Johann David Michaelis and the Colonial Imaginary: Orientalism and the Emergence of Racial Antisemitism in Eighteenth-Century Germany

The Great Chain of Orientalism: Jewish Identity, Stigma Management, and Ethnic Exclusion in Israel

“…This argument has two local implications and one global one. First, a large scholarly literature on a Jewish inferiority complex has only begun to interpret that complex as a historical reaction to Orientalism or internal colonization (Heschel 1999;Hess 2000;Khazzoom 1998;Kramer 1999) or to connect it to communal relations within the Jewish world (Aschheim 1982;Khazzoom 1998;Raz Krakotzkin 1989;Rodrigue 1993), and then only in limited local instances. In contrast, this work demonstrates that the effect of orientalism on Jewish identity was massive.…”

“…Third, that invasion led to a sharp turn in orientalism, which began to justify colonialism by producing the east as incapable of ruling itself. Much work on colonialism and classification has followed these basic connections, either on the same grand historical scale (Wolff 1994) or on a smaller scale (Anderson 1991;Heschel 1999;Hess 2000;Mitchell 1991;Stoler 1992). Similarly, the assertion that the power to classify is an important form of domination is a guiding insight of the U.S. literature on racialization (Espiritu 1992;Jenkins 1994;Kibria 1998;Omi andWinant [1986] 1994).…”

“…This paper is very much in the post-colonial vein. However the focus of post-colonial scholarship has been on the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized, not on the relationship between different groups of stigmatized others (e.g., Heschel 1999;Hess 2000;Memmi 1965;Said 1978;Spivak 1988;Trinh 1989). 6 As such, the kind of chain I elaborate here has not appeared before.…”

“…While this perspective is helpful in structuring the paper, it may be an artificial distinction, and it is likely that the point about power is applicable to Western European Christians as much as to Jews. For example, works by Heschel (1999) and Hess (2000) suggests that Western European Christians were aware that since Christianity emerged in the east, they too could be seen as eastern. Orientalization of Jews, by positing enormous differences between Jews and Christians, could be seen as an attempt to deemphasize this debt.…”

Eastern Others on Western Pages: Eighteenth-Century Literary Orientalism

“…Jonathan Hess discusses signs of racial anti-semitism in the prose narrative of Johann David Michaelis. 25 Eighteenth-century Russian orientalist research is conducted in a recent study by Brower and Lazzerini. 26 Like Germany, Italy did not have a colonial project in this period, and was long delayed in nation-forming, unlike the French and English powers.…”