Renan subordinated race to language and civilization in forming identity.

Evidence

Renan was clear that he was concerned with making ‘judgements about races’. Yet as Robert D. Priest has argued, Renan’s understanding of race was much more nuanced and difficult to pin down than many scholars have given credit. In his Histoire générale, Renan argued for the limitations of the influence of race, and pointed to the example of contemporary ‘Israelites’ who had surpassed their Semitic heritage thanks to the effects of ‘civilisation’: [T]he primordial influence of race, as immense a part that it plays in the dynamics of human affairs, is offset by a crowd of other influences, which sometimes seem to overcome or even smother [étouffer] entirely that of blood. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 643 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

In the mid-nineteenth century, the public probably considered the French orientalist scholar Ernest Renan as the foremost authority on the Semites. Renan was instrumental in recharging the old East versus West / Muslim versus Christian dichotomy with the new content of race. The biblical Jew, who had previously been seen as the religious Other, now came to be understood also as Other by race. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 192 (#complicates, via linked claim)

This anxiety on Renan’s part to convey the sense of a demonstration actually taking place is heightened when he remarks explicitly that whereas anatomy employs stable and visible signs by which to consign objects to classes, linguistics does not. Therefore the philologist must make a given linguistic fact correspond in some way to a historical period: hence the possibility of a classification. Yet, as Renan was often to say, linguistic temporality and history are full of lacunae, enormous discontinuities, hypothetical periods. Therefore linguistic events occur in a nonlinear and essentially discontinuous temporal dimension controlled by the linguist in a, very particular way. That way, as Renan’s whole treatise on the Semitic branch of the Oriental languages goes very far to show, is comparative: Indo-European is taken as the living, organic norm, and Semitic Oriental languages are seen comparatively to be inorganic. Time is transformed into the space of comparative classification, which at bottom is based on a rigid binary opposition between organic and inorganic languages. So on the one hand there is the organic, biologically generative process represented by Indo-European, while on the other there is an inorganic, essentially unregenerative process, ossified into Semitic: most important, Renan makes it absolutely clear that such an imperious judgment is made by the Oriental philologist in his laboratory, for distinctions of the kind he has been concerned with are neither possible nor available for anyone except the trained professional. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 371 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Renan attributed medieval Islamic science to Aryans, not Arabs, to preserve his racial hierarchy. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 347; Renan saw assimilation into civilisation as capable of erasing racial character — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in…, 644; Renan’s racial theory held that civilisation could override race — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in…, 643 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Renan’s racial theory held that civilisation could override race #corroborates (0.95) — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 643
• Renan injected race into the old religious East-West dichotomy #complicates (0.78) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 192
• Renan’s comparative philology encoded a racial binary of organic versus inorganic languages #complicates (0.75) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 371