Rhinestone Aesthetics and Religious Essence: Looking Jewish in Paris
Author(s)
Publication Name
Publication Date
Abstract
I explore the paradoxical construction of race through fashion among the Parisian children and grandchildren of upwardly mobile immigrant North African Jews. Faced with the conflation of North Africanity and inassimilable difference, Sephardi youth escaped some forms of French racism by enacting others. By essentializing and individualizing Jewishness through conspicuous consumption, they made Frenchness possible for "Arab Jews" in ways foreclosed to Arab Muslims. But these same practices also helped fashion and biologize their exclusion from the French nation. Rather than encourage the deconstruction of "modern" identity narratives, Sephardi youth liminality thus encouraged the reessentialization of class, ethnicity, religion, and nation.
Topics
Main Topic: Identity and Community Jewish Identity Race Racism Sephardi Jews North African Jewry Youth Jewish - Muslim Relations Clothing
Genre
Geographic Coverage
Original Language
Volume/Issue
36(4)
Page Number / Article Number
722-734
DOI
Link
Link to article in JSTOR, Rhinestone Aesthetics and Religious Essence: Looking Jewish in Paris
Link to article (paywalled), Rhinestone Aesthetics and Religious Essence: Looking Jewish in Paris
Link to article (paywalled), Rhinestone Aesthetics and Religious Essence: Looking Jewish in Paris
Bibliographic Information
Rhinestone Aesthetics and Religious Essence: Looking Jewish in Paris. 2009: 722-734. https://archive.jpr.org.uk/10.1111/j.1548-1425.2009.01206.x
