Language:
English
Year of publication:
2000
Titel der Quelle:
Diaspora and Visual Culture
Angaben zur Quelle:
(2000) 76-91
Keywords:
Dreyfus, Alfred,
;
Antisemitism History 19th century
;
Antisemitism Caricatures and cartoons
;
Trials (Treason)
;
Jews in popular culture
Abstract:
Discusses the person Alfred Dreyfus as a challenge to French society because of his assimilation. He did not fit the stereotype of the Jew, so French society made him fit visually and symbolically by caricaturing and humiliating him. His scapegoating in the press and at his court-martial reflected an attempt to control his body and what it represented. He was made to appear effeminate. This effort, that involved pseudo-sciences like phrenology and Bertillon’s handwriting analysis, reflected the racism and sexism of the host society. A clear link between antisemitism and French anxieties about their self-image emerges when the French elite refused to make public a homosexual affair that was discovered between the military envoys of Italy and Germany (France’s real powerful enemy, as opposed to the Jewish scapegoat). $c (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism)
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