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Antisemitism as Cultural Sadism: An Erotohistorical Approach

  • Susannah Heschel
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Grasping Emotions
This chapter is in the book Grasping Emotions

Abstract

Drawing on recent scholarship concerning anti-Black racism and enslavement in the United States, as well as feminist and queer theory, Susannah Heschel argues for an erotohistorical analysis of antisemitism that includes attention to emotions, gender, sexuality, and temporality. Essential to antisemitic violence is rape, she contends, as a physical, emotional, and spiritual attack against women that is intended to destroy the Jewish future. Historians have examined antisemitic ideology without recognizing its emotional role in producing a culture of sadism. The tenacity of antisemitism stems from the unremitting demand of sadism for physical and verbal cruelty.

Abstract

Drawing on recent scholarship concerning anti-Black racism and enslavement in the United States, as well as feminist and queer theory, Susannah Heschel argues for an erotohistorical analysis of antisemitism that includes attention to emotions, gender, sexuality, and temporality. Essential to antisemitic violence is rape, she contends, as a physical, emotional, and spiritual attack against women that is intended to destroy the Jewish future. Historians have examined antisemitic ideology without recognizing its emotional role in producing a culture of sadism. The tenacity of antisemitism stems from the unremitting demand of sadism for physical and verbal cruelty.

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Foreword to the Series V
  3. Acknowledgments IX
  4. Contents XI
  5. Introduction 1
  6. 1 Contemporary Methodological Perspectives on Emotions
  7. Selected Avenues to Emotion-Oriented Interpretations of Ancient Religious Texts: Review and Outlook 9
  8. Grasping Religiously Connoted Emotions and Sentiments from a Co-Constructivist Emotion Paradigm 29
  9. Antisemitism as Cultural Sadism: An Erotohistorical Approach 51
  10. 2 Grasping Emotions in Ancient Iconography
  11. Emotions and Ancient Near Eastern Art: Issues and Methods 79
  12. Emotions and Visual Arts, with a Focus on Greco-Roman Artefacts: A Response to K. Sonik 99
  13. 3 Grasping Emotions in Religious Authorative Texts of Antiquity
  14. Emotion Scripts in the Hebrew Bible: A Case of Hate 127
  15. Grasping Emotions in Psalm 130: Hermeneutics, Methods, and Issues 143
  16. Prophetic Shockvertising: Methods and Ethics of Shock Effects in Amos 3, Isaiah 20, and Ezekiel 23 177
  17. „Und sie fürchteten sich sehr …“: Kognitionswissenschaftliche Erkenntnisse zur Angst und deren Anwendung auf neutestamentliche Texte 207
  18. Qur’anic Plot and the Practice of Emotional Virtue, with the Example of Al-Aʿrāf (Q. 7) 229
  19. Divine Attributes and Human Emotions: Joseph’s Sentimental Education in Sura 12 of the Qur'an 253
  20. 4 Grasping Emotions from Philosophical and Systematic-Theological Perspectives
  21. Kontrollieren oder Kultivieren der Emotionen? Aristoteles’ Konzeption der Emotionen 273
  22. Sprache und Gefühl: Überlegungen zur theologischen Hermeneutik 289
  23. Mimesis, Gefühl und Ratio: Anthropologische Mehrdimensionalität und religiöse Tradition: Eine Response zu R. Barth 303
  24. List of Authors 313
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