The Church crafted ‘the Jew’ as an abstract category detached from daily encounter

Evidence

The Christian theory of the Jews stepped therefore beyond the generalization of the practices of exclusion; it was more than an attempt at systemization of that vague and diffuse experience of distinctiveness which emanates from, and informs, practices of caste-style separation. Rather than a reflection of grass roots, neighbourly exchanges or frictions, Christian theory of the Jews was subject to a different logic – that of the self-reproduction of the Church and its ecumenical domination. Hence the relative autonomy of the ‘Jewish question’ regarding the popular social, economic and cultural experience. Hence also the relative facility with which this question could be set apart from the context of daily life and made immune against the test of daily experience. To their Christian hosts, Jews were simultaneously concrete objects of daily intercourse and exemplars of a category defined independently of such intercourse. The latter characteristic of the Jews was neither indispensable nor inevitable from the point of view of the first. It was precisely for this reason that it could be relatively easily separated from the first and deployed as a resource in actions only loosely, if at all, related to the practices of quotidianity. In the Church theory of the Jews, antisemitism acquired a form in which it ‘can exist almost regardless of the real situation of Jews in society… Most striking of all, it can be found among people who have never set eyes on a Jew and in countries where there have been no Jews for centuries.’ — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 131

Categorization

• XREF: Directly prefigures the Islamophobia literature’s ‘the Muslim’ as a discursive construct separable from actual Muslims — connects to Said’s Orientalism discussion in the Foundations module. — connects to: Social discrimination invented the abstracted figure of the Jew as a universal type; Antisemites conflate the parvenu with the pariah in every Jew; Christian self-identity was constitutively dependent on ongoing Jewish estrangement — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 130 (+6 more)
• DEFINE: Defines the mechanism by which ‘the Jew’ became a free-floating signifier: separation from quotidian intercourse.

Related

• Antisemites conflate the parvenu with the pariah in every Jew (similarity 0.87)
• Social discrimination invented the abstracted figure of the Jew as a universal type (similarity 0.87)
• The conceptual Jew occupied every boundary conflict of Western modernity (similarity 0.82)
• The conceptual Jew was cast as the viscosity resisting modernity’s order. (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Social exclusion of Jews made abstract stereotypes replace personal knowledge. #corroborates (0.92) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 531
• Christian self-identity was constitutively dependent on ongoing Jewish estrangement #expands (0.82) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 130
• Propaganda struggled to override personal images of known Jews. #qualifies (0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 524
• The conceptual Jew was cast as the viscosity resisting modernity’s order. #expands (0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 168
• The conceptual Jew occupied every boundary conflict of Western modernity #expands (0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 134
• The Church’s moral language structured who counted as monstrous others #expands (0.78)
• Contact with a Jew can trigger tactile delirium and compulsions to wash #exemplifies (0.72)