Self-definition and self-defense: Jewish racial identity in nineteenth-century France
Self-definition and self-defense: Jewish racial identity in nineteenth-century France
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自我定义与自卫：十九世纪法国的犹太人种族身份
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发表时间：
2005
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通讯作者：
L. Leff
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作者：
L. Leff
本文探讨了法国犹太人如何以及为什么开始把自己说成是一个“种族”。虽然我们经常认为犹太人的种族身份是19世纪80年代反犹主义者的发明，但犹太人的种族主义者实际上早在19世纪20年代就采用了这种语言。犹太人并不是无意中借用了诋毁者的语言，而是从中立或同情他们事业的学者那里借用了种族语言，这些语言在他们更大的自卫战略中是有意义的。开创现代种族理论的学者不是19世纪晚期的社会达尔文主义者，他们是像蒂埃里和米什莱这样的浪漫主义历史学家，他们认为法国是一个由多民族组成的国家，这些民族随着时间的推移聚集在一起形成了一个统一的国家。因此，在反犹太主义者攻击犹太人是反社会和不道德的人，只会给法国带来伤害的时候，种族为理解差异提供了一个框架，认为差异是合法的、有用的和有尊严的。看看法国犹太人从这些早期历史学家那里借鉴了什么，我们就可以看到犹太人自卫和犹太人自我定义之间的相互联系。为了保证自己的权利和社会地位，法国犹太人借用了新的术语来理解他们是谁。
This article examines how and why French Jews began to speak of themselves as a “race.” Though we often assume that Jewish racial identity was an invention of anti-Semites in the 1880s, Jewish publicists had in fact adopted this language as early as the 1820s. Far from unwittingly appropriating the language of their detractors, Jews borrowed the language of race from scholars neutral or sympathetic to their cause in ways that made sense in light of their larger strategies of self-defense. The scholars who pioneered modern race theory were not the late nineteenth-century Social Darwinists; they were romantic historians like the Thierrys and Michelet, who saw France as a nation composed of a plurality of peoples who had come together over time to form a unified nation. Race thus provided a framework for understanding difference as legitimate, useful and dignified at a moment when anti-Jewish publicists attacked Jews as anti-social and immoral people who brought only harm to France. Looking at what French Jews borrowed from these early historians allows us to see the interconnections between Jewish self-defense and Jewish self-definition. In seeking to guarantee their rights and social status, French Jews appropriated new terms of understanding who they were.