Internal outsiders - imagined orientals?

This book explores the possibility of applying perspectives developed in the context of Gender and Postcolonial Studies to Jewish Cultural Studies and Studies in Antisemitism. Starting with two introductory texts on the 'Oriental Web' and the longue durée of the figure of the Jew as embodiment of the 'other' in colonial discourse, the essays analyse the ways in which stereotypes of the external and internal other intertwine in modern national discourse. The texts also examine the ways in which these borders are demarcated and transgressed by means of Orientalist self-fashioning in Jewish cultural production. The idea of Self-Orientalisation poses a challenge to the Saidian theory, in which Orientalism is conceived of as a „strange secret sharer of Western Antisemitism“. The general theme is approached in an interdisciplinary manner and the book is divided into several chapters that cover, amongst others topics, the interaction of colonialism, Zionism and Orientalism, the Jew as a literary Oriental trope, and the entanglement of Orientalising identities with gender and queer identities. The collection is primarily concerned with the intricate genealogies of contemporary discourses. With contributions by Ulrike Brunotte / Jürgen Mohn / Christina Späti: Preliminary Remarks || Steven E. Aschheim: The Modern Jewish Experience and the Entangled Web of Orientalism || Ulrike Brunotte: “The Jewes did Indianize; or the Indians doe Judaize”: Philo-Semitism and anti-Judaism as Topoi of Colonial Discourse. A Case Study || Hilegard Frübis: The Figure of the Beautiful Jewess: Displacements on the Borders between East and West || Mirjam Rajner: A Turbaned German of Mosaic Faith: Moritz Daniel Oppenheim’s Visual Self-Orientalization || Cecilie Speggers Schrøder Simonsen: Colonialism in the Ghetto: Reading Aus dem Ghetto as Self-Colonizing Literature || Christine Achinger: Orientalism, Occidentalism and Colonialism in Freytag’s Images of Jews and Poles || Axel Stähler: The Author’s derrière and the Ludic Impulse: Oskar Panizza’s “The Operated Jew” (1893) and Amy Levy’s “Cohen of Trinity” (1889) || Ofri Ilany: Homo-Semitism: Jewish Men, Greek Love and the Rise of Homosexual Identity || Gabriele Dietze: Affective Masculinity: Queering Jewish Orientalism in Young Vienna || Karin Stögner: Nature and Anti-Nature: Constellations of Antisemitism and Sexism || Christina Späti: Between Exoticism and Antisemitism: Orientalization of Jews in Switzerland in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries || Dekel Peretz: Franz Oppenheimer: A Pioneer of Diasporic Zionism || Jihan Jasmin S. Dean: De-Orientalization of Jews after 1989 in Germany: The Relationship between Discourse and Subjects