Postcolonial hybridity theory has neglected Jews, who remain cast as essential and unchanging.

Evidence

It is perhaps surprising that scholars concerned with postcolonial “hybridity” have paid so little attention to the Jews (and vice versa). Indeed, in this volume Sander Gilman argues that, for the “multicultural” writers whose works are so much the focus of postcolonial literary studies, the Jews seem to be the eternal exception: a people who, far from being hybrid, have an essence that is both unchanging and distinctive (as have all orientals in the orientalist conception). — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 89

Categorization

• QUESTION: Why have postcolonial literary scholars excluded Jews from hybridity discourse? Gilman’s claim that Jews are treated as ‘the eternal exception’ invites investigation into the mechanisms of that exclusion.
• SEED: An essay angle: the irony that a discipline celebrating hybrid, fluid identity treats Jews as the one essentialized holdout — what does that reveal about the unexamined assumptions of both multiculturalism and orientalism?