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A COMMON CAUSE Reconnecting the study of racism and antisemitism
Author(s): Cousin, Glynis; Fine, Robert
Date: 2012
Topics: Antisemitism, Main Topic: Antisemitism, Racism, Antisemitism: Opposition to and Activism Against Antisemitism
Abstract: This paper explores connections and disconnections in the study of racism and antisemitism within sociological inquiry. It begins with an exposition of how certain prominent theorists of racism and antisemitism (e.g., Du Bois, Fanon, Arendt) have in the past identified important connections between these fields of exclusion and persecution in the making of European modernity. While their analysis of connections between racism and antisemitism may have been uneven and provisional, the more recent tendency to replace such connectivity with separatist or even oppositional readings has been a step backward. This tendency toward what we call ‘methodological separatism’ impoverishes our sociological imagination for a number of reasons. First, it neglects the extent to which prejudice and persecution in relation to Muslims, Jews and Black people are connected phenomena in the formation of European modernity. Second, it encourages divisive and competitive analytical approaches which lock their protagonists in rival camps and reproduce aspects of the language of racism they oppose. While affirming the distinctive characteristics of anti-Black and anti-Jewish racisms, we argue that the development of a more integrated approach is required to enable our understanding of how modernity continues to operate.
Fighting with phantoms: a contribution to the debate on antisemitism in Europe
Author(s): Fine, Robert
Date: 2009
Topics: Main Topic: Antisemitism, Antisemitism: New Antisemitism, Theory
Abstract: The point of departure of this paper is the polarization of ways of thinking about antisemitism in Europe, between those who see its recent resurgence and those that affirm its empirical marginalization and normative delegitimation. The historical question raised by this polarization of discourses is this: what has happened to the antisemitism that once haunted Europe? Both the current camps—‘alarmists’ and ‘deniers’, as they are sometimes known, or, perhaps more accurately, new antisemitism theorists and their critics—have the strength to challenge celebratory views of European civilization. One camp sees the return to Europe of an old antisemitism in a new and mediated guise. The other sees the return to Europe of a rhetoric of antisemitism that is not only anachronistic but also delusory and deceptive. Overshadowing this debate is the memory of the Holocaust and the continuing presence of the Israel–Palestine conflict. The aim of this paper is to get inside these discourses and deconstruct the dualism that generates homogenizing and stigmatizing typifications on either side. The spirit of Hannah Arendt hovers over this work and the question of the meaning of her legacy runs through the text.