Jews Out of the Question. A Critique of Anti-Anti-Semitism. Introduction (original) (raw)
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Critical theories of antisemitism
1999
Critical Theories of Antisemitism Distinguishing between different ways of thinking about antisemitism, this study concentrates on those theories that understand antisernitism as a uniquely modern phenomenon. Covering the period from the mid-19th century to the present day, it first examines the work of Marx and Nietzsche and then moves on to those theorists who wrote in the immediate aftermath of the holocaust and concludes with the postmodern writings of Bauman and Lyotard. It argues that these critical theories of antisemitism all relate the emergence of antisemitism to modern forms of political emancipation and questions the impact of the holocaust upon this body of thought. The study argues that the fluidity and open-endedness by which the early writers characterise modernitymost notably the ambivalence within modernity itself between the possibility of full emancipation and barbaritycomes to be replaced by an increasing pessimism that sees antisernitism as modernity's only possible outcome. It argues that this change is accompanied first by increasing the centrality of antisemitism to modernity, and also by defining more rigidly the concepts by which antisemitism is explained, most noticeably, the concept of "the Jews". This study argues that as a result of these interrelated developments, critical theories replicate many of the assumptions of the antisemitic worldview identified in the early works. By calling for a cautious and critical return to these earlier ways of explaining antisemitism, the study concludes by pointing to an approach that remains within the tradition of critical theory, but which re-establishes the critical distance between ways of accounting for antisemitism and the phenomenon itselfone in which the "Jewish question" is de-centred, the explanatory concepts reopened to question and the promise of emancipation reinvigorated.
Confronting Antisemitism from the Perspectives of Philosophy and Social Sciences: Introduction
An End to Antisemititsm! vol. 4, 2021
The present,fourth volume of An End to Antisemitism! combines articles that address the studyofa ntisemitism from perspectiveso ft he social sciences,i ncluding psychology, philosophy, and pedagogy. The contributions to this final volume of the proceedings series essentiallym irror the general approach to combating antisemitism that is suggested by the whole five-volume series An End to Antisemitism! One of the series' main arguments is that successful strategies to fight antisemitism must be based on at horough scholarlya nd scientific analysis of Jew-hatred. Such an analysis begins with the assessment not onlyo ft he level of antisemitism in ag iven population and time but alsob yi dentifying which forms of Jew-hatred wereo ra re more prominent thano thers. Thisa ssessment is followed by an interdisciplinary theoretical reflection of antisemitisma nd by an analysis of the assessed data. Such theoretical reflection must be the basis for the development of successful strategies to combat antisemitism. This first part is followed by articles dedicatedtothe theoretical reflection of antisemitism on philosophical, sociological, and psychological levels. Historical and religious perspectiveshavebeen discussed in previous volumes.¹ The results of these theoretical contributions point the wayt ot heir implementation in the form of pedagogical studies and as examples of best practices. Assessmento fA ntisemitism Assessment of the level of antisemitism has been established as one of the key prerequisites to successfullyf ight it-bothi nv olume 1o ft he present series as well as in the respective official catalogue of measures for combatingantisemitism.² Onlyanin-depth understanding of the level and nature of antisemitism in
The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2017
This impressive book, offering essays by 19 authors on the topic of the recent upsurge in virulent anti-Jewish hostility, is daunting, not by sheer size, which is considerable, but by the very fact of its existence, the very fact of what must be its focus the worldwide rise of a pernicious, persistent anti-Semitism. The topic of course must be explored, and is explored with painstaking scholarship, intensive scrutiny of the subject itself, commitment, eloquence, and passion. The book is the outgrowth of a four-day conference involving 45 scholars from 10 countries at Indiana University's Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism (ISCA) in April 2014. The 19 authors represented in the book live in, and/or are affiliated with colleges and universities in Austria, England, France, Germany, Norway, Poland, and the United States. It is important, and impressive, that the contributors to the book are international, because anti-Semitism is a burgeoning international problem. The book is organized into four parts, (I) Defining and Assessing Antisemitism, (II) Intellectual and Ideological Contexts, (III) Holocaust Denial, Evasion, Minimization, and (IV) Regional Manifestations. The second chapter, ''The Ideology of the New Antisemitism,'' by Kenneth Marcus, is useful in identifying some key psychoanalytic issues. He sets the stage by underscoring that antisemitism is an ideology, quoting Sartre, who described antisemitism as a ''conception of the world'' (p. 21), giving us a broad, inclusive perspective to consider. He identifies the irrationality of otherwise educated, knowledgeable people who accept an ideology that includes the infamous blood libel, that Jews murder Christian babies to use their blood in making Passover matzoh. He continues by citing Holocaust-denial statements that Jews invented stories about a Holocaust that never happened, and by citing the belief that the antisemitic forgery, ''The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,'' is true. He anchors his discourse in an acknowledgment of Freudian thought, that ''the ideology of hatred is a symptom of repressed desire'' (p. 25). Marcus discusses trauma as underlying antisemitic ideology, citing projection and displacement as essential to further understanding how people deal with the conflicts generated by repressed desire, in an attempt to rid themselves of forbidden desires. He delineates various ways in which Jews are blamed for everything, quoting a 19th century CE (Common Era) tract that traces everything evil to Jews, and contemporary Islamic thought that attributes every ''catastrophe'' to Jews (p. 37).
"Antisemitism" and "Judaism" in Dialectic of Enlightenment: A Jewish Answer to the Jewish Question
This paper considers the concepts of " antisemitism " and " Judaism " in Dialectic of Enlightenment, a foundational text of the so-called Frankfurt School of Critical Theory written in the U.S. from 1938 to 1944 by Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, two German theorists of Jewish origin, during their exile from Nazi Germany. At the heart of Dialectic is the question of how to critique the Enlightenment tradition's legacy of domination without abandoning its commitment to reason. Departing from Dialectic's surprising admission of the " truth " of antisemitism (" in the sense that fascism has made it true "), I show that by the 1940s the so-called Jewish Question had become, more than just a test case, the locus around which Adorno and Horkheimer could develop their method of critical theory. Connecting Dialectic with the work of their colleague Walter Benjamin, from whom they had begun to borrow theological, and specifically messianic, concepts, I argue that " Judaism " developed in their thought as a counter-concept through which to formulate a critical method that resisted naïve faith both in its accuracy of analysis and its independence from the toxic socio-political conditions under which it was created. Identifying the figure of Judaism with the possibility of critical thought allowed Horkheimer and Adorno to hold on to a concept of hope beyond the immanent horizon (Adorno's " What is must be changeable if it is not to be all ") while simultaneously rejecting the Enlightenment tradition's allegedly uncritical faith in reason. Situating Dialectic with reference to the authors' scholarly trajectories and related work by their contemporaries, I present an account of the 1940s as a pivotal moment in the development of critical theory and early attempts to make sense of the Holocaust.
October Reflections: Antisemitism, Antizionism and the Jewish Question
Unpublished, 2023
October Reflections: Antisemitism, Antizionism and the Jewish Question Abstract This presentation tries to make some sense of the aftermath of the events of 7 October in which approximately 1200 Israeli and non-Israelis were raped, tortured, kidnapped and slaughtered by the terror group Hamas. My argument is that we can try and make sense of this aftermath through three interrelated thoughts. The first is an understanding of the irrationality of the Jewish question as the doppelgänger or ‘evil twin’ of the rationality of Jewish emancipation. The second is the idea that antizionism has come to supplant, or, at the least is coming to supplant antisemitism as the latest iteration of this so-called ‘question’; and third, is the combined effect of these two ideas on the meaning of Jewish emancipation today.
Interrogating ‘new anti-Semitism’
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2013
Abstract Since the breakdown of the Middle East Peace Summit at Camp David in 2000 and the start of the second Palestinian Intifada there has been a voluminous literature that asserts that hostility to Israel and Zionism is a new form of anti-Semitism. This essay critiques the ‘new anti-Semitism’ view. Reversing the method that Plato uses in the Republic, the analysis moves from microcosm (an imaginary ride on a London bus) to macrocosm (the Middle East). In the process, the author argues that anti-Semitism is best defined not by an attitude to Jews but by the figure of ‘the Jew’. In the light of the analysis, and bearing in mind the variety of possible reasons for hostility to Israel or Zionism, it is difficult to see how the ‘new anti-Semitism’ view can be sustained.
The Holocaust destroyed Jewish communities across Europe and in Poland. Subsequently, in the Soviet bloc, most Jewish survivors were expelled or coerced to leave, while the memory of the millennium-long presence of Jews in Poland was thoroughly suppressed. This article, through the lens of a scholar’s personal biography, reflects on how snippets of the Jewish past tend to linger on, in the form of absent presences, despite the national and systemic norm of erasing any remembrance of Poles of the Jewish religion. This norm used to be the dominant type of antisemitism in communist Poland after 1968, and has largely continued unabated after the fall of communism.