This book, the first to explore the politics of definitions from an interdisciplinary perspective, encourages readers to reconsider the value and limits of definitions in confronting antisemitism and Islamophobia. In recent years, definitions of antisemitism and Islamophobia have become central to the struggle to combat the hostility, harassment and discrimination experienced by Jews and Muslims. Yet these definitions have also provoked fierce controversy: critics have questioned whether they are fit for purpose, or have criticised them as unwelcome attempts to restrict freedom of expression. In this edited collection, historians, social scientists and philosophers reflect on definitions of antisemitism and Islamophobia in both the past and the present. Its contributors investigate the different historical contexts which have shaped definitions and examine their different political purposes and meanings, as well as addressing contemporary debates, and identifying ways forus to move beyond our current impasse. This book therefore provides a broad and new perspective from which to comprehend present day minority politics.
Part I Introduction.- 1. The Pure Essence of Things? Contingency,
Controversy, and the Struggle to Define Antisemitism and Islamophobia - David
Feldman and Marc Volovici.- Part II The Long View.- 2. Bracketing
Antisemitism: The Discourse and Its Semantic Distinctions - Manuela
Consonni.- 3. Attitudes to Islam and Muslims in the Christian Balkans -
Frederick F. Anscombe.- 4. Moorish Blood: Islamophobia, Racism and the
Struggle for the Identity of Modern Spain - Fernando Bravo López.-
5. Challenges of The Jewish People: Promises and Perils of Collective
Identities - Cynthia M. Baker.- Part III The Short View.- 6. The Antisemitism
Question and the Politics of Israel in Cold War America - Doug Rossinow.
7. The Rifle that Stands Between Us: Arab Intellectuals and the Jewish
Question, 18392020 - Orit Bashkin.- 8. Wither Philosemitic Europe?
Antisemitism after the Golden Era - G. Daniel Cohen.- Part IV The Present
Day.- 9. DefiningAntisemitism: What Is the Point? - Brian Klug.- 10. BDS
today is no different from the SA in 1933: Juridification, Securitisation
and Antifa-isation of the Contemporary German Discourse on
IsraelPalestine, Antisemitism and the BDS Movement - Peter Ullrich.-
11. Islamophobia, Antisemitism and the Struggle for Recognition: The Politics
of Definitions - Tariq Modood.- 12. Does Defining Racism Help Overcome It? -
Rebecca Ruth Gould.
David Feldman is Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London, UK and Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism.
Marc Volovici is Alfred Landecker Lecturer in the Department of Jewish History at the University of Haifa, Israel.
