Eighteenth-century despotism discourse yoked Judaism and Islam under subjection but alternately erased each

Evidence

By the time he deploys his theologico-political vocabulary, and although “unfortunately he does not always appear to use his terms consistently,” Kant is already participating in a discourse that, in the eighteenth century, was in the process of violently emerging: the invention of political despotism. Through it, the incomparability of religion and politics, of Judaism and Islam, most particularly under the figure of subjection, would not become quite stable. Yet, and most significantly, perhaps, what would become most visible of the configuration produced by the Kantian sublime in connection to subjection was precisely what has dropped out of view of the Kantian text: Islam. In the discourse on despotism, on the other hand, and in the pages that follow it, it “seems strange” that Judaism (which had already been absented from the Observations on the Feeling of the BeautifUl and Sublime), this time, and again, drops out of view. — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 615

Categorization

• XREF: This is the genealogical spine claim — Islam appears under subjection where Judaism disappears, the reciprocal occlusion pattern that connects to the Kant sections and other Islamophobia-cluster books.
• DEFINE: Describes the ‘subjection’ figure as the shared site where Judaism and Islam are yoked and alternately dropped from view.