Language:
German
Year of publication:
2011
Titel der Quelle:
Affinität wider Willen?
Angaben zur Quelle:
(2011) 85-102
Keywords:
Arendt, Hannah,
;
Adorno, Theodor W.,
;
Antisemitism Historiography
;
Antisemitism Philosophy
;
Antisemitism History 20th century
Abstract:
Focuses on the place of Adorno's "The Authoritiarian Personality" (1950) and Arendt's "The Origins of Totalitarianism" (1951) in the field of research on antisemitism which began to develop in the U.S. in 1941-45. For both Arendt and Adorno, the Shoah had a decisive effect on their social critique. Although central to present-day theoretical reflections, these writers' earlier texts on antisemitism remained mostly unknown outside émigré circles until the end of the 1940s. This changed with the publication of the above two works, although they were not viewed primarily as contributions to research on antisemitism. The chapter on antisemitism in "The Origins of Totalitarianism" raised interest only after the 1970s, and the comments on antisemitic prejucide in "The Authoritiarian Personality" were overlooked. Adorno's "Dialektik der Aufklärung (1957) was noticed in the U.S. only in the 1970s, and its comments on antisemitism still remain largely overlooked today. Contends that, for both writers, the experience of exile was also an experience of American antisemitism and indifference to the fate of the Jews in the Holocaust, as well as to that of the 200,000 Jewish refugees in the U.S. The research on antisemitism was created in response to a demand from intellectuals in the fields of politics and science, and to the influx of European refugees. Compares these two thinkers' theories regarding antisemitism, and discusses the changes they underwent in the mid- to late 1940s, before they wrote their major works.
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