Criticism of anti -Semitism – anger on the identical

In times of war it was necessary to operate philosophy. Philip Hogh, director of the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Kassel, welcomed around 50 present to the workshop of the “Interdisciplinary Materialism” series with this Lenin, which took place on January 24th and 25th as a continuation of the focus of the same name. After dealing with internal and external natural relationships in 2022 and the concept of work in 2023, the series now dealt with the “elements of anti -Semitism”.

Hogh’s Lenin reference meant this argument: In times of rampant anti -Semitism, it is important to make a concept of what you are dealing with. According to Hogh, the (philosophical) discourse on anti -Semitism is characterized by semi -knowledge and falsehoods; The seven contributions of international lectures should therefore help to provide information.

Of central importance

The event title builds on the chapter “Elements of Anti -Semitism” in the writing “Dialectic of the Enlightenment” by Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer. At the beginning of Niklas lambs dealt with this text. Despite changed social conditions, many of the considerations published in 1944 are still of great relevance today. The concept of mimesis – i.e. the imitation of what the anti -Semites calls “Jew” – could illuminate how the genocidal massacre is connected on October 7, 2023, Israel committed a genocide in Gaza. The central position of the “elements” in Adornos and Horkheimer’s analysis showed that civilization and education cannot be fully understood without access to anti -Semitism. For it embodies all the delusional, which is dialectical, and shows that the education of anti -Semitism reaches its limits – “border” in a double sense: anti -Semitism refuses to educate and in anti -Semitism. .

The social philosopher Titus Stahl then dealt with Axel Honnneth’s “Pathology of Reason” and Rahel Jaeggi’s “regressive ways of life”. Both approaches only made anti -Semitism as a result of a blockade of reason. There was agreement on the inadequacy of being able to understand anti -Semitism so adequately. But Stahl’s attempt to make both concepts for an anti -Semitism criticism also met with little approval. An accusation: The attempt follows more political-instrumental considerations than knowledge.

With the intention of saving the intersectionality concept, sociology professor Karin Stögner emphasized the connection between anti -Semitism and racism to connect the first day. Racism, according to Stögner, turns against the first nature to be projected into racified people; Anti -Semitism against the second nature, the abstract that is projected in the “Jews”. Together, racism and anti -Semitism are the hatred of external rule and the attempt to cope with exploitation (in racism) or annihilation (in anti -Semitism). In the course of the 20th century, racism has changed from biological to cultural attributions – generally one speaks of “racism without races” – that is how anti -Semitism has passed to the Jewish state of Israel – “anti -Semitism without Jews «.

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Already the answer to the first question, which is why Israel -related anti -Semitism is widespread in queer communities, but revealed an empty space. Stögner was surprised by the fact that parts of these communities nevertheless not show solidarity with Israel despite their praise for the non-identical. The anger on the “too identical” in postmodern anti -Semitism hardly seems to be taken into account in Stögner’s approach. The fact that perhaps the central considerations in queer feminism are related and indefinite are related to hatred of the “identical” Israel, as can be observed, for example at Judith Butler, cannot be fully grasped with the defense against second nature, i.e. the abstract. Israel is less accused of being an abstract “artificial state” from these circles, rather than an identical “ethnost state”.

Defense and reinterpretation

The following morning, the social philosopher Julia Christ indirectly resumed this connection. As an editor of the French magazine »K. La Revue «she reported on the grantedness to defend her anti -Zionism as a moral necessity with which French intellectuals. Christ found that anti -Zionism was neither a socio -economic criticism nor an ideology criticism or a plausible criticism of a nationalism, especially of the Jewish people. The “strange rejection of Jewish nationalism,” said Christ convincingly, was due to the anti -Semitic idea, and sovereign Judaism would be wrong under all circumstances.

As an explanation, which is why left western intellectuals in particular held on these ideas, Christ offered two hypotheses. First, the concept of the closed nation state was increasingly perceived as injustice after 1945. However, this did not lead to its dismantling, but into a new rhetoric of democracy without a sovereign nation state. The necessary conflict between structural necessity and public denouncing the nation state is projected onto Israel. Because Israel clubs with the broad domestic protests before and the merger of the population and the state after October 7th identical and non-identical moments. Second, Christ observed the increase in a moral self -image in western societies. It is not for nothing that, according to Christ, anti -Zionists always emphasize their connection to Jews. The existence of Israel’s scratch in the self -assessment as morally integrated, as not anti -Semitic. Because if Israel’s existence is necessary due to the global, including European, anti -Semitism, an indirect allegation would be associated with all those who imagine that they have “learned from history”. Antizionism, one could conclude, is also a defense strategy against the implicit allegation of anti -Semitism.

According to Hogh, the discourse on anti -Semitism is characterized by half -knowledge and falsehoods.

The sociologist Johanna Bach dealt with anti -Semitic emotional theory based on Richard Wagner’s view of Judaism. For Wagner, Jews were unable to feel feelings-they were too cold and could only imitate real feelings in communication with non-Jews. The denounced “Jewish work” was therefore not understood as Jewish on the basis of economic criteria, but because of the supposedly missing warm, empathetic feeling that Germans felt while working. It is not only this attribution, according to Bach, already the assumption that feelings as an allegedly immediate truth was enough to reject a world declaration. Feelings are always socially.

The last speaker of the workshop series also took up the differentiation between supposedly Jewish and German work. The historian and social philosopher Nikolas Lelle traced that the German concept of work could not be solved from anti -Semitic world interpretations. The pathic projection already mentioned by Niklas Lämmel shows itself in the marking of Jews as unproductive: The allegation of the “wage without work” reveals the dissatisfaction of the anti -Semites with the compulsion to have to sacrifice their own life of wage labor.

Current philosophy

The multi-layered approaches to the concept of anti-Semitism and the discussions at consistently high level should have contributed to strengthening the need to organize a social criticism from anti-Semitism, as Hogh outlined the goal of the workshop series. At the same time, the limits of an undertaking became clear to synthesize some approaches through an undogmatic approach. The “saving” in the saving criticism seemed to have been hung too high in one place or another.

In contrast, Julia Christ’s focus was on the current anti -Zionism where anti -Semitism criticism could move: without having to put aside without economic and reason -critical approaches, the “anger” would primarily be dealt with. Thinking together with the already thoroughly researched anger on the abstract seems to be one of the essential tasks for a critical theory of anti -Semitism in the coming years.

The next workshop series is to take place as part of the research focus of “Interdisciplinary Materialism” as part of the “Interdisciplinary Materialism” research focus. Philip Hogh has not yet predicted what the following rows will deal with, since the institute wants to intervene in current problems. For a political practice, Hogh emphasizes, a present – not just ex -insistent – philosophical reflection is required.

Timon Wißfeld is a communication designer and deals with the design of memory and commemoration with a focus on anti -Semitism criticism.