Language:
English
Year of publication:
2023
Titel der Quelle:
Antisemitism, Islamophobia and the Politics of Definition
Angaben zur Quelle:
(2023) 89-111
Keywords:
Antisemitism
;
Jews Identity
;
Group identity
;
Jewish nationalism
Abstract:
The word ‘Jew(s)’ has always been a peculiarly potent term whose lability as a concept and category has long rendered it a powerful mechanism for thinking about, constructing, and contesting collectives or collective identities and values in what has come to be called the ‘global West’. Examples of this phenomenon are myriad and are found in seemingly countless forms and variations. Among historical examples are many that clearly partake in acts, attitudes, and images appropriately labeled as ‘anti-Jewish’ or ‘antisemitic’. Other uses are apparently positive or ‘philosemitic’. And still others are enmeshed in neither (or both) of these dynamics as workings of a widespread culture in which Jews, as well as non-Jews, now actively participate in making meaning with and from iconic narratives about Jews. It is this range of complex workings that this chapter explores in order to illuminate significant elements of the current sociopolitical context, in which people of conscience seem unable to reach consensus on definitions and examples of anti-Jewish animus or ‘antisemitism’. In this context, the broad, robust, and inherently plural category Jews has been increasingly circumscribed and merged, in public discourse, with the grammatically definite, singular, and seemingly monolithic phrase ‘the Jewish People’. This particular phrase has a decidedly ethnonationalist pedigree, whose pervasive instrumentalization and institutionalization in the past few decades have substantially undermined Jews’ ability to further pluralistic visions and movements combatting racism and xenophobia in all its forms, including that of antisemitism.
DOI:
10.1007/978-3-031-16266-4_5
URL:
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