the one and denigrate the other, as is immediately evident when one examines their respective etymologies and uses in language. While a single stable term is commonly found for ‘right’ among the Indo-European languages, ‘left’ appears in several distinct forms and seems altogether more unstable. One of Hertz’s sources suggests that the left was often spoken of allusively not directly, with various synonyms employed in substitution, as though it could only be approached tangentially, as something inherently distasteful or distrusted, encountered with disquiet or aversion. ‘Left’ emerges as sinister and suspect, or else is ridiculed as clumsy or awkward, ill-fitting or out of place. ‘Right’, by contrast, expresses only positive qualities: adroitness, dexterity and rectitude. It evokes uprightness, moral integrity and law, for which the left represents the contrary.2 In Matthew 6:3, for example, a well-known text that serves to inspire secrecy in giving, such that one’s left hand does not know what one’s right hand is doing, it is the right hand that does the giving, which must be kept secret from the indiscreet and suspect left, ‘hidden in the folds of the garment’, for, as Hertz’s cautionary description implies, it is a corrupting agent, empowered with all the attributes of an impure sacred:
The power of the left hand is always somewhat occult and illegitimate; it inspires terror and repulsion. Its movements are suspect; we should like it to remain quiet and discreet, hidden in the folds of the garment, so that its corruptive influence will not spread.
