The Colonized Semites and the Infectious Disease
Theorizing and Narrativizing Anti-Semitism in the Levant, 1870-1914
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2228036 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Orit Bashkin (0000-0001-8096-8430, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 47 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 189-217 |
| Publication date | 2021-01-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Critical Inquiry (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0093-1896 • E-ISSN: 1539-7858 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/712116 |
| OpenAlex | W3115007830 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 27 |
This article studies the ways in which Arab intellectuals in Egypt and the Levant wrote about modern anti-Semitism during the four decades preceding the demise of the Ottoman Empire. This period is often described as the era of the Arab Nahda (revival); it refers to an era when Arab thinkers and writers showed great interest in the Arabic language, Islamic history, and Arab culture and consumed European literary and philosophical works. Arab intellectuals in this period wrote about Jewish affairs. They protested the persecution of Jews in Eastern and Western Europe and compared anti-Jewish racism to an infectious disease that spread in Europe’s cities and destroyed the fabric of its democracy, especially during the Dreyfus affair. I argue that these very pro-Jewish positions were connected to several conversations about the Arab self. Since the Arabs were categorized as Semites in European racial discourses, the meanings ascribed to the term were of utmost important to them. Arab writers also connected their discussions of anti-Semitism to their broader interest in science; as anti-Semitism seemed to have reflected a remnant from the medieval past, Arab writers wondered why this phenomenon prevailed in modern and scientific Europe. As Ottoman subjects witnessing the colonization of Egypt and North Africa, Arab intellectuals underscored the fact that Europe, whose intellectuals and politicians critiqued the persecution of Christians in the Ottoman Empire and argued that their colonization brought justice to persecuted minorities, was treating its minorities in a horrific fashion. Lastly, as Arab thinkers demanded linguistic and cultural rights within the Ottoman Empire and demanded to curb the powers of autocratic rulers, they were interested in Europe’s most glaring failed emancipation. Their reflections, moreover, could help us theorize the present moment, when Jews and Muslims struggle together against purist and racist movements in the US and in Europe
Ancient history · Islam · Judaism · Middle East · Persecution · Political science · Politics · Schism · Classics · History · Islamic Studies and History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Race, History, and American Society
Ottoman Orientalism
Rethinking Jews and Muslims
Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism
Defining Neighbors
The Vexed Relationship of Emancipation and Equality
We the Semites
Francophone Egyptian Nationalists, Anti-British Discourse, and European Public Opinion, 1885-1910
Their Blood is Eastern’
The Formation of Pan-Arab Ideology in the Interwar Years
Three Syrian intellectuals, a French Jewish Officer, and the Question of Late Ottoman Pluralism
Between anti‐Semitism and Islamophobia
Anthropological analyses of Islamophobia and anti‐Semitism in Europe
An Imperial Entanglement
Historicizing the Concept of Arab Jews in the Mashriq
Hannah Arendt and the Dreyfus Affair
Symptomatic Politics
Edward Said
An Arabic-Zionist Talmud
Discerning the ghosts and the interest of the living
Auerbach in Istanbul
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,2 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2024 (4) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 6 |