Going through a book that is trying to argue that antisemitism is ultimately an expression of castration anxiety, & that in the antisemitic outlook Jews and Judaism are symbolic "holes" or "clefts" in European society, feared & hated because they represent the possibility of "civilisational unmanning". There's a very striking passage about Jews running off with social penises, and also some laboured thinking around circumcision + the symbolic castration of the Jewish people that was the destruction of the Temple (which materialises the possibility of "civilisational unmanning"). CC: @chicago-geniza re deranged psychoanalytic outlooks on The Jewish Question.
#me spritzing the French intelligentsia with a spray bottle: put down the phallus!#put your hands on your head and put the phallus DOWN#(she is trying to argue that rabbinical Judaism is built on a 'lack' or a 'cut' ie the destruction of the Temple#& that Jews are feared as the castrated outsider which demonstrates the *possibility* of castration#& from there goes on to say that Jews are not hated for what they lack as she presupposes is the case in other forms of racialised hatred#- an assumption that she never anchors to anything may I add -#but are rather hated for what they have or are thought to have eg more money more influence#& she never bridges that gap#& it's like ok then which is it! are Jews hated because they're castrated or because of their enormous symbolic penises#are we socially castrated but individually generously bedicked? I have many questions about this essay)
