Suchergebnisse

This paper revisits the fabled yet substantially neglected public exchange between Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem in the wake of Arendt's publication of the book Eichmann in Jerusalem. Analyzing the central concept of the correspondence, Ahabath Israel, the paper investigates what may be considered two diametrically opposed constructions of Jewish identity and politics. Scholem's particularistic "politics of continuity" is analyzed in terms achieving continuity or even unity between past and present, the sacred and the secular. This construction is supported by his ultimate dividing line being between the Jewish and non-Jewish, where his correspondent's place is constructed outside the boundaries of the group. In turn, Arendt introduces the rigidly universalist constitutive categories of post-Enlightenment liberal democracies, where the firm demarcation is drawn exactly between the sacred and secular, the religious and the politics. Consequently, the intrusion of a religious tradition is understood by her as an attempt by Scholem to render otherwise earthly objects beyond the limits of criticism, manifesting not only a racist but a downright totalitarian tendency. Having presented these radical positions — Occidentalism and Orientalism, respectively —, the paper will conclude with pondering the possibility of their reconciliation.

This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in Routledge Handbook of Language and Politics on 22/08/2017, available online: http://routledge.com/9781138779167 ; This chapter will examine race and racism and the relations between social ideas (e.g. the existence of races; the association of qualities/characteristics with particular racial/ethnic/religious groups), social stratification based on these ideas, and discourse. After introductory and contextualising sections, where we introduce the historic and conceptual bases of the subject, the empirical and analytic sections of the chapter will be structured in such a way that we gradually examine levels and details that the reader may not have initially considered. We start with the most obviously prejudicial texts, produced and circulated by European extreme-right political parties. Next, we will examine a case which appears to have a racial dimension without race being explicitly articulated: a televised interview with the actor Samuel L Jackson, in which the interviewer mistook him for Laurence Fishburne. Finally, we will consider British conservative broadsheet newspapers' reporting of a conflagration of the Israel/Palestine conflict ('Operation Cast Lead'), and the ways they related this act of reporting to acts of antisemitism. The chapter will thus progressively move to less conspicuous and more dilemmatic waters, and in so doing demonstrate the value of close analysis when examining discourse on this topic.