A Matter of Distinction: On Recent Work by Jan Assmann

AJS Review ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 385-393
Author(s):  
Eliza Slavet
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
English Language ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Canonical Texts

The study of memory and its collaborators (history, narrative, and trauma) has been at the center of both the German- and English-language academic worlds for at least the last fifteen years. While many of the “canonical” texts overlap, the anxieties and implications of recent scholarship have often been quite distinct, particularly in discussions of the memory and history of the Holocaust, and more generally, anti-Semitism, Jews, and Judaism. This phenomenon is played out in the debates about Jan Assmann's work, particularly since the publication of Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (1997).

The Tropes of Jewish/Muslim Difference

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yulia Egorova
Keyword(s):  
Reference Point ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Communal Violence ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

The chapter explores how notions of Jewish and Muslim difference play out in the history of communal violence in independent India. In doing so it will first interrogate the way in which trajectories of anti-Muslim ideologies intersect in India with Nazi rhetoric that harks back to Hitler’s Germany, and the (lack of) the memory of the Holocaust on the subcontinent. It will then discuss how the experiences of contemporary Indian Jewish communities both mirror and contrast those of Indian Muslims and how Indian Jews and the alleged absence of anti-Semitism in India have become a reference point in the discourse of the Hindu right deployed to mask anti-Muslim and other forms of intolerance.

scholarly journals Political cognition. Can scientific paradigms change cognitive status of anti-semitism and the Holocaust in the history of the jewish people?

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-54
Author(s):  
Łukasz Młyńczyk
Keyword(s):  
Jewish People ◽  
Research Strategy ◽  
Cognitive Status ◽  
Historical Experience ◽  
Research Paradigms ◽  
Scientific Paradigms ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The People ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of

Abstract The purpose of this article is to look at selected positions devoted to issues of historical experience of the Jewish people for their research strategy and their corresponding or lack of dominant research paradigms. The basic intention is to indicate the path of political science to know the history of the nation, through limited exemplification as a response to the absolutization of the research results before they are published to be limited exclusively to the study of the Jews, as the people, especially experienced by the history, which enforces appropriate research approaches. If we reduce the judgment of contemporary phenomena and problems concerning the Jews to the stereotypical anti-Semitism, then any knowledge does not make much sense, because everything important is explained and closed in one cause. Something else is identifying antipathy as an act of anti-Semitism, and quite something else its formal manifestation. On the basis of science, you can examine any antipathy towards minorities alike, and if we assume a separate code for the Jews, then we forget that the function of science is discovering, not decreeing the result.

The Three Horseman of the Holocaust: Anti-Semitism, East European Empire, Aryan Folk Community

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
William W. Hagen
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Mass Murder ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
East European ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Conscious Choice ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anti Jewish

This article traces the three main issues which dominated Hitler's regime in Germany during the Holocaust. Two interpretive traditions have, since Hitler's day, commanded scholarly efforts to understand the Holocaust. One emphasizes ideas, recounting the intellectual history of anti-Semitism and the aims and political actions of those gripped by its poisoned talons. Paired with this approach is the conviction that history is made by human beings' conscious choice: beliefs inspire purposive behaviour seeking their realization. Historical actors are aware of their actions and responsible for them. In Holocaust historiography, this widespread understanding of history and human behaviour has yielded the ‘intentionalist’ argument. This holds that anti-Semitic ideology of a uniquely aggressive type flourished in late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century Germany; and the anti-Jewish policies (Judenpolitik) of Hitler's ‘Third Reich’ led, if perhaps by a ‘twisted path’, to a mass murder which the Nazis' anti-Semitic ideas, and the dictator Hitler's in particular, authorized and even commanded.

Zionism Reconsidered

2020 ◽  
pp. 24-43
Author(s):  
Jerome Slater
Keyword(s):  
Arab World ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Jewish State ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Religious Claim

In some ways, Zionism is legitimate and persuasive, but in other ways it has undermined the possibilities of Israeli peace with the Arab world. The argument that the history of murderous anti-Semitism, culminating in the Holocaust, justified the creation of a Jewish state, somewhere, was strong. However, the arguments that the Jews had an eternal right to Palestine were weak. The religious claim that God gave Palestine to the Jews is challenged by Christian and Islamic counterclaims. The argument that 2,000 years ago the Jews were predominant in Palestine until they were driven out by the Romans has long been shown by archaeologists and historians to have little foundation. Even if true, it would be irrelevant to establishing a convincing claim for exclusive Jewish sovereignty today. Likewise, the Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations Mandate to Britain, the basis for the Zionist claims based on modern history, were simply colonialist impositions.

The History of the English Language and the Medievalist

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seth Lerer
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Change ◽  
First Century ◽  
Linguistic Change ◽  
Languages In Contact ◽  
History Of ◽  
Vowel Shift ◽  
Vernacular Literacy

The History of the English Language (HEL) is a largely ideological enterprise keyed to fitting literary evidence into expected categories, and yet recent work has suggested that we can no longer simply assume that phenomena such as the Great Vowel Shift were “real,” historical, systematic changes. Contemporary debates on language change and use have historical precedent; social arguments about language are part of a very long tradition; languages in contact have generated linguistic change and adaptation, and language and national identity, as well as personal self-consciousness, have long gone together. This chapter will explore the ways in which the historical and institutional associations of HEL and the “medievalist” are contingently driven, and then to suggest some ways in which the redefinition of the “medievalist” in the twenty-first century can productively include a newer, critical sensibility about the place of HEL in the teachings of social vernacular literacy.

Philology, Theory, and Critical Thinking Through the History of the English Language

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Giancarlo
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
English Language ◽  
Teaching Practice ◽  
Potential Usefulness ◽  
Language Difference ◽  
Critical Questions ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theoretical Issues

This chapter summarizes recent scholarship on the history of philology and literary theory, and on calls for a “return to philology.” It explains the potential usefulness of theoretical questions for teaching the History of the English Language (HEL). It summarizes a set of relevant theoretical issues for organizing a HEL curriculum along a series of contrasts and self-critical questions: synchrony vs. diachrony; content vs. structure; levels of change; conscious vs. unconscious variation; stability vs. instability; standard vs. nonstandard; language difference and identity. The chapter then presents a series of sample inquiries and resources for foregrounding these issues in teaching practice. It concludes with a summary set of practical observations about teaching outcomes for promoting greater discourse awareness through HEL, and the potential scope for further theoretical elaboration in HEL teaching.

scholarly journals One Time, Many Times

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rahul Rao
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Review Article ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Experience Of Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Over Time

This review article surveys recent work on time and temporality in international relations. It begins with an overview of Kimberly Hutchings’s influential history of ideas exploring the relationship between chronos (quantitative experience of time) and kairos (qualitative conceptualisation of time). Building on the architecture of Hutchings’s argument, it surveys more recent scholarship that supplements, extends and complicates her insights in two ways. First, while Hutchings focuses on the way in which theorisations of kairos shift over time, the development of a unified global chronotic imaginary was itself a contested process, frequently interrupted by kairotic considerations. Second, while Hutchings is interested in western conceptualisations of kairos, recent work has shifted the analytical focus to those subject positions marginalised by such kairotic imaginaries.

Beyond Helpless Victims and Survivor Trauma: New Historiography on Jews in the Age of the Holocaust

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 693-707
Author(s):  
FERENC LACZÓ
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Second World War ◽  
National Narrative ◽  
World War ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Before And After ◽  
History Of ◽  
European Jewish ◽  
Second World

This review essay explores recent scholarship on the history of Jews in the post-Habsburg territories, before and after the Second World War. The impressive wave of scholarship that has emerged in recent decades on European Jewish history shortly before, during and, increasingly, after the Holocaust, has only made historians more aware of how much they have left to do to reconstruct, at least in text, the lives of European Jews – a multilingual and culturally, economically and politically heterogeneous group – that the Holocaust so systematically and brutally destroyed. Aiming to overcome reductionist attempts that either subsume the history of Jews under a national narrative or parcel it into separate national units without comparative or transnational agendas, a growing number of scholars aim to reconceptualise Jewish history as being crucial to European and global history.

scholarly journals The Embassy of Poland in Poland: The Polin Myth in the Museum of the History of Polish Jews (MHPJ) as narrative pattern and model of minority-majority relations [Ambasada Polski w Polsce. Mit Polin w Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich jako wzór narracji i model relacji mniejszość-większość]

2016 ◽  
pp. 1-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elżbieta Janicka
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Polish Jews ◽  
Critical Conversation ◽  
European Jewish

The Embassy of Poland in Poland: The Polin Myth in the Museum of the History of Polish Jews (MHPJ) as narrative pattern and model of minority-majority relationsThe text offers an analysis of the MHJP’s core exhibition, the architecture of the Museum’s building as well as the transformations of its surroundings, seen as operations in as well as on a space that is a sign and a designate of the Holocaust. This observed de-Holocaustization of the Holocaust story takes place in the context of progressing Holocaustization of the story concerning the past of ethnic Poles.The main narrative uniting the MHJP’s surroundings, building and core exhibition is the idyllic myth of Polin which dictates the selection and presenting of information. The story of Polish hosts and Jewish guests that is inherent to the Polin myth establishes inequality and dominance/subjugation as framing principles of a story of majority-minority relations. It also constitutes a mental gag and an instance of emotional blackmail which precludes any rational – analytical and critical – conversation based on historical realities. Furthermore, in practice, it is a part of a pattern of culture which produces – and at the same time legitimizes – violence and exclusion.The article reconstructs the principles governing the Polinization of the history of Jews in Eastern Europe (a term coined by Konrad Matyjaszek). These principles include: emphasizing the Polish over the Jewish lieux de mémoire; presenting the figures and landmarks of importance for both groups through the prism of those aspects which concern the majority group; refraining from problematization of specific phenomena (like Judaism or transboundary character) and from applying to the a longue durée perspective; and decontextualization (e.g., by passing over anti-Semitism – Christian but not only Christian – and its significance for the construction of the majority group’s collective identity, an identity that over time increasingly determined the Jews’ conditions of life, until eventually it determined their fate). In relation to the core exhibition the text discusses such issues as: “last minute” censorship; affirmation of anti-Semitic phantasms (like the Paradisus Iudaerum or Esterka); the abandonment planned – and prepared – part of the exhibition dealing with the period after the regaining of independence by Poland in 1989; presenting numerous events and questions in a way that contradicts the state of research not only known but often arrived at in Poland (a particularly outraging example of this is abstaining from a realistic presentation of the Polish context of the Holocaust in favor of a return to the outdated category of the innocent, or indifferent, Polish bystander to the Holocaust).The stake of this retouched story is the image of Poland and reputation of Poles, that is to say – the complacency of the non-Jewish majority. The price is the mystification of Eastern European Jewish history and the thwarting of the potential for change which arouse as a result of the Jedwabne debate. This potential promised a chance for a revision of culture and a remodelling of social relations in the spirit of equal rights and integrated history. Apart from the period from 1944/45 to 1946, this chance was unprecedented in theJewish-Polish and Polish-Jewish “common history that divides”.  Ambasada Polski w Polsce. Mit Polin w Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich (MHŻP) jako wzór narracji i model relacji mniejszość-większośćTekst zawiera analizę wystawy głównej MHŻP, architektonicznej postaci gmachu muzeum i przekształceń jego otoczenia jako operacji dokonanych w oraz na przestrzeni będącej znakiem i desygnatem Zagłady. Kontekstem dla obserwowanej deholokaustyzacji opowieści o Holokauście jest postępująca holokaustyzacja opowieści o przeszłości etnicznych Polaków. Narracją główną spajającą otoczenie MHŻP, gmach oraz wystawę główną jest idylliczny mitPolin, który rozstrzyga o selekcji i sposobie prezentowania informacji. Zawarta w nim opowieść o polskich gospodarzach i żydowskich gościach ustanawia nierównoprawność oraz dominację/podporządkowanie jako zasady ramowe opowieści o relacji większość-mniejszość. Stanowi także rodzaj mentalnego knebla i emocjonalnego szantażu, który udaremnia racjonalną – analityczną i krytyczną – rozmowę w kategoriach historycznego konkretu. Ponadto zaś – w praktyce – jest częścią wzoru kultury, który produkuje – i legitymizuje zarazem – przemoc oraz wykluczenie.Artykuł rekonstruuje reguły polinizacji historii Żydów w Europie Wschodniej (termin autorstwa Konrada Matyjaszka). Do reguł tych należą m.in. eksponowanie polskich miejsc pamięci (lieux de mémoire) kosztem żydowskich miejsc pamięci; prezentowanie figur i cezur obopólnie ważnych przez pryzmat tego, co w nich istotne dla grupy większościowej; brak problematyzacji zjawisk specyficznych (jak np. judaizm, transgraniczność) i ujęcia ich w perspektywie długiego trwania; dekonstektualizacja (np. pominięcie antysemityzmu –chrześcijańskiego i nie tylko – oraz jego znaczenia dla konstrukcji zbiorowej tożsamości grupy większościowej, która z biegiem czasu w coraz znaczniejszym stopniu rozstrzygała o warunkach życia Żydów, aż przesądziła o ich losie).W odniesieniu do wystawy głównej tekst porusza sprawę m.in. cenzury last minute; afirmacji antysemickich fantazmatów (jak Paradisus Iudaeorum czy Esterka); rezygnacji z przewidzianej i przygotowanej części ekspozycji dotyczącej okresu po odzyskaniu przez Polskę niepodległości w 1989 roku; prezentacji wielu wydarzeń i zagadnień w sposób sprzeczny ze stanem badań nie tylko znanym, ale też niejednokrotnie wypracowanym w Polsce (czego szczególnie bulwersującym przykładem jest odstąpienie od realistycznej prezentacji polskiego kontekstu Zagłady i powrót do zdezaktualizowanej kategorii biernego czy też obojętnego polskiego świadka [bystander] Zagłady).Stawką tak spreparowanej opowieści jest wizerunek Polski i reputacja Polaków, a więc dobre samopoczucie nieżydowskiej większości. Ceną zaś – mistyfikacja historii Żydów Europy Wschodniej oraz zniweczenie potencjału zmiany, który ujawnił się w związku z debatą jedwabieńską. Potencjał ten oznaczał szansę rewizji kultury oraz przebudowy stosunków społecznych w duchu równych praw i historii zintegrowanej. Nie licząc okresu 1944/1945 - 1946, była to szansa bezprecedensowa w żydowsko-polskiej i polsko-żydowskiej „wspólnej historii, która dzieli”. 

Second World Urbanity: Infrastructures of Utopia and Really Existing Socialism

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daria Bocharnikova ◽  
Steven E. Harris
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Urban History ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Special Collection ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Cultural World ◽  
Second World ◽  
State Socialist

The disappearance of most state socialist regimes in 1989/1991 afforded scholars from a range of disciplines new opportunities to examine the history of socialist cities and their post-socialist transformations. Recent scholarship has focused particularly on such cities in their corresponding national contexts and with the passing of the Cold War, broader commonalities with the urban history of Western cities have come into sharper focus. Absent in most recent work on socialist cities, however, is attention to the broader ideological, political, and cultural world—the socialist Second World—that bound these cities and their countries together. Similarly lacking is a deeper appreciation of the specificities of the socialist city in contrast to its counterparts in the capitalist West and the global South. Read together, the essays in this special collection underscore the value of re-examining how socialist cities were once part of the myriad relations that gave the Second World its ideological and material coherence in pursuit of socialist urbanity.

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