The End of Jewish Modernity
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"The fact that, after having been ignored or repressed for decades, the memory of the Holocaust has been transformed today into a kind of civil religion in the Western world, sometimes protected by the law, shows the profound isolation of anti-Semitic discourse and ideas."--The End of Jewish Modernity (2016) by Enzo Traverso "As for the anti-negationist laws adopted in various European countries, including France and Germany, after several years in force these have largely proved their harmful character. First of all, they have had the perverse effect of transforming the ‘assassins of memory’ into ‘victims’. Negationists try to legitimize their lies in the name of freedom of expression. Another perverse effect has been the extreme mediatization of all the trials, verdicts or arrests arising from the application of these laws, which have thus paradoxically become vehicles of propaganda. The arrest in Vienna of the British negationist David Irving focused the attention of the global media. His American counterpart Arthur Butz, however, can publish his pamphlets with total impunity, there being no laws against this, but also to total indifference, as no US newspapers or TV channels find him newsworthy."--The End of Jewish Modernity (2016) by Enzo Traverso |
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La fin de la modernité juive : Histoire d'un tournant conservateur (2013) is a book by Enzo Traverso.
It was translated in English as The End of Jewish Modernity (2016).
Its most cited chapter is "Memory: The Civil Religion of the Holocaust".
Blurb
Has Jewish modernity exhausted itself? Flourishing between the age of Enlightenment and the Second World War, the intellectual, literary, scientific and artistic legacy of Jewish modernity continues to dazzle us, however, in this provocative new book, esteemed historian Enzo Traverso argues powerfully that this cultural epoch has come to an end.
Previously a beacon for critical thinking in the Western world, the mainstream of Jewish thought has, since the end of the war, undergone a conservative turn. With great sensitivity and nuance, Traverso traces this development to the virtual destruction of European Jewry by the Nazis, and the establishment of the United States and Israel as the new poles of Jewish communal life. This is a compelling narrative, hinged upon a highly original discussion of Hannah Arendt's writings on Jewishness and politics.
With provocative chapters on the relationship between antisemitism and Islamophobia, the ascendance of Zionism, and the new 'civil religion of the Holocaust', The End of Jewish Modernity is both an elegy to a lost tradition and an intellectual history of the present.
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