Semites

“Anidjar argues persuasively that it was precisely at the moment when Christian Europe appeared to vanish, in the wake of the Enlightenment, political revolution, and universalism, that Christendom retained its identity and power through its construction of the Semitesthe two enemies, Arab and Jew. The purported separation of religion and politics, a separation that has formed the core of Western historical thinking over the last two centuries, in fact did not occur. In less than two hundred pages, Anidjar succeeds in shifting our understanding of Christianity’s relationship to modernity, to power, to Jews and Arabs, and to Judaism and Islam.”—Mitchell B. Hart, University of Florida

“In this fascinating collection of essays, Gil Anidjar traces the Western conception of the outsider, the enemy, through the once-familiar notion of the Semite. He invites his readers to ponder the remarkable fact that although the category of ‘Semite’ is now scarcely used in its original sense (Arabs and Jews as Europe’s joint Other), its negative, ‘anti-Semite’ (meaning anti-Jews), is very much alive in religious and political discourses in Euro-America. Anidjar is a master of Derridean deconstruction, a provocative analyst of the role of Western Christianity in the formation of contemporary hostilities. This elegant book will upset many complacencies.”—Talal Asad, The CUNY Graduate Center