Theory, as it’s happened across the humanities, has often been
coded as “Jewish.” This collection of essays seeks to move past
explanations for this understanding that rely on the self-evident
(the historical centrality of Jews to the rise of Critical Theory
with the Frankfurt School) or stereotypical (psychoanalysis as the
“Jewish Science”) in order to show how certain problematics of
modern Jewishness enrich theory. In the range of violence and
agency that attend the appellation “Jew,” depending on how,
where, and by whom it’s uttered, we can see that Jewishness is a
rhetorical as much as a sociological fact, and that its rhetorical
and sociological aspects, while linked, are not identical.
Attention to this disjuncture helps to elucidate the questions of
power, subjectivity, identity, figuration, language, and relation
that modern theory has grappled with. These questions in turn
implicate geopolitical issues such as the relation of a people to a
state and the violence done in the name of simplistic identitarian
ideologies. Clarifying a situation where “the Jew” is not
readily or unproblematically legible, the editors propose what they
call “spectral reading,” a way to understand Jewishness as a
fluid and rhetorical presence. While not divorced from sociological
facts, this spectral reading works in concert with contemporary
theory to mediate pessimistic and utopian impulses, experiences,
and realities. Contributors: Svetlana Boym, Andrew Bush, Sergey
Dolgopolski, Jay Geller, Sarah Hammerschlag, Hannan Hever, Martin
Land, Martin Jay, James I. Porter, Yehouda Shenhav, Elliot R.
Wolfson
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