Antisemitisme, hierarchies nationales et de genre: reproduction et reinterpretation des rapports de pouvoir

In: Raisons politiques: études de pensée politique, Heft 4, S. 125-141

Abstract

In anti-Semitism, the focus on an absolute Other, the Jew, tends to obscure the link to other power relations, particularly that of gender. This project seeks to shed some light on this link in late 19th-century anti-Semitic discourse in France & Germany. An analysis of the dominant anti-Semitic stereotypes of the Jew & Jewess shows that these constructs did not so much stem from a racial logic as they reproduced a preexistent sexual dichotomy. From this angle, every questioning of gender order that was declared to be natural was echoed in anti-Semitism, which incorporated the prevailing anti-feminist topoi at the fin de siecle. However, the sexual & social power relations were not simply included or reproduced in anti-Semitism, inasmuch as the new national -- & implicitly racial -- hierarchy established by anti-Semitism ended up winning out over other power relations or made it possible to reinterpret them. This adaptability may be considered one of the assets of anti-Semitism & helps explain its powerful appeal for many people, men & women alike, contrary to German psychoanalyst Margarete Mitscherlich's assertion that the proponents of anti-Semitism were exclusively male. Adapted from the source document.